In the final accounting of the 2026 Orioles season, there will not be a shortage of things that a person can point to as a representative explanation for why things have turned out the way that they did. Many of their losses have contained multitudes of such decisions, actions, sequences of play. They found a way to do it again on Friday night, blowing repeated opportunities before ultimately falling behind in the top of the ninth inning, tying the game in the bottom of the ninth inning, and still
losing in ten innings, 6-5.
The bottom of the seventh inning is the one that really sticks out. When people advocate for manager Craig Albernaz to be relieved of his duties after only one season at the helm, this inning is why. Decisions that were obviously bad even as they were happening that turned out badly and made the Orioles have a worse team on the field for the remainder of the game.
Here’s what happened. The Orioles entered this inning with a 3-3 tie game, facing former Oriole DL Hall. Leading off the inning, Gunnar Henderson got a left-on-left hit against his buddy, and alertly advanced to second base on a ball that bounced. Hall walked Coby Mayo after tossing the wild pitch. There was no one out. In a late-inning situation, this was a crucial at-bat coming up. Due up for the Orioles was Samuel Basallo, who has been having a rough time at the plate of late.
On the first pitch of the at-bat, Basallo squared to bunt. No, I’m not making that up. Albernaz – we can only assume – demanded of Basallo that he bunt. What happened in this at-bat? Basallo looked like a guy who has bunted one time in his professional career. He picked up strike one while missing a bunt, the kind of thing that anybody, even bad bunters, knows how to pull the bat back. Albernaz left the bunt on even after watching this and Basallo bunted the next pitch foul, again looking kind of like pitchers used to do when they were asked to bunt.
Basallo eventually struck out on four pitches, failing to advance the runners at all. It’s not his fault he was asked to bunt! This is just absurd to even have to describe it. To be sure, the “let Basallo swing away” option wasn’t great either. The guy has a .579 OPS in September. Perhaps Albernaz might remember he has three catchers on the roster and he could pinch hit someone who has a chance of bunting and then put in a different catcher. It is his job to remember who is on the roster. No.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand struck out after this. That was also dumb but probably not Albernaz’s fault, particularly. Next up was Colton Cowser, a lefty who struggles against lefties. The Orioles pinch hit Rece Hinds, who struggles against everyone, for Cowser. Hinds grounded out. They wasted the chance. Maybe they should have had Hinds drop the bunt. Maybe they should have done a lot of things as this year went along.
Later, in the ninth inning, Milwaukee took a 5-3 lead on a play in which Hinds featured prominently, bobbling a liner into the outfield that led to a run scoring. It didn’t get scored an error. But it might have just been better to have Cowser out there.
The Orioles pulled off a dramatic ninth inning comeback even after Rico Garcia and Grant Wolfram teamed up to allow those two ninth inning runs. Henderson led off the inning with a single and Mayo followed with a double, and each of these O’s eventually scored on sacrifice flies hit by Basallo and Encarnacion-Strand. (Henderson and Mayo each had three hits in the game; Mayo’s three hits were all doubles.) As dumb as it all was, the Orioles went into extra innings with the wind at their back as they were able to rally.
They blew it again, of course. The Brewers, with the zombie runner starting on second base, opted to sacrifice bunt to get that runner to third. This is a poor tactical decision for a road team; the home team has the winning run at the plate already. Most road teams, anyway. Perhaps when you’re playing the Orioles, you can feel more confident about the one run lead. You have to get the one-run lead first, but like, Wolfram was on the mound, and he couldn’t do anything about Sal Frelick and his .618 OPS, giving up what turned into the game-losing hit.
In the bottom of the tenth, the Orioles 8-9-1 hitters struck out, flew out, and popped out. That flyout would have scored the game-tying run as a sacrifice fly, if only Jeremiah Jackson had advanced the runner ahead of it. He did not. The Orioles lost.
Returning to Albernaz, his seventh inning decisions are all the more infuriating because in some ways, he managed earlier in the game like it really mattered if the Orioles won for the first time all year. This included an aggressive hook for Cade Povich in only the fourth inning as Povich seemed to be running into the times-through-the-order penalty – which is a reasonable thing to conclude, because he always does.
Povich had given up a three-run home run to Jackson Chourio in the second inning to put the Orioles in a 3-0 hole. Pete Alonso erased that hole in one swing in the bottom of the third, tying it up with his 38th homer of the season and 302nd of his career. He extends his AL RBI lead, now with 105. Nobody has had at least 105 RBI in a season as an Oriole since Jonathan Schoop had 105 in 2017.
That 3-3 score is where things stayed for a long time. The Orioles did not lack for chances. They had 12 hits in the game and had a total of 13 at-bats with a runner in scoring position. They got two hits in those at-bats. It is one of the common things about this season. They struck out 13 times. More than once, they just needed a productive out and they couldn’t get it.
It’s all the more frustrating of a loss because the Orioles could have gained a game. In Chicago, the White Sox blew an 8-2 lead to the Tigers and eventually lost, 11-8. The Orioles would be just two games back to a team they have the head-to-head tiebreaker. They would be, if only they were a better team, with a better just about everything, compared to what they have now. Instead, here we are, with the Orioles having lost a game where they made Basallo try to bunt. I don’t have any problems believing that the Orioles lost a game. I still can’t believe they had Basallo try to bunt.
