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After beating the Yankees in the first game of Friday’s doubleheader by a 10-2 score, the Orioles came out for the nightcap with a lineup that featured Jeremiah Jackson as the cleanup hitter, Rece Hinds as the right fielder, and included Yohel Pozo and José Barrero at the bottom of the order. As you already know, it did not go very well. The Orioles lost the game, 6-3.
The players who were given the assignment of playing the game were trying to win. I believe this is true every day and has been true every day of this disappointing Orioles season. Yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that the people who make the decisions on who plays where and when were not all that interested in whether or not they won the second game. This may end up being the last game of the season, with the possibility of the same rain that led to the Friday doubleheader washing out the meaningless Sunday contest.
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The particulars almost don’t matter. It was another one of those dumb games. Not only dumb but dumb in a way that was brought about in part by guys who don’t even belong on any major league roster anywhere, even a bad team’s roster. It feels bad to pile on them sometimes. It’s not their fault that Mike Elias screwed things up to the point that they were needed.
It wasn’t all bad. Brandon Young put a nice bow on his season by holding the Yankees to one run over five innings. If you want to pick nits, sure, he walked too many guys with three free passes, but he only gave up two hits and he struck out six batters. He finishes the year with a 3.56 ERA. Coby Mayo had two hits. So did Christian Franklin. Pete Alonso was on base twice and scored a run on a sacrifice fly. He’s good, you guys.
Also, Pozo stole a base when he took off running on an 0-2 count to Dylan Beavers where he probably figured Beavers was about to strike out, and Pozo was super excited about it. That was fun. It was the first stolen base of Pozo’s MLB career. Beavers hit a garbage time home run in the ninth inning, his second homer of the day after a grand slam that blew open the first game.
Then, there was everything else. It’s not like the Orioles lacked for chances. They kept getting guys on base. They just weren’t bringing them home. The team left 13 men on base, went 1-13 with runners in scoring position, and struck out 17 times. Hinds had multiple bad plays in the field that led to an inning continuing and runs scoring. He also went 0-5 with five strikeouts. Josh Walker had a rough outing, not helped by Hinds. Anthony Nunez had a rough outing that had nothing to do with Hinds.
The Orioles have lost a lot of games like this over the course of this season. Perhaps either due to rain or due to playing better, this will be the last one that we have to watch.
To be fair to the guys, they ended up with the tying run at the plate in the ninth inning after Leody Taveras got an RBI double. They were battling to the end. The batter who came up next after that? It was Hinds. There was not a pinch hitter for Hinds with one out in the ninth inning when he was the tying run. He struck out for a fifth time. The players who played were trying. The people who put them on the field were perhaps less motivated to win than I would prefer.
The team is now 79-82. They are guaranteed a losing season. They are not guaranteed to finish in last place in the AL East. That depends on whether the Blue Jays win their final two games on Saturday and Sunday. They sit at 78-82 right now.
Shane Baz and Elmer Rodríguez are the scheduled starting pitchers for the 3:20 game on Sunday that may or may not happen. If this game is it, you could not write a better coda for the 2026 Orioles season.
