ANAHEIM -- The 18.9 mph dribbler off the bat of the Angels’ Logan O’Hoppe slowly rolled down the third-base line, before Orioles catcher Samuel Basallo jumped up out of his crouch and retrieved it within 15-20 feet of home plate. At that point, the 21-year-old rookie backstop had to immediately decide whether to try to tag Nolan Schanuel -- the runner barreling toward the plate -- or spin and throw to first.
Basallo tried to slap a tag on Schanuel, who evaded it and scampered across the dish. And with that, the Halos handed the O’s a crushing 7-6, 10-inning loss with a disappointing conclusion for Baltimore.
It wasn’t an easy final play for Basallo by any means, especially with only a split second to make a decision.
“That was an instinct play there. That was my instinct to go for the tag there,” Basallo said via team interpreter Brandon Quinones. “Sometimes, you’re going to mess up, and I think I messed up on that play. I don’t think the game should have gotten to that point. I think that’s a game we should have won easily. It was a mental error. But it was a game we should have won earlier.
“It shouldn’t have gotten to that point.”
No, it shouldn’t have. In fact, the Orioles had an opportunity to close it out one play earlier.
Taking a 6-5 lead to the bottom of the 10th, Baltimore turned to left-hander Keegan Akin, the club’s seventh reliever of the day and the last available man in the bullpen. The 31-year-old recorded the first two outs with the automatic runner (Oswald Peraza) only advancing to third.
Then, Akin got Schanuel to hit a 67 mph ground ball to the right side of the infield. Jeremiah Jackson fielded it at second base, and Akin quickly broke to cover first. But first baseman Pete Alonso got caught in between, initially moving to his right because he thought he might need to field the ball and then trying to cut back to cover first.
Akin, Alonso and Schanuel all got to first at about the same time. Akin couldn’t haul in Jackson’s throw in the commotion (getting charged with an error), Peraza scored and the ball hit off Schanuel and rolled into foul territory down the right-field line, allowing Schanuel to get to third.
“I took this really hard step-and-a-half into the hole because I thought he hit it a little bit better than he did,” Alonso said. “And then, it was kind of like a softly hit ground ball and by the time I committed to the ground ball, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not hit as hard as I initially thought.’ That’s why I wasn’t able to get there.”
“J.J. put a good throw, just put it over the base, and I knew Pete was coming. I knew the runner was coming. It was a little low, but I mean, it was catchable, for sure. And that’s kind of why I went down, just to almost protect myself,” Akin added. “Honestly, I thought I caught it. I looked in my glove and the ball wasn’t there.”
Of course, as Basallo also pointed out, the game shouldn’t have gotten to that point, either.
The Orioles had a 5-2 lead entering the bottom of the eighth thanks to a career-high-tying four RBIs from Basallo, who clubbed a pair of two-run home runs off Angels starter Jose Soriano (one in the second and another in the third) for his first MLB multi-homer game. But the Halos rallied for three runs in the eighth (all charged to right-hander Rico Garcia), tying the game at 5 on Wade Meckler’s two-out two-run single off righty Andrew Kittredge.
However, sloppy defense and a lack of fundamentals again proved to be an issue for the O’s (38-44), who committed three errors in the finale of their nine-game West Coast road trip. They went 4-5 on the road swing, taking two of three from the Dodgers but losing two of three to both the Mariners and Angels.
“Defense in general, it's a constant improvement. Like today, we didn't help ourselves at all,” manager Craig Albernaz said. “We also had seven walks. That's not a good recipe to win a baseball game.”
If the Orioles are going to get going in the second half of their schedule -- which has been a season-long issue, considering they have yet to win more than three consecutive games and can’t seem to string together long stretches of success -- they have to play cleaner. They can’t beat themselves or give opponents extra outs, which continues to be an issue.
“As a group, we just need to execute. That’s it,” Alonso said. “Execute, do the simple things well. That’s really it. We have to execute. We can’t let the game get away from us. We just have to execute. Simple as that.”