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Being sellers doesn’t always equate to being losers. A team can hit four home runs in the first two innings and pretend that stripping the roster of key players isn’t a detriment.
And it can blow a lead and fall to the worst team in baseball, a reminder of why the front office is punting on 2025.
The Rockies overcame a four-run deficit, were tied in the seventh and got a solo homer from Ezequiel Tovar off Andrew Kittredge in the eighth to defeat the Orioles 6-5 before an announced floppy hat crowd of 25,090 at Camden Yards.
Alex Jackson doubled against reliever Jake Bird with one out in the seventh and scored the tying run on Jackson Holliday’s single. Kittredge entered in the eighth, struck out his first batter and surrendered his fourth homer in 28 appearances. Two more Rockies struck out.
"That's a bitter one right there," said interim manager Tony Mansolino. "It feels like here lately we've thrown up some good numbers early in games on that last road trip, and we just haven't been able to hang on. Part of that is pitching and part of that is not adding more runs as the game goes on. We have to add more runs. We had a couple spots we could have. We didn't get it done, unfortunately, tonight. Got to add more runs and got to hold leads."
The Orioles traded another high-leverage reliever this afternoon, took the field and received home runs in the first inning from Jordan Westburg and Tyler O’Neill and in the second from Coby Mayo and Jackson. But the Rockies fought back to take the lead in the fifth against Dean Kremer, who wasn’t nearly as sharp as previous outings.
The first and last outs against Kremer in the opening inning came on line drives to third baseman Ramón Urías (102.9 mph) and Mayo. In between were back-to-back soft singles by Hunter Goodman and Jordan Beck with two outs, the latter an infield hit.
Kremer escaped the jam in the first, but the ball was flying. Mickey Moniak homered on an 0-2 count in the third and Thairo Estrada delivering a two-run shot in the fourth. The Rockies went ahead 5-4 lead in the fifth on Hunter Goodman’s double after a two-out walk to Moniak, and Beck’s RBI single.
"It's a really aggressive-swinging team," Mansolino said. "I think it's one of the higher chase rate teams, highest swing percentage teams. He was in the zone, which I think probably played to their favor a little bit. A couple of the balls that they hit, I think the two-run homer was kind of at the very bottom of the zone, but teams like that, you tend to maybe work the edges a little bit more and get some a little bit weaker contact in some spots. But Dean's been so good here for so long for us.
"It's actually, you look up on the board, you got guys with good numbers. It's a good hitting team, and they hung in there. You have to give them a lot of credit, too. Probably just too much zone tonight."
Kremer had posted a 2.00 ERA in his last six starts, and a 2.00 ERA in seven home starts this season. He allowed five runs and six hits tonight in six innings and was removed after 92 pitches.
"Moniak's was up above the zone, a good piece of hitting," Kremer said. "I missed my spot, I was supposed to go in there. The other one was on the bottom line, down to a good hitter, and he caught it out in front and a good piece of hitting on his part. The other one was a bleeder through the middle. The hit by Goodman was a backed-up cutter, so that's on me. But all in all, didn't do my job tonight. Guys gave me a lead, and I blew it."
The teams kept playing as rain fell, lightning flashed in the distance and fans were instructed to vacate the lower seating bowl and seek shelter. They were allowed to return to their seats in the bottom of the seventh while the grounds crew crouched in a line behind the tarp.
"It's not our decision," Mansolino said. "Major League Baseball and the umpires, they have control of the game at that point. I trust the fact that the umpires have our health and safety in their best judgment, and I applaud the Orioles for kind of clearing out the lower bowl and kind of mitigating any risk whatsoever, making sure that the fans were in a safe spot."
"Fans do what they need to do to stay safe, but that's not really any of our concern or notice," Kremer said. "It just is what it is."
Crew chief Bill Miller said he didn't feel any pressure to halt play.
