Orioles beaten by barrage of Yankees home runs

There is nothing left to the Orioles in the final weekend of the 2025 season but to play for pride. Alas, there is little pride to be found. Much like on Friday night, the O’s limped their way to a defeat at the hands of the Yankees on Saturday afternoon where it never felt like they even had much of a chance to win the game. When all was said and done, the O’s lost by a 6-1 margin.

The cake was pretty much baked in the first inning. Tomoyuki Sugano, who has been homer-prone in his first MLB season, was always going to be fighting an uphill battle in trying to contain the big thumpers in the Yankee lineup, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Judge is up over 50 homers for the fourth time in his career. Stanton is keeping his sights on joining the 500 home run club in the next couple of years.

Sugano retired the first two batters and up came Judge. The Orioles starter tried to get Judge to bite on a sweeper out of the zone. Unfortunately, it didn’t actually sweep out of the zone, and Judge did bite. Homer #53 cleared the left-center field fence in a hurry. The Yankees had a 1-0 lead that they would never surrender. They got back to homering off Sugano in the second inning. Stanton got to Sugano leading off, and then just for funsies, a much worse hitter, Ryan McMahon, also homered, with a fly ball that bounced off the top of the fence and into the bullpen.

Across the entirety of the game, the Orioles only mustered three hits. They were thoroughly dominated by Yankees rookie starting pitcher Cam Schlittler. The unfortunately-named righty – two big ways for that name to go wrong when saying it – went seven innings against the O’s and allowed only two hits and one walk. There was nothing going on. He also hit two batters, some might say suspiciously, and the Orioles were not capable of capitalizing.

In the fifth inning, Sugano recorded just one out before the Orioles decided to go into the bullpen. The times through the order penalty suggests it’s best to take the starter out before the third time through. Sugano has struggled once getting to that point, so, the strategy was sound.

The problem is that the Orioles brought in Grant Wolfram, and Wolfram proceeded to walk the first two batters he saw to load the bases for Judge. Many more bad outcomes are possible than good in that case. Wolfram actually got two called strikes inside and had a 2-2 count on Judge, then he hung a curveball, Judge lined the ball into center field, and two runs scored, padding the Yankees lead out to 5-0. Wolfram ended up walking three batters in just 0.2 innings.

If you have been closely following the Orioles roster, you might be aware that Wolfram was not on the roster at the beginning of the day. It’s true, he wasn’t. Modestly fun lefty Dietrich Enns was placed on the paternity list, with Wolfram replacing him on the roster. Another change saw Cade Povich optioned in favor of Carson Ragsdale, presumably with the aim of giving the Orioles some multi-inning length.

With one of the inherited runners scoring, Sugano ended up allowing four runs in 4.1 innings in his final start of the season. That’s a 4.64 ERA for the year. Mike Elias was probably hoping for better, but it could have been worse, too. Sugano was good enough and durable enough to stay in the rotation for 30 starts. Any team could use that at the back of their rotation. Wolfram gave up two runs in his two-out stint in the game. That’s bad.

The Yankees were done scoring after the fifth. Yaramil Hiraldo pitched a scoreless sixth, then Ragsdale followed with two scoreless innings, lowering the tragic ERA from his MLB debut. Still in the double digits, though: 14.40.

After Schlittler exited the game before the eighth inning, the Orioles were finally able to get themselves in the runs column. Coby Mayo led off against Paul Blackburn and ambushed the first pitch he saw, driving it over the left field fence for his 11th homer of the season. For the offense, there was nothing else to cheer about. That was it. Mayo donned the Ravens helmet, grabbed the football, and ran through the gauntlet of teammates in the dugout. If this celebration carries over to next year, that will be fun if the team manages to be good again.

It will be up to the Blue Jays to help their own case by beating the Rays on Saturday. The Orioles have one final chance to spoil a Yankees AL East comeback if they can show some more life in the season’s final game tomorrow. It’s a 3:05 Eastern start time for game 162, with all teams beginning their games simultaneously. Kyle Bradish is set to start for the Orioles, with Luis Gil pitching for New York.