Orioles Bullpen Does All It Can But Orioles Fall To Brewers In Extra Innings

The Orioles bullpen will extend this Orioles season as far as it goes and basically explains why this flawed roster has staved of mathematical elimination to this point.

The rotation is falling apart and will likely continue to do so, and Friday's makeshift starter Cade Povich allowed six men to reach safely through two innings and was gone in the fourth inning after allowing three runs to the best team in baseball at Camden Yards. The O’s hung in there, thanks to the bullpen, but were their own worst enemy along the way (13 strikeouts). and lost in extra innings, 6-5, after a wild push in the 9th.

The Brewers took the lead in the 9th when another AAAA outfielder (they keep showing up eight years into a pathetic rebuild), Rece Hinds, couldn’t handle a groundball in the gap, the O's tied it off top closer Trevor Megill, but Milwaukee slapped the ball around for another run in 10th. The Orioles (75-79; 33-41 against teams .500 or better) remain three out of the final Wild Card in a pedestrian AL with eight to play, as the White Sox blew a big lead to the fading Tigers but Baltimore could not take advantage.

“We keep on clawing and fighting back,” rookie manager Criag Albernaz said, “but also, we know where we’re at right now … The loss still hurts.”

This was a very Orioles ball game.

They had the bases loaded in the third with one out and Colton Cowser struck out and they couldn’t score. Coby Mayo, who has now reached base safely in 21 straight games and lashed three doubles, was on third with one out in the fifth and overmatched Albernaz had the contact play on, because he always has the contact play on, and Mayo was caught in a rundown on a comebacker to the mound.

Base running and clutch hitting haven’t been a part of this team’s DNA since early in the 2024 season (former O’s skipper Buck Showalter broke it down pretty well recently), but swing and miss by Baltimore hitters, that’s always in style (third-most in MLB after fourth-most in 2025), That’s an obsession for chief baseball failure Mike Elias, who is going to stay in charge as he continues to fire and re-assign his minions with Blackjack Sig Mejdal now with a different role; we told you a week ago Elias's right-hand man was very likely not going to last in his prior overarching position.

So in the seventh inning, with runners on first and second and no outs, Samuel Basallo struck out and Christian Encarnacion-Strand struck out and Hinds grounded out. Brewers reliever DL Hall, a former O's top prospect, has blossomed with that franchise, changing his pitch mix and fixing him after Elias yo-yoed his role and stunted his growth.

Dueling Weavers

The Orioles tied this game in the third on a three-run homer from Pete Alonso, who is now closing in on 40 of them. Alonso figured out how much Elias butchered this left field wall in June and since then began to hunt the opposite field, and this was his 16th homer to right field this season.

The Brewers went up on a three-run homer by Jackson Churio, the young phenom coming through like so many of the players Milwaukee develops in depth and magnitude that Elias could never fathom. Povich, who Elias talked up as a future front-line starter when he landed him at the 2022 deadline, was playing with fire from the first batter he saw, he will never be a starting pitcher here and should have been shifted into a potential relief role years ago.

The Orioles bullpen was spectacular again – it needs to be with this a bottom 10 rotation since July 31 and an inept lineup all season. Luis De Leon has been stellar since his promotion and Josh Walker had another scoreless outing, though he did depart with men on base and Rico Garcia once again wiggled out of it.

But the defense suffered in the ninth and the Brewers are a scrappy team that excels at winning close games, and Garcia wasn’t nearly as lucky in the 9th as he was in the 8th. The Orioles fought back to tie it in the 9th against Megill, who had gone 20 straight outings without blowing a save, with Mayo's double keying it and runs scoring on successive sac flies.

But that was the last of their rallies, and the Birds are now 17-23 in one-run games, due to Elias's ineptitude building winning rosters and his insistence on hiring sophomoric first-time managers who are out of their depth.

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