ST. LOUIS -- In the first two games of this three-game set, it was hard to miss both the aggression and the success in approach of the Baltimore hitters. They tagged Cardinals starters for 15 combined runs in those games, running away with the first and building a big enough lead to survive a tightened affair in the second.
Faced with the task of handling the kitchen-sink approach from the St. Louis bullpen in the series finale, the results were somewhat more underwhelming. None of the O’s who came to the plate in the first three innings reached base, and by the time the offense got going, the hole was a little too deep. The Orioles dropped the series finale, 7-5.
“The first guy [Gordon Graceffo] mowed right through us,” manager Craig Albernaz said. “We didn’t really have an answer for him. Coming in, he had a high walk rate, but he came out pumping strikes and especially getting ahead early, which forced us to swing at some tough pitches out of the zone and chase.”
Thursday’s matinee at Busch Stadium instead saw the Cardinals fire out to a big lead, with Blaze Jordan tagging Trevor Rogers for a three-run homer in the second inning and former Oriole Ramón Urías depositing a two-run shot in the fourth. Those two long balls represented the 15th and 16th allowed by Rogers this season, setting a new career high.
“I thought I pitched really well, attacked the zone the way I wanted to,” Rogers said. “Just lately, the homers have been killing me. You’ll give up base hits. That’s baseball. But the damage lately, it’s just been homers. So, try to figure out how to get the ball on the ground more consistently. I wouldn’t really change a whole lot other than that.”
The homers marred what was otherwise a perfectly acceptable performance by Rogers, who scattered seven hits over five innings and walked just one. He struck out seven, just the third time he’s recorded that many punchouts in 10 starts since July 1.
“[St. Louis] did a good job of grinding out at-bats, fouling off some tough pitches, just moving the ball forward,” said Albernaz. “For me, it was just two mistakes: the changeup for the homer [by Jordan], and then the one to Urías, the [sinker] that moved down and down the middle, and he put a good swing on it.”
Coby Mayo played a significant part in cutting into what was then a 6-1 deficit in the seventh, blasting a Statcast-projected 446-foot homer to center off Cardinals lefty Caleb Ferguson. It was Mayo’s 14th homer off a southpaw in 2026, drawing him into a tie with Atlanta’s Matt Olson for the most in MLB.
“I think that my swing is a swing kind of meant to put the ball in the air,” Mayo said. “I think that’s a good thing. I think if I was hitting a bunch of singles against lefties, it wouldn’t be great. I’m a power hitter. You’ve got to put the ball over the fence or put the ball in the gap and get on second base.”
The back two-thirds of the game looked a great deal more like the Baltimore offense which showed up in the first two-thirds of this series, and the approach against the individual pitchers provided ample opportunities. Gunnar Henderson stood on second base as the tying run in the eighth inning, and broke immediately toward third on a hard comebacker hit by Samuel Basallo. George Soriano fielded cleanly but fell down the mound as he threw, requiring Jordan to make a difficult catch and tag that resulted in him leaving the game injured after Henderson’s slide.
But for that play, Henderson could have come home with the tying run, and the resilient O’s would have yet again found a way to get back into the game.
“He did a great job of getting a good, aggressive secondary lead,” Albernaz said of Henderson. “He knew where Blaze Jordan was playing, and so he was just trying to beat him to the bag. That was his mindset, because he felt like with his aggressive secondary, he got caught in no man’s land.”
The O’s depart with a series victory to open their three-city, three-time-zone trip that resumes Friday in Sacramento before carrying on to Denver. It comes at a time of the year with the AL Wild Card race drawing tighter and each game -- each 90 feet -- carrying outsized importance. Even with Thursday’s setback, the Orioles seem to be pushing in the right direction.
“Losses aren’t great right now,” Mayo admitted. “But if you win two out of three for a few series in a row, you’re gonna have a lot of wins, and you’re gonna make some ground up.”