Pete Alonso has many things going for him. Speed is not one of them.
The Orioles star tore around the bases anyway as fast as his legs could carry him, and he dove across home plate before a tag in the eighth inning to hand Baltimore a comeback victory before the rain began in earnest.
As drops began to fall and the grounds crew hovered near the tarp along the right-field line, Orioles manager Craig Albernaz counteracted the Chicago Cubs’ move to the bullpen, which saw left-hander Ryan Rolison enter. Jeremiah Jackson strode to the plate as the pinch hitter, and he drove a two-run double into the right-center gap.
Gunnar Henderson scored easily. Alonso followed, waved home by third-base coach Buck Britton. He just made it, helping the Orioles steal a 3-2 victory Thursday — and avoid a sweep.
The site of Alonso sprinting will not induce visions of the Olympics, but it’s a testament to Baltimore’s star. Albernaz said Alonso likes to joke about his “open-field speed” when he gets to rumbling around the bases.
“He’s a gamer,” Albernaz said. “He wants to win, loves to play. He plays the game hard, plays the game right, and you can tell right when the ball was hit and got in the gap — there was no slowing down for him.”
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As for Jackson, this wasn’t his first clutch hit. In what FanGraphs defines as high-leverage moments, he now leads the Orioles with 16 runs batted in — one more than Adley Rutschman.
“There’s been some good times, some bad times in the big, important spots,” Jackson said. “Any time you can get it done, you definitely celebrate that win. All in all, it’s all about winning, and the hit helped us win. As far as I’m concerned, I did my job.”
This series was full of unfortunate moments, such as the five homers the Cubs hit Wednesday and the lack of success against another left-hander in Tuesday’s opener. Bookend errors in the first and ninth innings didn’t help Thursday, but neither derailed the Orioles in the finale.
The ninth-inning gaffe from Henderson at shortstop was more worrisome. He whiffed on Nico Hoerner’s grounder to allow the leadoff runner to reach base. Catcher Samuel Basallo threw out Hoerner at second, though, with Henderson holding the tag long enough to catch Hoerner as he overslid the bag.
“Sam with the great throw in the ninth, great tag by Gunnar,” Albernaz said. “And the one that Gunner [misplayed] — that spot gets chewed up a lot and it looked like it took a — not a funny hop, but it took a sharp hop on him. And, yeah, it was a roller coaster for defense, for sure.”
The Orioles (43-51) are still in a precarious position. They are in last place in the American League East, and their wild-card chances are tepid. After this win, however, the Orioles have three games against the Kansas City Royals before the All-Star break. Those could define the direction of Baltimore’s trade deadline approach.
Before they get there, the performance Thursday — which ended with right-hander Andrew Kittredge securing a save as the sky opened up — at least stemmed a three-game losing streak.
“Any win against a good team, I feel like you can get momentum out of,” said Kittredge, whose save prevented Baltimore from falling a season-low 10 games below .500. “We have such a talented group in here. It’s kind of like we’re waiting for it to kind of come together. A win like this really feels like it’s a step in the right direction.”
When asked why the Orioles have been unable to click to this point, over halfway through the season, Kittredge pointed to “little things” that prove costly.
“We’ll play a really good game, and then one little facet of a game will kind of derail it at times. It doesn’t consistently seem to be the same thing every time,” Kittredge said. “The teams that do the little things really well, with talent, those are teams that go a long way.
“We’ve got the talent. We’ve got to do the little things a little bit more consistently, whether it’s not giving up extra bases or taking extra bases or just making routine plays, not walking guys. Little things like that that kind of add up. In any given night, it doesn’t always seem to be one thing. But those are the kinds of things that I think have been costing us games.”
On Thursday, the Orioles got away with a few of those little things, such as a pair of errors and producing only three hits.
The offensive performance wasn’t robust. It took a solo home run from outfielder Tyler O’Neill — his third in three plate appearances — to put the Orioles on the board against left-hander David Peterson.
Then Baltimore required Jackson’s clutch double in the eighth to take a lead.
Left-hander Trevor Rogers managed what few pitchers have done against the Cubs of late: holding their explosive offense in check. He pitched six innings with one run against him, which came from Seiya Suzuki’s deep solo homer in the sixth inning.
“If you throw a changeup middle-middle, it’s probably going to go a long way. So one bad pitch, but it’s what he [Suzuki] is supposed to do,” Rogers said. “They’re a really tough lineup and [I] had to grind through most of it, and I was just lucky to get through six solid innings and we pulled out the ‘dub’ right there.”
This was another strong performance from Rogers in a string of successes. In every start since the beginning of June, he has allowed three runs or fewer. In his last five, Rogers has conceded a combined four runs. He did more than enough to give Baltimore a chance to salvage one game in this series, but Rogers didn’t do it alone, either.
While there were two errors, two other defensive plays stood out. The first cut down a runner at home. Michael Busch tried to score from first base on Hoerner’s two-out double in the fourth, and it took a perfect relay sequence from left fielder Taylor Ward to Henderson to Basallo to nab him.
And in the fifth center fielder Leody Taveras slid to rob Miguel Amaya of what could have been a run-scoring single with Dansby Swanson on second.
The Cubs established a lead in the top of the eighth through doubles from Pete Crow-Armstrong and Suzuki. But the Orioles avoided the sweep through a late comeback, and it required Baltimore’s most expensive free-agent signing ever hustling at full steam to take the lead before the downpour.
“For him to get in there and make it happen was awesome,” Jackson said of Alonso. “It’s a great slide. Great read off the bat for him.”
This article has been updated.
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