The Orioles blew the lead in the top of the ninth inning and then walked off the Giants in the bottom for a 5-3 win.
One swing can make all the difference, if it’s the right swing at the right time. Anthony Santander delivered the right swing at the right time for the Orioles on Thursday afternoon, turning a budding disaster into a thrilling win that sent everybody home happy. Santander delivered the answer to life, the universe, and everything with his 42nd home run of the season as the O’s sidestepped a sweep at the hands of the Giants with a 5-3 win.
Why was it a budding disaster? The Orioles brought a 3-2 lead into the ninth inning and sent out Seranthony Domínguez to try to get his tenth save as an Oriole. Regrettably for the Orioles, Domínguez performed a Craig Kimbrel career tribute a day after his former teammate was designated for assignment. The problem with the plan is that Domínguez was doing a second half of 2024 Kimbrel tribute and he was bad.
Domínguez’s attempt at the save started by walking the first two batters he saw, Giants 6-7 hitters Patrick Bailey and Heliot Ramos. The next guy, Casey Schmitt, came up to the plate looking to bunt, only Domínguez was wild enough that Schmitt backed out of that plan and started swinging away. Schmitt swung at a sinker in the zone and lofted a fly ball out towards the right-center field warning track.
Orioles center fielder Cedric Mullins and late-inning replacement right fielder Austin Slater both gave chase as this fly ball headed into the gap. It wasn’t clear that either one would catch it and they both made to either dive or slide to catch it. Mullins didn’t get far enough; Slater did and had the ball in his glove until his glove and the rest of his body crashed into Mullins. The ball popped out of Slater’s glove.
There were two pieces of good fortune for the Orioles stemming from this play. First and immediately for the game’s outcome, the Giants baserunners had each gone back to try to tag up, assuming the ball would be caught. By the time the ball popped out of Slater’s glove, there was no way for Ramos to score from first base. Slater made a good play to get up and fire the ball back in, with Schmitt having to stop at first base instead of rushing to second. The ballgame was tied, but it could have been worse. The O’s could have easily been losing here. (The second piece of good fortune is that Mullins was checked out by trainers and stayed in the game.)
After #9 batter Donovan Walton failed at a bunt, manager Brandon Hyde pulled Domínguez for the other ex-Phillies teammate of Kimbrel remaining out in the Orioles bullpen, Gregory Soto. There have been some clunkers from Soto as an Oriole, but not this time. The Giants sent out a pinch hitter, Mark Canha, who grounded into a double play on the first pitch.
I assume that we all felt the dread after this save was blown. We all know how the Orioles have been playing lately. It seems like anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and particularly what goes wrong is that they don’t score runs. “Score only three runs and lose in extra innings” would absolutely be a way for the Orioles to lose.
If Santander’s ball had been hit only a foot or two shorter, maybe it would have been. After the ball left Santander’s bat, the stadium sound started playing the home run siren immediately. They stopped when it suddenly became clear that the ball might not actually clear the fence – Canha lined up for a big jump in right field. He made it to the fence and leaped. The ball passed just over Canha’s glove, dropping in on the grounds crew shed for a walkoff home run. The siren resumed as Santander and Gunnar Henderson (who had singled with one out) rounded the bases and awaited the pile at home plate.
Before the walkoff homer, there was eight innings worth of baseball that started out with Giants workhorse Logan Webb dueling against Orioles pitcher Zach Eflin. The teams traded zeroes for the first three innings, with each side wasting some opportunities. Henderson’s leadoff single and steal of second base (his 20th of the season) amounted to nothing. The Giants got their first two men on in the second inning and that turned into no runs as well.
San Francisco managed to strike against Eflin in the fourth inning. Jerar Encarnacion led off with a single. Eflin ran a 3-0 count to the next batter, Michael Conforto. No sooner than Kevin Brown had said that Eflin had yet to walk multiple batters as an Oriole… actually, no, Eflin didn’t walk Conforto. Worse, he served up a meatball on the 3-0 count and Conforto didn’t miss, cracking his 19th homer of the year to give the Giants a 2-0 lead.
With how the Orioles have been hitting lately, you had to wonder if that was going to be all it would take for them to lose. The O’s got to work right in the bottom of the fourth. Santander started off with a walk, followed by a Colton Cowser single. For teams other than the September 2024 Orioles, that’s a promising scoring opportunity. It was up to the long-term struggling Adley Rutschman to keep the line moving.
Catharsis: Rutschman ripped a double into the right field corner, plating Santander as Cowser advanced to third. The Camden Yards crowd, desperate for anything to cheer about, erupted with this hit. The Orioles were still trailing! They were down 2-1 after Rutschman’s double, and the next two batters made outs that did not manage to bring Cowser home.
They nearly blew it. Except, then, they didn’t. Jackson Holliday smoked a single up the middle and two runs scored. The Orioles surged ahead to a 3-2 lead. Clutch hits CAN happen! Sometimes.
That’s where the score stayed until the ninth inning. Eflin worked around some sixth inning traffic to finish his outing with two runs allowed on six hits and a walk. Another good day for the O’s biggest July trade acquisition. Reliever Cionel Pérez worked around letting his first two men on base in the seventh. The Orioles managed to load the bases in their own half of the seventh, ultimately adding no insurance onto their lead. All of that set up the ninth inning drama, which was agonizing and terrible until suddenly it was awesome.
With the win, the Orioles drop their magic number to clinch any postseason spot down to 5. They’ve got a five game lead over the Tigers and Twins, currently tied for the third wild card spot, with nine games to play. It’s a three-game lead over the Royals for the top wild card position. The magic number to clinch that is only 6, due to the O’s holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over KC. Win games and they’ll make it.
Oh yeah, and Jordan Westburg and Ramón Urías each started a rehab assignment at Triple- A Norfolk this afternoon. For today, at least, we can all pretend that maybe things are starting to look up in Birdland.
The Orioles host the Tigers for this weekend starting on Friday night. Corbin Burnes is set to start the 7:05 opener. Win it and the magic number to clinch anything drops to 3. Lose and the limbo lasts a little longer.