The Orioles fell to the Yankees 5-3 on Wednesday at Camden Yards, unable to overcome a two-out eighth-inning rally that turned a tie game into a New York win, and a third straight loss for Baltimore.
Cam Sanders loaded the bases with two outs in the eighth, and Yennier Cano came on only to see a George Lombard Jr. single and his own wild pitch bring both inherited runners home, turning a 3-3 tie into a 5-3 Yankees lead that held up the rest of the way. It undid a night Baltimore had otherwise fought hard to salvage.
Dylan Beavers' two-out solo home run to left field off Fernando Cruz had tied the game at 3 in the sixth, and Rico Garcia followed it with a clean, scoreless seventh to keep the game level. Alex Hoppe added a scoreless top of the ninth, but Baltimore's offense didn't get a runner on base in the bottom half against Yankees closer David Bednar.
Pete Alonso was at the center of the night's two biggest offensive moments, one that counted and one that didn't. His opposite-field solo home run in the third trimmed an early 3-1 Yankees lead — built on a Ryan McMahon RBI single, a George Lombard Jr. sacrifice fly, and a Ben Rice home run — down to 3-2.
Then in the seventh, Alonso appeared to do it again, sending a long drive near the left field foul pole that looked like it could be a go-ahead homer. Umpires ruled it foul, and the call stood up on video review, keeping the game tied instead of handing Baltimore the lead outright.
The Orioles' players in the dugout, with a view down the third base line, were emphatic that it was a home run.
"It's definitely deflating," Orioles manager Craig Albernaz said. "We have a good view and I think everyone thought it was fair, and you look at the iPad and look at where the ball's tracking... I'm not saying that's the reason we lost at all, but being up one going into later innings, I would take that."
Alonso said he thought the call would be overturned. “100 percent, based on the video and also the Hawkeye had it fair in the dugout,” Alonso said. “I thought it was fair, but what I was told was in order to overturn a call you have to have two camera angles to overturn it… The umpire called it foul originally.”
“I think it was fair,” Orioles pitcher Chris Bassitt, also the team's MLBPA union representative, said. “It’s just crazy that we still have this issue. We might be the only major sport with an issue like this. It’s been years that we have technology that we can easily say, ‘This is exactly the right thing or wrong thing.' The fact that we don’t have it in 2026 is crazy.”
Why aren’t there enough cameras, or lasers even, in stadiums that can make that delineation?
“It costs money, that’s it,” Bassitt said, saying fans, players, and coaches all want the technology in place to get the calls around foul poles correct.
New York built its early cushion off Bassitt, who worked 5.2 innings and allowed three earned runs on eight hits with one walk and six strikeouts. He escaped further trouble with relief help from Grant Wolfram, who got the final out of the sixth, before Garcia's scoreless seventh briefly settled things down.
Then came the unraveling in the eighth. Sanders, whose been good lately, departed having allowed no hits but walked enough batters to load the bases, and Lombard's single plated the first of the two runs charged to him. The second came moments later, when Jazz Chisholm Jr. scored from third on a wild pitch by Cano — both runs credited to Sanders, who took the loss.
Baltimore's lineup had its moments without ever finding consistency. The Orioles were 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position. Leody Taveras went 2-for-4, and Jackson Holliday, Gunnar Henderson, and Samuel Basallo — back in the lineup for the first time in a month because of a shoulder injury — each reached base. Coby Mayo struggled, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.
Basallo also played an impressive first base, making diving sopts and covering ground balls. "He's really athletic over there," Albernaz said.
Lombard went 2-for-3. Yankees starter Will Warren went four innings and reliever Brent Headrick picked up the win.
The loss drops Baltimore to 61-66 and extends the Orioles' losing streak to three games, having now dropped the first two games of this series to a Yankees team that improved to 71-55. Baltimore has fallen out of the third and final AL wild-card spot entirely as a result, a position the club has traded in and out of for much of the past week. The Orioles and Yankees close out the series Thursday.