Not much went right in the Orioles blow out loss to the Giants on Sunday afternoon.
A horrid month of Orioles baseball came to an appropriate end on Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, where the Giants blew out the O’s 13-2 to win the weekend series at Oracle Park.
How bad did things get, you ask? Alex Jackson, the Orioles backup catcher, had to make a pitching appearance in the eighth inning. He threw meatballs in the general direction of Giants hitters, and got smacked around. But he was far from the only “pitcher” to struggle for the visitors.
Tomoyuki Sugano did not have a good game. The Orioles starter lasted just 3.1 innings and gave up seven runs on 10 hits, one walk, four strikeouts, and a home run. But it’s not as if he was getting hit consistently hard. In fact, Statcast only counted two hard hit (95+ mph) balls in this outing, although it seems to have malfunctioned during Rafael Devers’ solo home run in the first inning. Including that makes the total three, which is still pretty low. That said, the total of 10 hits in only 3.1 innings for Sugano is a lot! It’s hard to argue that it was all bad luck with that kind of volume.
There were elements of Sugano’s start that were impressive. He worked a 1-2-3 second inning, which included strikeouts of Matt Chapman and Luis Matos. He had a 45% whiff rate on his splitter, and a 50% whiff rate on the sweeper. There just wasn’t enough good to overcome all of the bad.
The 35-year-old pitcher began to wobble in the third inning. He gave up three straight singles to allow the Giants second run of the afternoon. Willy Adames drove in the third run with a sac fly.
But the fourth inning is where the game was truly lost for the Orioles. Seven straight Giants reached base. It went like this: single (caught stealing by Samuel Basall0. Yay!), single, walk, single (throwing error by Jeremiah Jackson), triple, single, double. By the end of that barrage, the Giants led 7-0 and Sugano’s day was done. Kade Strowd came on and recorded the final two outs without issue to save his starter’s line from getting totally out of control.
Things got even worse in the sixth inning. Corbin Martin issued a one-out walk to Heliot Ramos. For a moment, it looked like he might escape the inning with a hard-hit double play from Devers, but Jeremiah Jackson made another throwing error. No one was out, and now two runners were on base. Martin managed to strike out Adames, but Dominic Smith made the error hurt with an RBI single. Matt Chapman followed with a walk to load the bases. Martin then induced another grounder, this one to shortstop Luis Vázquez, but he too booted to allow another run to score and make it 9-0. That ended Martin’s bad-luck outing and brought on Yennier Cano from the bullpen. Cano issued a bases loaded walk to give the Giants a 10-0 advantage before wrapping up the inning with a ground out.
San Francisco’s final three runs were scored against Alex Jackson in the eighth inning. We could review those, but why? Jackson was throwing 30-mph lollipops for balls, then switched to 65-mph batting practice “fastballs” instead. That allowed him to throw more strikes but also get hit quite hard. In this context, where the goal was to just survive and move on, that was the better option. Still not good!
But let us not forget, the Orioles offense was also bad! They were kept off the scoreboard through eight innings, had no extra base hits, and had gone 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. Ugly.
At least the ninth was kind of fun? By that point nothing mattered any more, but they accomplished the moral victory of not being shut out. Daniel Johnson led off with a line drive double that hit Matos right in the glove. Jackson Holliday doubled him home. Later, a Gunnar Henderson single scored Holliday. And that was it. The inning eventually fizzled, and the 13-2 beat down was complete.
The positives from this game? Holliday looked good at the plate, walking three times and the aforementioned double. Henderson and Ryan Mountcaslte had two hits each. Kade Strowd’s 1.2 scoreless innings were the highlight on the pitching side. The Orioles need to rebuild the bullpen this offseason, but he looks like an internal solutions from some role in the 2026 unit.
The negatives? Well, everything else. Sugano struggled. The defense, especially Jeremiah Jackson, was a disaster. It seems clear now why the Orioles have shied away from using him on the dirt too much this month. A Ramón Urías replacement he is not with that kind of glovework.
The Orioles finished August with a record of 11-17, their worst monthlong mark since May, when things were really brutal. August even included a stretch in which they went 6-1. In all games outside of that one week they went 5-16. Woof.
Next up for the Orioles is a trip to San Diego. That is where the playoff-hopeful Padres await. Kyle Bradish will take the hill for the Orioles, and he will be opposed by Dylan Cease (6-11, 4.82 ERA). The Labor Day first pitch will be 6:40 ET from Petco Park. Hopefully September gets off to a better start than August ended.
Category: General Sports