"No, because I was getting updates every half-inning from the grounds crew gentleman," Miller told a pool reporter. "He said that we were going to get hit by a big storm in a half an hour. He said at 8:45 it was going to come. It was going to be windy, it was going to be rainy and there was going to be thunder and lightning. I asked him to give me a half-inning update, and it progressively diminished. The storm was decidedly moving south, he thought the top of it was going to catch us. They did clear the stands unbeknownst to me. We are concerned about lightning, but the crew did not see any lightning in the area. We saw it from afar, but we didn't think at any time anybody on the field was in danger.
"When we pull the teams off the field when it's not raining hard, we get second-guessed. We work in conjunction with the grounds crew. We are a team. At no time did I feel like the field was dangerous. I don't think the field took rain in a way that there was any slipping. We did have them treat the mound and plate area with a little bit of Turface. But even that wasn't really necessary. That was just trying to get ahead of the game, but the heavy rain just never came. Hindsight, I think we handled it accordingly. It would have been difficult to pull teams off the field and then we get into the waiting game of when we actually come back. Both starters at that point in time were still in the game, and so that's difficult as well, because now you've got to burn starters."
To post a win under difficult conditions, all you need is pride and the right opponent. The Orioles have the former and seemed to be gifted the latter. Colorado has the worst record in baseball at 27-76 and the highest ERA, and the Orioles worked left-hander Kyle Freeland for 32 pitches in the first to set a loud tone.
Westburg’s 11th homer was a towering fly ball to left field with a 45 degree launch angle. O’Neill’s fourth homer, and second this month, was 107.6 off the bat for a 2-0 lead.
"He's trending in a really positive direction right now," Mansolino said of O'Neill. "I think this is kind of what we expected when he got signed and came over here. Going back to that Cleveland game yesterday, he hit a couple balls hard. I think he hit three balls right on the screws tonight. He's a guy that we need. He can help us a lot here in August and September as he kind of gets back to health and back to what he's been for quite a while in the big leagues."
Mayo led off the second with a 413-foot shot to center field, his second major league home run and first against a pitcher. Jackson launched a fastball 419 feet to left field with one out, his second this season, to increase the lead to 4-0.
Freeland allowed only 10 home runs in 18 starts before tonight, but he was pummeled early. Holliday came close in the second, settling for an automatic double on a ball that struck the right-center field fence and wedged between the padding and warning track. Holliday stood at third base, pointing and pleading for the triple.
Freeland is 2-10, but he posted five quality starts in his last seven outings before the Orioles took batting practice against him. He’s among 39 active pitchers with at least 200 major league starts and he has the worst record at 62-83.
Right-handers were hitting .319 with an .830 OPS against Freeland this season, and he lived up to his reputation. Or is it down?
The Rockies got six innings out of Freeland, who allowed four runs and seven hits.
The Orioles fell to 45-58 while playing a man down in the bullpen after the Gregory Soto trade to the Mets. The only remaining left-hander, Grant Wolfram, tossed a scoreless seventh and struck out two.
O’Neill led off the eighth with a double and was stranded at third base. Seth Halvorsen retired the side in order in the ninth, and the post-Soto era began with a thud.
* Catcher Chadwick Tromp was returned from his injury rehab assignment this evening and reinstated from the 10-day injured list. Tromp elected free agency in lieu of accepting an outright assignment to Triple-A Norfolk.
The 40-man roster has 39 players.
Adley Rutschman caught tonight for Triple-A Norfolk, and he singled in the third inning and scored on Samuel Basallo’s double. Basallo, playing his first game since July 13 due to a sore oblique, doubled twice, singled twice and hit his 20th home run.
Vimael Machín hit a three-run homer in the first inning, his 13th of the season. Kyle Brnovich allowed one run in 2 1/3 innings.
Double-A Chesapeake’s Trey Gibson tossed seven scoreless innings with two hits, no walks and eight strikeouts to lower his ERA to 1.96.
