BALTIMORE — After taking blow after blow from Boston in a four-game sweep this week, the Orioles were finally able to fight back against Arizona on Friday night.
A night filled with frustration and missed opportunities was finally salvaged when Mark Trumbo homered to lead off the bottom of the 12th inning, giving the Orioles a 3-2 win and keeping them a half-game behind Detroit for the second wild card spot. It was Baltimore’s third solo home run of the night after Buck Showalter’s lineup had left 14 runners on base and gone 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
Trumbo provided the Orioles with just their third win all season when trailing at the end of eight innings.
“It can be a real gut punch if it goes the other way,” said Trumbo, who hit his 44th homer of the year. “It would be a tough one to stomach. Fighting really hard in the thick of things and then to have a couple chances [wasted]. The effort’s there, but someone’s got to get that big hit eventually.”
The big hits absent throughout the Red Sox series eventually came via the long ball against the last-place Diamondbacks, but the Orioles certainly didn’t make it easy on themselves, which has been a defining story for much of an underwhelming second half.
Pedro Alvarez hit a solo shot to give the Orioles their first run of the game in the eighth inning, but that came only after he had struck out with the bases loaded in the first and popped out with runners on second and third and one out in the sixth. Matt Wieters hit the game-tying homer to lead off the bottom of the ninth, but his teammates didn’t capitalize when he led off the 11th with a single to start a bases-loaded, one-out rally.
The Orioles even attempted to play small ball as Michael Bourn bunted twice, once unsuccessfully and the other leading to no runs in the 11th. In the ninth, J.J. Hardy was thrown out at the plate on a very aggressive send by third base coach Bobby Dickerson.
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“This was a game where we kind of knew it didn’t matter what the situation was, what we were down by,” Wieters said. “We were going to have to find a way to win this game.”
To no surprise, that way was by the home run as has been the case all season.
This is what the Orioles do, for better or worse. Such a reliance on the long ball will be a blast when they’re hot, but the tough times will leave you wondering if they’re ever going to score runs again.
The club isn’t going to magically change fundamentally in the final week of the season. That’s more of a big-picture discussion for executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette and Showalter to have after the season.
The hitter-by-hitter approach certainly needs to be better than it has been over the last week in particular, but the Orioles’ best — and perhaps only — hope of securing a playoff spot is getting hot with the long ball again.
You don’t have to like their chances, but the formula still has us talking about them in the thick of the playoff race in late September. Maybe it can take them a little bit further still.
