Before the call was made, Austin Hayes and his Orioles teammates were already leaving the field. That, as well as all inside Oriole Park at Camden Yards, knew the ruling would be overturned.
Hayes threw a seed from the left field into home plate, and the catcher was Anthony Bembaum. Tag applied to Wander Franco, The initial call – which would have given the Tampa Bay Rays a 13th inning lead – signaled Franco to be safe. But left-hander Nick Vespi later left the mound with two goalless innings, thanks to Hayes’ hand. But there was an even bigger part: Vespy’s slider.
One day many expected catcher Adley Reutsman – the top prospect in baseball – made headlines for making the Orioles debut, the major league debut for the Wespi. It was his 20 sliders that made seven rounds, and his two innings that closed the door on the Rays.
“I knew when I got approved, I was going to be there and do my best,” Vespi said.
And if it hadn’t been for that laser from Hayes to seal the last of those two scoreless innings of Wespie, it wouldn’t have been a deep shot from second baseman Rugged Odor on the night, to seal an 8-6 win for Baltimore on a second outing. Seals together – closes in several days.
The Orioles (16–24) faced losses three times and overcame them all – first in seventh, then 10th and then 11th. But for all the comebacks, they could not produce a winning run until the 13th, when Smell detonated a cutter in the flag court just beyond the right field fence.
He knew that he too was gone. As did his comrades. As the Orioles left the field during a review of He’s Throw Home, he later threw back out with glee, throwing Gatorade over the smell as he crossed the plate.
“There’s a lot of emotion in there,” said Smell. He said, ‘We win matches there, it’s really good. I did my part to help my team win this game. And tonight’s game, it was incredible, man. All our pitchers worked really well. Our defense was also good. We don’t give up. We keep fighting, we keep fighting and we win the game.”
The win broke a string of 15 straight Ray wins over the Orioles, although Tampa Bay still won 27 of the last 30 matchups between the clubs.
“Total team effort,” said manager Brandon Hyde. “Our lineup grinded to a halt throughout the game, and then we were out of the bullpen.”
back and forth night
In Strode Anthony Santander, about 29 hours were extracted from a similar situation the day before. This time, however, the Orioles’ right fielder stepped in as a left-hander on Friday night, with two bases loaded as a right-hander on Thursday afternoon.
The results, however, were pretty much the same – even if the balls left his bat by a margin of 15 mph.
Santander was Baltimore’s hero in Thursday night’s walk-off win against the New York Yankees, destroying a three-run shot over the hotly debated left field fence. And on Friday, he saved Baltimore from a loss, trailing the game in the 10th inning, slowly putting a two-run single into right field to score two runs.
“I think there was something different in every innings,” Hyde said. “There are a variety of things that come into play with a runner at second base and no one is out.”
But despite runners finishing second and third without any outs, the Orioles could not come up with another run. Ryan McKenna finished third on the left of the infield for the first groundout, then was thrown out on the second.
Baltimore entered the scoring position with the runners-up with a .198 batting average—the third-lowest in the Majors—and while Trey Mancini also came in seventh, Baltimore still finished 6-for-19 in such conditions, increasing his average. Went. 205. Homer of smell was a big blow.
However, the Orioles had other opportunities. If right fielder Brett Phillips hadn’t bowled Chris Owings to the plate to finish in fifth place, the extra innings would not have been needed. And it was Phillips’ double that gave Raze a momentary lead in the 10th before a run-scoring single from Yandy Diaz, though Santander’s two-run single knocked off either.
“We blew a chance with second and third, nobody got out, and there are times when that happens, there’s a deflation during the dugout, and it’s like, ‘This was our chance. Hyde said. “When you give that kind of blow, at times, I think it’s natural to feel like it’s not going to happen tonight, and I’m really proud of our guys, the way they came back after that.” And continued Play Play.”
The back-and-forth nature was already a carryover, when Ray leaped over a three-run homer from right-hander Tyler Wells catcher Mike Zunino before the Orioles tied it in seventh. Then Hayes’ RBI single in the 11th scored again after Rays center fielder Kevin Kirmeyer put his team ahead in the top half.
Maybe Baltimore has a different feeling. Before Thursday’s walk-off, the Orioles were put on a six-game losing streak. But two nights in a row, the script went its way to Baltimore, with a spectacular shot culminating in a Gatorade bath from the yard.
“Looking at them over the years, they are not far from the competition,” Kirmeyer told reporters. “His time is coming.”
Where is Adley?
When Joshua Davis Kelsey learned that his friend wanted to go to an Orioles game, his mind immediately turned to what Friday could bring. In her group chat, Kelsey wrote: “Adley Ratshman must have been coming from the minors that day… of course the stadium sold out.”
This was not to happen. When Friday arrived — as Monday rolled around — Reutsman was not in Baltimore. He was at Charlotte with Triple-A Norfolk on the bench after catching three days in a row for the Tides.
“It was tonight!” Kelsey shouted outside the Pickle Pub before the game, enjoying a bucket of Bud Light despite moaning over a missed opportunity to see Rutschman. The 27-year-old from Catonsville isn’t alone in this gloom, either, among 15,127 fans at Camden Yards.
There is little certainty about when Rutschmann could make his long-awaited major league debut. For now, the wait is on.
rays @ orioles
Saturday, 7:05 pm
TV: Masan
radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
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