PITTSBURGH — The Orioles scratched and clawed back into a game they had no business winning Saturday.
Baltimore didn’t have a base runner through three innings Saturday, were no-hit through five frames by a pitcher who entered with a career 4.94 ERA and trailed 3-0 in the seventh. The Orioles’ four runs off the Pirates’ bullpen came on a groundout, a fielder’s choice and two sacrifice flies. Pittsburgh had the bases loaded with no outs in a tie game in extras and didn’t score.
But in the end, the Orioles couldn’t pull out one of their signature comeback wins, falling 5-4 to the Pirates in extra innings. The offense sputtered, stranding seven on base and going 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position.
“It’s just the cruel world of baseball,” starting pitcher Tyler Wells said. “It builds you up, tears you down. Losses like this today, I think, are ultimately — I guess the best way of putting it is a good loss. We battled, and we battled hard and came back. I’m very proud of the guys.”
Jordan Westburg raced home to tie the game in the ninth on Cedric Mullins’ ground ball, and Danny Coulombe escaped a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the 10th to keep the Orioles alive. But the offense continued to stall in extras. After scoring just one run in the 10th inning on Adley Rutschman’s sacrifice fly, they failed to push one across in the 11th.
Pirates leadoff hitter Oneil Cruz won the game with a walk-off single off reliever Jonathan Heasley to score the automatic runner in the 11th.
“It’s always tough on the road, especially if we don’t score there,” manager Brandon Hyde said of extra innings. “That’s a tough situation. You’re trying to score more than one. If you don’t score any, that’s putting yourself in a really tough spot.”
Pittsburgh scored three runs off Wells in the second inning, but Wells’ success with runners on base and the bullpen’s continued dominance kept the Pirates at bay until it couldn’t any longer. Dillon Tate, Keegan Akin, Jacob Webb and Craig Kimbrel combined to pitch 3 2/3 scoreless innings before Mike Baumann’s struggles in the 10th were made moot by Coulombe’s heroics.
Baltimore is 5-3 and allowed more than four runs in a game for the first time this season. The Orioles and Pirates (7-2) play Sunday afternoon in the series’ rubber match.
In a balmier PNC Park than Friday’s near-freezing climate, Pirates first baseman Rowdy Tellez roped an RBI single, and catcher Joey Bart, playing in his first game as a Pirate since coming over from the San Francisco Giants, crushed a two-run home run over the left field wall. The Orioles have trailed 3-0 in five of their eight games this season.
Wells struggled to prevent the long ball last year, allowing 25 in 20 starts. He was able to limit the damage by surrendering mostly solo and two-run homers, as the 6-foot-8 right-hander spent 2023’s first half as one of the American League’s best starting pitchers.
He’s given up a pair of homers in his first two starts of the season. That’s partially a product of being a high-spin pitcher who works at the top of the zone, but the big fly he allowed Saturday was on a cutter, not his excellent four-seam fastball. Eight of Wells’ 25 homers came against his cutter last year; on a per-pitch basis, it was his most likely pitch to be taken deep.
Wells wasn’t sharp for most of the outing, but he battled to escape jams throughout to exit in the sixth with just three runs on his tab. In the third, Pittsburgh had runners on first and second with no outs, but Wells retired the next three in order with two strikeouts. Bart then doubled in the fourth to put two runners in scoring position, but the 29-year-old Wells got Alika Williams and Cruz to pop out.
“I kept my team in it. I think it was really one bad pitch that kind of really hurt me today, ultimately,” Wells said. “It was definitely a grind. I’m pleased with the way I was able to work out of a lot of those jams. I’m not really happy I was in those jams.”
Wells got into trouble again in the sixth, but he was pulled at 87 pitches before Bart’s third plate appearance. Reliever Dillon Tate induced two ground ball outs to strand the two runners. Orioles pitchers held the Pirates to 3-for-16 with runners in scoring position.
Falter, who allowed six runs in four innings in his first start, retired the first 10 batters before Adley Rutschman walked in the fourth. The first hit the former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher gave up was a double by Jorge Mateo that should’ve been caught to lead off the sixth. The high fly ball to shallow center field landed as the Pirates’ second baseman and center fielder watched it fall. Statcast tracking data projected the batted ball to have an expected batting average of .020. But Falter, who struck out just one batter, got Gunnar Henderson, Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle out on soft contact to strand Mateo at second.
Ten of the 18 outs Falter recorded came on fly balls or popups, as Orioles hitters struggled to make solid contact against the southpaw.
“We didn’t make it easy on ourselves,” Hyde said.
The Pirates pulled Falter at just 78 pitches in the seventh, and the Orioles took advantage by scoring two runs off right-hander Ryder Ryan. Anthony Santander walked, advanced to third on Westburg’s double and scored on Hays’ groundout. Mullins then cut the deficit to 3-2 with a sacrifice fly.
Westburg sparked the game-tying rally in the ninth off closer David Bednar, as the second-year infielder singled with one out, advanced to second on pinch-hitter Ryan O’Hearn’s single and went to third on a wild pitch. Mullins’ ground ball to Tellez at first base appeared too hard for Westburg to score, but the 25-year-old reached a near-max speed of 28.1 feet-per-second, according to Statcast tracking data, to score before Tellez’s throw reached home.
Pinch-hitter Colton Cowser then grounded out to Cruz, whose pinpoint throw home nabbed O’Hearn to keep the game tied. Then, with the go-ahead run on third base and two outs, Hyde pinch hit the left-handed hitting Tony Kemp, a veteran the club signed after spring training, for Jorge Mateo, and Kemp softly grounded out to second base.
After Kimbrel, who recorded his first save as an Oriole on Friday, looked excellent in a scoreless ninth, all three Baltimore hitters who stepped to the plate in the 10th recorded outs as only Rutschman’s sacrifice fly brought home a run.
With no Félix Bautista to pitch the 10th as well as the ninth, as the injured fireballer did several times last year, the Orioles turned to Baumann, who allowed the first three batters to reach base on a single and two walks, the second of which came with the bases loaded to tie the game. Coulombe, the Orioles’ most-trusted left-handed reliever, then got Tellez to pop out, Jared Triolo to ground into a forceout at home and ended the frame with a strikeout of Bart. Coulombe, 34, jumped for joy after his masterful display.
“I got pretty excited about that one,” Coulombe said. “Bases loaded, no outs it’s obviously not ideal, but you really just want to pick up your teammate and I was really excited I could do that for big Mike.
“You think the momentum would be on our side. It’s a really good team over there, and it just didn’t go our way.”
But Santander, Westburg and O’Hearn were retired in order, and after Mullins’ diving catch robbed Ke’Bryan Hayes of a walk-off hit to lead off the 11th, Cruz followed his fellow young star with a line drive that couldn’t be caught. Santander’s throw home had no chance of catching automatic runner Henry Davis.
Around the horn
• Left-hander John Means pitched three innings of one-run ball in the second start of his minor league rehabilitation assignment. After he was roughed up in the first, the veteran struck out four and walked one in a solid outing against the Charlotte Knights (White Sox). He threw 50 pitches. Also for the Tides, Connor Norby — one of five prospects putting up monster numbers so far this season — hit his fourth homer in eight games. Heston Kjerstad, Coby Mayo, Kyle Stowers and Jackson Holliday each also reached base in the game.
• Double-A outfielder Jud Fabian, who Baseball America ranks as the Orioles’ 13th-best prospect, returned to the Baysox’s lineup Saturday after exiting with an ankle injury Friday.
Orioles at Pirates
Sunday, 1:35 p.m.
TV: MASN2
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM