His throw to first, unfortunately, sailed wide of Mountcastle, took some unlucky bounces off the fence, and led to Benintendi getting to third base. Kyle Gibson had some catlike reflexes to pounce on this ball and get a barehand grab on it. The bottom of the first began with Andrew Benintendi hitting a comebacker towards the mound. As it tends to go, only with two outs did the Orioles get the fly ball that would have scored the run, and Hays simply ended the inning. Gifted the chance at an RBI with a quality ball in play, Santander struck out. Mullins got to third base as Ryan Mountcastle lined out to right, giving Mullins the chance to tag. The first two Orioles batters, Mullins and Rutschman, reached base. The game was stupid at the beginning too. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye. The umpire had nothing to do with Oscar Colas driving the first pitch he saw over the head of Anthony Santander, who had to play shallow because there would be no chance to throw out the winning run on any deep fly ball anyway. If you want to be fair to Gillaspie, he threw what was strike three to Burger but the umpire didn’t call it. Jake Burger smacked a hard line drive to left that got to Hays too quickly to score the man on second. The rest is pretty much just Gillaspie’s fault. Still, he certainly ought not to have given up the effort so soon. Diving and the ball getting past him could have ended worse. Ought Hays to have caught this ball? Perhaps I am being unfair in thinking yes. Chicago’s Manfred Man scored easily and Grandal was in scoring position with a double. The ball did end up in foul territory but only after bouncing just fair. Left fielder Austin Hays, shaded towards left center, pulled up in his chase for the ball as if he assumed the ball would land foul. The first pitch that Gillaspie threw in the game was sliced down the left field line by Yasmani Grandal. Or maybe he was just cursed because the Chicago public address announcer got confused by everyone wearing #42 for Jackie Robinson Day and announced Gillaspie as Austin Voth. The stupid part was in the bottom half of the inning, when fresh reliever Logan Gillaspie, pitching in this spot presumably only because Félix Bautista had pitched the previous two days, was shredded by fortune and by not being able to pitch well. This one wasn’t Adley’s day he’d already grounded into a double play twice and hit what could have been a third, except he was able to leg it out thanks to a bit of a casual relay throw from the White Sox. ![]() Cedric Mullins followed with a walk, bringing up recently quite-clutch Adley Rutschman. ![]() Jorge Mateo moved the zombie runner to third base with a sacrifice bunt. Here was the path to the stupid ending: The Orioles entered the bottom of the tenth inning with a 6-5 lead after scoring their Manfred Man. This was also part of the Orioles fate on Saturday afternoon, because in spite of all of those runners, they went 1-14 in at-bats with runners in scoring position. ![]() Some tragicomic ineptitude must be involved in losing a game in which your team draws ten walks and racks up eleven base hits. ![]() This was a stupid game almost from start to finish. They blew four leads against the White Sox, including one in extra innings, on the way to losing a 7-6 walkoff. The reason for this is not a surprise after the early weeks of the baseball season, because this is a team whose greatest talent up to this point has been in giving up runs. This is the fate that befell the Orioles on Saturday afternoon. As a general rule, there is no good reason for an MLB team to lose a game in which it scores six runs.
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