In the early hours of Saturday morning, Ryan Mountcastle received a textual content from his dad.
“That sucked.”
The Orioles’ first baseman rapidly realized what it meant. With a pinch-hit, walk-off dwelling run from Cal Raleigh, the Seattle Mariners had simply mathematically ended Baltimore’s playoff hopes.
About 13 hours later, the Orioles performed a recreation that might largely be summed up by that textual content message, too. Their first recreation formally out of postseason competition was an 8-0 loss to the New York Yankees as one-time Orioles left-hander Nestor Cortes struck out 12 in 7 1/3 one-hit innings.
It was a letdown from the evening earlier than, when the Orioles (81-77) quickly staved off elimination with a dramatic 2-1 victory over New York that ensured their first non-losing season since 2016. A Rule 5 draftee that pitched in 4 video games for Baltimore within the 2018 season that sparked the group’s rebuild, Cortes continued his domination towards his former staff.
He struck out 5 of the primary six Orioles because the Yankees (97-60) constructed a 4-0 lead off Austin Voth, together with solo dwelling runs from Giancarlo Stanton and Kyle Higashioka. Voth didn’t enable one other run in finishing 5 innings, however the outing nonetheless marked the primary time since Baltimore claimed him on waivers from Washington that he allowed greater than three earned runs. In 22 appearances, 17 of them begins, he had a 3.04 ERA with Baltimore after posting a ten.13 mark as a Nationals reliever.
Cortes, in the meantime, didn’t enable successful within the first 4 innings, with walks to Jorge Mateo and Mountcastle accounting for Baltimore’s lone base runners. Mateo’s two-out single within the fifth ended the no-hit bid. The Orioles threatened to finish the shutout with Mountcastle’s single and Adley Rutschman’s double within the ninth, but it surely solely continued their struggles with runners in scoring place.
In seven profession appearances towards the Orioles, Cortes has a 1.06 ERA, 0.853 WHIP and 51 strikeouts in 34 innings. Both of his career-best 12-strikeout video games have come towards Baltimore.
As a lot as Cortes might need pissed off the Orioles’ hitters Saturday, it couldn’t evaluate to what Baltimore’s pitchers did to the 45,428 followers introduced in attendance when it got here to how they dealt with Aaron Judge. With Judge’s 61 dwelling runs tied for the American League single-season report, the Orioles largely averted the strike zone towards the slugger, although it got here again to chew them.
Down 2-0 towards Judge to open the primary, Voth hit the star outfielder to immediate an avalanche of boos, and Judge finally scored the primary of the body’s three runs. Spenser Watkins opened the seventh by strolling Judge on 5 pitches, with the Yankee Stadium crowd chanting an obscenity towards Watkins in response. Three hits adopted as New York doubled its lead. More boos got here when Watkins fell behind 3-0 towards Judge within the eighth, however he recovered to strike him out to push Judge’s pursuit of historical past to Sunday’s collection finale.
This story will likely be up to date.
ORIOLES@YANKEES
Sunday, 1:35 p.m.
TV: MASN
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
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Source: www.bostonherald.com