(Cue circus music) Ladies and gentlemen, your 2025 Orioles.
The O’s played a game tonight in which their offense stranded 15 runners on base in nine innings. A game in which their defense allowed multiple Nats runners to take extra bases because they either weren’t hustling or weren’t paying attention, including the game-winning run in the ninth. This 4-3 loss to the Nationals was a game in which the Orioles truly surrendered any semblance of hope of salvaging this season, doing everything short of literally waving a white flag.
How this franchise has fallen so hard, so quickly, from the elite group of 2023 to the clown show we witnessed tonight and all season long is truly mind-boggling. This isn’t baseball, this is satire.
There’s simply no way any remotely competent team loses a game like this. Even for the Orioles, this was a truly astounding defeat. Had it been just a garden-variety loss to a dominant pitcher in MacKenzie Gore, that would be one thing. But the Orioles had approximately 10 million chances to win this game running away and flatly refused every one of them.
Let’s talk about Gore. Before I describe how he fared tonight, see if you can figure it out based only on the box score:
IP: 3.2
H: 10
ER: 2
BB: 2
K: 9
Take a long, hard look at that pitching line. It makes no sense. He must have been terrible, you think, looking at the 3.2 innings. But wait, he must have been great, you think, looking at the nine strikeouts. But no, he was terrible, you think again, looking at the 10 hits. But wait, only two runs scored, so…was he great after all?
It’s complicated. Against Gore, Orioles hitters simultaneously had great at-bats — working deep counts, making hard contact on tough pitches — and ugly ones, too often failing to put the ball in play with runners in scoring position. By the end of the fourth inning, the O’s had 10 hits, 10 strikeouts, and 10 runners left on base. I mean, what even is that?
The Orioles’ first inning set the tone for this night of lunacy. With one out, three consecutive hitters struck singles against Gore, loading the bases. As usual for the O’s, though, they squandered the golden opportunity when Gore struck out Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Urías. The next inning saw another 0-for-3 performance w/RISP, as Jackson Holliday’s leadoff double was followed by three straight Ks.
In the third, the O’s broke through for two runs, but missed a great chance to pile on some more. Back-to-back doubles by Adley Rutschman and Ramón Laureano — who is a ridiculous 9-for-11 in his career against Gore — got the Orioles on the board. An O’Hearn single and Urías walk loaded the bases for Holliday, who impressively put a tough 3-2 slider in play and bounced it over the first baseman’s head for a hit, scoring Laureano. With the bases still loaded and one out, the O’s were primed for a big inning. But Gore again wriggled his way free, striking out an overmatched Cedric Mullins and Jorge Mateo.
The bottom of the fourth had a similarly rough finish. The O’s loaded the bases with two outs, capped by a fantastic, 10-pitch O’Hearn at-bat ended with a controversial check swing that was called ball four. That was the end of the night for Gore, who was pulled from the game after laboring for 102 pitches in 3.2 innings. The O’s did an outstanding job of running up the pitch count for the lefty, who had worked five or more innings in each of his first nine starts this year.
But reliever Cole Henry escaped the bases-loaded mess when Urías was rung up on a 3-2 pitch that was clearly outside. I suppose that was the baseball gods balancing the scales for the O’Hearn walk that should’ve been a strikeout.
And so, despite 10 hits in four innings, the Orioles had only two runs to support their starting pitcher, Cade Povich. The youngster very nearly made it stand up…but not quite. Through the first five innings, the only run he surrendered was on a Nathaniel Lowe second-inning homer. Povich, who dominated the Nationals in D.C. last month, looked similarly filthy tonight, racking up a season-high nine strikeouts. This was the version of Povich the O’s had hoped they would see more often this season. Keep it up, kid!
Unfortunately, things took a sour turn for Povich — not entirely of his own doing — when he returned for the sixth. He committed the cardinal sin of walking the first batter, who also happened to be the #9 hitter in the lineup, Nasim Nuñez. Later, Nuñez took off for second and advanced all the way to third when Povich’s pitch sailed past Rutschman’s glove. Adley didn’t run particularly hard to retrieve the ball from the backstop, and Holliday failed to deke the runner at second base.
With Nuñez at third and two outs, Brandon Hyde gave Povich, who at 96 pitches, the chance to finish the inning. That was…a mistake. James Wood laced a single up the middle to tie the score at two and end Povich’s night. Cade deserved a much better fate, and if the O’s hadn’t stranded a small army of baserunners, he would’ve been in position to win.
The Orioles got the lead right back in the bottom of the sixth against reliever Jackson Rutledge. They found themselves in a familiar position by loading the bases with one out, and Urías — who twice had stranded the bags full in the game — came through this time with a first-pitch sac fly to right, putting the Birds up, 3-2. The other two runners were eventually left stranded, though, bringing the Orioles’ LOB count to 13 in six innings.
The O’s survived the top of the seventh despite some Gregory Soto shenanigans, in which he threw wildly to second on a potential double-play grounder to put two men in scoring position with one out. Bryan Baker pulled a Houdini act to escape, striking out two batters and letting out a triumphant yell. But Keegan Akin ruined Baker’s heroics just an inning later by coughing up a two-out, game-tying homer to Wood. And here we go again.
The Birds, of course, continued to waste every chance offensively, stranding two runners in the eighth against former Oriole Jorge López. Let’s not forget that the Nationals’ bullpen entered the night with an MLB-worst 6.75 ERA, and the O’s proceeded to score zero earned runs in 5.1 innings against them. Like I said: clown show.
Then came the brutal top of the ninth. Hyde summoned Félix Bautista to hold the tie, but the big righty’s control abandoned him. He issued a leadoff walk to Dylan Crews, but caught a break when Crews, attempting to steal second, overslid the bag and was tagged out. No matter. Bautista promptly walked José Tena, who advanced to second on a groundout.
Bautista got ahead of Nuñez 1-2 in the count but couldn’t put away the #9 hitter, who bounced a chopper to Ryan Mountcastle at first. Mountcastle didn’t get quite enough oomph on his lob to a covering Bautista, and the speedy Nuñez busted it down the line to beat the throw by a step. A dazed Bautista, thinking he had gotten the out, froze in place and didn’t notice the lead runner, Tena, breaking for the plate. His eventual throw home was too late (and wild).
And that, my friends, is how the Nationals scored the winning run. On a routine bouncer to first base that scored a runner from second because the O’s defense is awful and nobody has their head in the game.
Don’t worry, there was one final chance for the Orioles’ offense to futilely fail again. Holliday led off the ninth with a single, but on a 3-2 pitch, Cedric Mullins stared blankly at a fastball right down the middle while Holliday got thrown out trying to steal. Pinch-hitter Emmanuel Rivera’s flyout finally put the O’s out of their misery and ended three-plus hours of the most torturous experience a baseball fan could ever have.
Only 119 more games to go!
