Orioles triumph in another wacky Fenway Park special with 9-4 win over Red Sox

Colton Cowser’s two home runs helped turn a frustrating Orioles loss into a crazy and fun win.

The top of the eighth inning was over: to begin with. As far as MASN was concerned, there was no doubt whatever about that. Adley Rutschman grounded into a double play, second base to shortstop to first base, erasing a runner and ending the inning. The network went to a commercial. The Orioles were close to dead as a door-nail. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story that I am about to relate.

When that commercial break ended, instead of the Red Sox coming up to bat as the start of the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Orioles trailing 2-1, it was Anthony Santander at bat. No one involved in the production had quite figured out what even happened when Santander swung at the first pitch he saw, low and inside, and he drove it a mere 337 feet.

However, it was Fenway Park, down the right field line, where the fence is not far out and not far off the ground, and Santander’s ball landed just in the front row. The Orioles had a 3-2 lead before the broadcast cottoned to the fact that Boston’s shortstop had not actually touched second base on the would-be double play and this was overturned during the commercial break.

We all could have hoped that this would be the smooth path to an Orioles celebration, kind of like Jordan Westburg’s go-ahead homer on Wednesday led to the O’s sailing to victory. It was not to be. In the bottom of the eighth, lefty reliever Danny Coulombe retired the first two batters he saw before Boston emptied its bench and pinch-hit its backup catcher, righty Connor Wong. Down to his last strike, Wong saw a cutter that didn’t quite cut enough and he socked it high atop the Green Monster, knotting the game at 3-3. Wong hit just one homer every 41 at-bats last year. Dang.

This set up a situation where both teams chose to use their 400+ save closers – just the second time in history that two pitchers with that many saves appeared in the same game. The other time it was two Hall of Famers, Billy Wagner and Trevor Hoffman. Kenley Jansen and Craig Kimbrel join the list.

Jansen, unfortunately for Orioles fans, flexed his veteran stuff on the rookie Jackson Holliday, who batted with two men on and two out in the top of the ninth and struck out, looking hopeless. We’re all still waiting for his first hit. Kimbrel sent down the Red Sox in order to push the game into extra innings.

Boston did not have a future Hall of Famer standing by in the tenth. Their man Isaiah Campbell was, in the words of MASN’s Kevin Brown, turned into soup. Gunnar Henderson led off the inning and blasted a laser the opposite way over the Green Monster to quickly put the Orioles up, 5-3, thanks to the zombie runner.

Campbell’s troubles did not end there, with a two-out rally plating another FOUR runs thanks to a Cedric Mullins RBI single and Colton “the Milkman” Cowser swinging 3-0 to crack his second home run of the game, a three-run shot that gave the Orioles a 9-3 cushion heading into the bottom of the tenth. That result, I dare say, is m’m m’m good!

Would a six-run cushion prove to be comfortable even for Mike Baumann? Not long after his Pittsburgh disaster last weekend, Baumann gave up an RBI double to Jarren Duran, scoring the Boston zombie runner immediately. There is a limit to even how bad the pitchers you don’t like are. Baumann retired the next three batters in a row and this wacky baseball game was in the books with an Orioles win and a series sweep. Holy mackerel. Holy cannoli. Holy Toledo. Holy moly. Holy Roman Empire, even. You know?

All of this later-inning wackiness crowds out what, for the beginning of the game, was a heck of a duel between Garrett Whitlock and Grayson Rodriguez. Boston scored two off Rodriguez in the first before he settled in – and if you really want to get down to it, they “deserved” only one of the runs. Duran’s leadoff double turned into a run on an RBI groundout, that’s fair enough. But then what should have been the third out, a pop-up hit by Triston Casas, was read poorly by Santander and turned into a Bermuda Triangle chase for Santander, Mountcastle, and Holliday.

The rookie nearly got there and grabbed it, and may have even run too far, but he could not make the catch and it bounced into the stands for an automatic double. One batter later, Wilyer Abreu scored Casas with a double of his own. The Orioles trailed 2-0 before the first inning was even over, but the Red Sox did not do any further damage to either Rodriguez’s ERA or his RA/9. When all was said and done on the outing, Rodriguez had two earned runs allowed over 5.2 innings, mostly scattering six hits and two walks while notching five strikeouts.

One of the hallmarks of the 2024 Orioles to date is that they really stink early in the game. That trend did not change on Thursday night, as the O’s, despite getting some traffic on the bases in the second, third, and fourth innings, were unable to solve Whitlock for much of that time. That finally changed in the fifth, when Cowser led off and sliced a home run the opposite way, high enough and hard enough to clear the Monster. This was the first career homer for Cowser. It will not be his last. For the time being, it was enough to bring the O’s within a run.

Boston pulled Whitlock at 85 pitches after five innings. The O’s could not capitalize on this immediately, with reliever Justin Slaten, a Rule 5 draft pick, laying down a pair of scoreless innings. The Orioles still had that 2-1 deficit heading into the eighth inning, and if only shortstop David Hamilton had stepped on second base they might have lost the game by that same 2-1 score. Hamilton did not step on second base, no matter that MASN thought the inning was over.

This was the latest of a whole series of butchery on defense by the Boston team. It is a big part of why they got their butts swept. Too bad, so sad. The Orioles, now 8-4, gained a half game on the idle Yankees to pull to 1.5 back. Their talented young lineup is winning them games without even firing on all cylinders yet. It seems that they will seldom make it easy on us, but at least so far it seems like they will quite often make it fun.

The Orioles head back to Baltimore to kick off a three-game series against the Brewers on Friday night. Note that the game will not be televised on MASN or available on MLB.tv, as it is exclusively on the streaming service Apple+. Tyler Wells is set to start the 7:05 game for the O’s, with Freddy Peralta pitching for Milwaukee. This was originally listed as former Oriole DL Hall, but with the Brewers getting rained out on Thursday, they pushed everyone back a day and Hall will start Saturday afternoon instead.