Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that Trevor Rogers is mortal.
The previously unhittable Orioles ace suffered his worst outing of the season in his final start of 2025, giving up six runs and three homers to take an early exit after three innings. Meanwhile, the Orioles’ offense continued to fail in every clutch situation, batting .100 with runners in scoring position, as the O’s dropped the opener of their season-ending three-game series at Yankee Stadium, 8-4.
These final three games
are hugely important to the Yankees, who have already clinched a playoff spot but have designs on winning the AL East. They entered the day tied with the Blue Jays for first place, but technically behind because of the head-to-head tiebreaker. For the Yanks, overtaking the Jays means having a first-round bye and home field advantage throughout the AL playoffs, while failing to capture the division crown means they’d have to play in the best-of-three wild card series starting Tuesday.
The Orioles would love to ruin the Yankees’ plans and force them to settle for second place, but they made little headway in doing so tonight, thanks to an uncharacteristically rocky start from their ace. Rogers’s first two batters started out easily enough, including a nasty slider to freeze Aaron Judge for strike three, but then it all started to go wrong. Cody Bellinger “walked” on a pitch that was entirely within the strike zone, called ball four by home plate ump C.B. Bucknor. I truly cannot wait for the ABS challenge system next year.
Rogers then got ahead of Giancarlo Stanton 0-2, giving him a variety of options for putting him away. Slider away? Fastball up? No, Rogers made the unfortunate mistake of grooving a fat four-seamer over the heart of the plate, and Stanton flicked an opposite-field shot to right that just kept carrying and sailed into the right-field seats. Man, that guy is strong. And that right field wall is shallow. The Yankees led, 2-0. It marked only the fifth time all season that Rogers had given up at least two runs in a game. But the damage was far from done.
The Orioles showed a brief bit of life in the top of the third against Yankees righty Will Warren, who had retired the first eight batters of the game. With two down, Coby Mayo reached on an infield single and Jackson Holliday walked. Up came Jordan Westburg, who in general has looked rough at the plate since returning from the injured list. Not this time. Westburg jumped on a hanging sweeper and powered it just over the left-field wall for an Earl Weaver Special. There we go, Jordan! It was his first home run since Aug. 17, two days before he went on the IL, and it gave the Orioles a 3-2 lead.
But Rogers wasn’t up to the task of holding it. I told you it was a weird night for him. He started the bottom of the third with a four-pitch walk to José Caballero — again, with one of those pitches clearly in the strike zone — and faced Judge with one out. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but: Aaron Judge hits a lot of dingers. And here he hit #52, walloping a 423-foot shot to straightaway center. Once again it came on a two-strike pitch, a Rogers sinker that caught way too much of the strike zone.
For the first time all season, Rogers had given up more than three runs. For the first time all season, he’d given up two homers in a start. And no sooner had I typed those words than he gave up a two more runs and another dinger, Stanton’s second blast of the night. It was a 6-3 game.
What is happening? Before tonight, Rogers had allowed only three home runs all season. He matched that total tonight. He had never allowed more than three runs in any start. It was six tonight. He had worked at least five innings in all but one of his 18 starts. He went only three tonight. In one fell swoop, his season ERA rose 46 points to 1.81, its highest point since the end of June.
Rough way to finish. But it doesn’t take away from what’s been an unbelievable bounceback season for Rogers, who established himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball this season and figures to be the Orioles’ ace going into 2026.
Down 6-3, the Orioles had a chance to rally back against the soft underbelly the Yankees’ bullpen, but they failed to take advantage of numerous scoring opportunities. After Tyler O’Neill chased Warren from the game with a leadoff homer in the sixth, Yankees manager Aaron Boone turned to his lower-leverage relievers, who worked themselves into and out of jams. The Orioles loaded the bases against Mark Leiter Jr. in the sixth, only for Jackson Holliday to ground out against lefty Tim Hill to leave them all stranded. An inning later, Fernando Cruz walked two batters but retired Adley Rutschman on a pop-up. My kingdom for a clutch hit! Anyone?
The Yankees added two insurance runs against the soft underbelly of the Orioles’ bullpen — which is basically the entire Orioles’ bullpen — on an Austin Wells RBI single in the sixth and a Stanton bases-loaded groundout in the seventh. On that Stanton grounder, it seemed like the third baseman Westburg would have had an easy forceout at the plate, but inexplicably decided to throw to first instead. It wouldn’t be an Orioles game without some questionable defense. Both runs were charged to Yennier Cano, who continues to pitch himself out of the Orioles’ future plans.
The Orioles’ offense had one last failure in store in the ninth. Yankees closer David Bednar, pitching in a non-save situation, allowed the first two batters to reach base, giving the O’s a chance at a miracle comeback. But a Gunnar Henderson groundout and back-to-back strikeouts of O’Neill and Jeremiah Jackson left those runners stranded and finished off a Yankees win. The O’s went just 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position tonight, which ain’t gonna cut it when you give up a trio of two-run homers.
Just two more games we have to put up with this unsightly 2025 Orioles team.
