The Baltimore Orioles dropped Wednesday night’s game 6-2 to the Tampa Bay Rays (77-81). The loss was not pretty to say the least as a pair of errors in the outfield led to a pair of unearned runs and the Orioles bats were once again anemic, recording just three hits on the night.
The Orioles were held hitless by Rays’ pitching for six innings. Ironically enough it was Tyler O’Neill who broke up the no-hitter with a leadoff single in the seventh inning. Baltimore finally got on the board in the eighth inning when Colton Cowser worked a leadoff walk off of former Oriole Bryan Baker. Dylan Beavers moved Cowser to third with his one-out single and then took second base on a Baker wild pitch. Jordan Westburg then singled them both in.
Making his final start of the year, Tyler Wells (2-1) was not very sharp. He needed 79 pitches (52 K’s) to navigate 4.0 innings, allowing 3 runs on 7 hits, including a third inning solo homerun to Brandon Lowe. Wells walked 1 and struck out 4 but in the end was tagged with the loss.
Wells had this to say about his night, “Honestly, felt pretty good in the first inning. Second inning and the first inning both kind of got long on me. So that third and fourth inning just kind of ran out of gas. I’ve been very fortunate to have really good outings so far and you’ve got to take the good with the bad. They just ran up the pitch count, hit mistake pitches and got me out there early. That’s their job, and my job is to go deeper into the game.”
Dietrich Enns, in relief of Wells, was victimized by O’Neill’s fielding error on Tristan Gray‘s double in the sixth inning that led to an unearned run. A fielding error by Beavers in the seventh led to one of the runs allowed by Jose Castillo being unearned; Castillo also coughed up a homerun to Jake Mangum in the eighth.
Double Derby
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— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) September 25, 2025
Yennier Cano struck out one batter over the final inning and a third.
An announced crowd of 18,367 endured not only a team that looked lifeless at times, but also a few rain showers throughout the game.
Those that stayed until the end did witness some fireworks in the ninth inning. Tampa Bay reliever Pete Fairbanks hit Samuel Basallo in the right wrist with a 96.6 mph fastball leading off the inning. Basallo, clearly in severe pain, was immediately removed from the game. X-rays were negative for any signs of a fracture but it wouldn’t be surprising if more images are taken on Thursday. At the conclusion of the game Fairbanks was seen mouthing something in the direction of the Baltimore dugout and blew a kiss in that direction as well.
When asked about the incident, Interim Manager Tony Mansolino said, “I know there was somebody above our dugout screaming at Pete, and then as I was walking down the steps there at the end, I think he must have made some type of gesture in the direction of the dugout. I’m assuming he heard the fan. Apparently he made the gesture.”
After the game Fairbanks confirmed as much per MASN’s Roch Kubatko. “It was to a guy wearing about a 2008 Majestic dugout jacket and a dad Orioles hat” he said. “It’s words I’m not allowed to say on air. You know, you want to tell me all sorts of things about myself? Cool. We’re human professionals, but sometimes we respond.”
As the Orioles head into their final home game of 2025, Mansolino summed up his team’s effort saying, “I mean we didn’t want to go hitless through six or whatever it was. Tough night for us swinging the bats, thought we swung the bats better last night. Unfortunate part of the game, we don’t get hits, so just wasn’t a good night for us offensively.”
2025 Record: 74-84
Next Game: Thurs. 9/25 @ 1:05 pm vs. Tampa Bay Rays