The Orioles dropped the finale of their four-game series to the Guardians, 8-4, as their offense underachieved again, their defense continued to stink, and their erstwhile ace coughed up six runs and suffered a noticeable velocity dip in his second straight ugly outing.
Other than that, though, it was a great afternoon of baseball.
The first four innings of this game featured the classic combination of terrible 2026 Orioles baseball — offensive futility and defensive shenanigans — along with the unfortunate
new wrinkle of a horrendous Trevor Rogers performance. Normally, Trevor Rogers Day is one of celebration, in which fans can take comfort that they’ll at least get a quality outing from the Orioles ace. Today, though, he was sucked into the abyss of ineptitude that’s swallowed up so many of his teammates.
Things started out innocently enough, with Rogers mowing down the first seven batters he faced. But then came the defensive shenanigans I referred to earlier, and Rogers has nobody to blame but himself. On an Austin Hedges grounder to first base, Rogers raced to the bag to receive the feed from Pete Alonso, and then just…ran right past the base. He couldn’t get back before Hedges reached safely, and Cleveland had a gift baserunner on the Rogers error.
The Guardians, of course, took full advantage, because every Orioles defensive misplay is required to lead to at least one run. It’s in the MLB rulebook, look it up. Brayan Rocchio advanced Hedges to third on a single, and Steven Kwan scored him on a sac fly. An inning later, the Guardians made it 2-0 when José Ramírez blasted Rogers for a home run to left, the 290th of his Hall of Fame career. Well, there’s no shame in giving up a dinger to a guy like that, and at least things hadn’t spiraled out of control for Rogers.
…Oh. I spoke too soon. After the home run, Rogers suddenly couldn’t get anyone out. A single and a walk brought up Juan Brito, who lofted a shot to deep center field. It wasn’t an easily catchable ball, but a natural center fielder might’ve had a play on it. Unfortunately, the Orioles’ center fielder on this day was infielder Blaze Alexander, who got himself turned around and had no chance to reach the warning track as the ball fell in safely. Two runs scored on the double. If I could make a humble suggestion to the Orioles: maybe stop playing infielders in the outfield?
Two batters later, Brito scored on a Rocchio RBI single, extending the Cleveland lead to 5-0. It marked the second straight outing in which Rogers allowed four or more runs, something he hadn’t done since May 2024 with the Marlins (somehow he didn’t even do it in his disastrous four-start debut with the Orioles in September 2024). Not only that, but Rogers’ fastball velocity was notably down nearly 3 mph from his average. It’s fine. This is fine. Everything is fine. Rogers gutted through five innings, but coughed up a second Ramírez homer before he left.
As for the Orioles’ offense, well, the majority of the game was the same, sad story we’ve seen this whole series and most of the season. Birds hitters looked completely inept against a cavalcade of Cleveland pitchers, making weak contact — when they made contact at all — and coming up empty in most RBI situations. The O’s put up goose eggs in eight of their nine offensive innings.
The only exception was the top of the fifth, when it briefly looked like the O’s might stage a multi-run comeback like they did in Friday’s win. Starting the inning with a 5-0 deficit, the Orioles put two runners on base for Taylor “Two Bags” Ward, who added an extra two bags in this case, cranking a three-run homer to left field to whittle the deficit to 5-3. At long last, Ward — who homered 36 times for the Angels last year — picked up his first dinger as an Oriole in his 22nd game. He’s been one of the Birds’ best hitters all season, so I wasn’t going to rag on the guy for not homering, but it’s nice to get that first one into the ledger.
The rally continued, thanks to some bad Guardians defense. With two outs, Pete Alonso singled and Johnathan Rodríguez walked, chasing starter Joey Cantillo from the game. Against reliever Matt Festa, Jeremiah Jackson shuffled a grounder to the hole on the right side. The second baseman Brito fielded it cleanly but yanked a wild throw to first, allowing Jackson to reach. The next batter, pinch-hitter Dylan Beavers, rolled a grounder near the second base bag. Again Brito fielded cleanly but again muffed the throw, lobbing too late to the shortstop Rocchio as Jackson slid in safely to second. Beavers had a gift RBI and suddenly it was just a one-run game, 5-4, with the bases loaded and the chance for more damage.
Sadly, Coby Mayo flied out harmlessly, and the Orioles essentially never threatened again. Despite the Birds’ success against the Cleveland bullpen earlier in the series, they had no answer for the Guardians’ relief crew on this day. Rule 5 righty Peyton Pallette painted the strike zone for two perfect innings, followed by a scoreless inning apiece from Erik Sabrowski and ex-Oriole Shawn Armstrong. The Guardians added a pair of insurance runs in the eighth on Rocchio’s two-run single off Cameron Foster.
Before that, at least, Tyler Wells had his best outing of 2026 with two perfect innings, including five strikeouts. It’d be nice if Wells could do that in high-leverage situations, but kudos to him in any case. Tyler’s performance was one of the few highlights in another all-around ugly, lackluster showing by what’s becoming an increasingly uncompetitive Orioles team.
