Orioles battle against red-hot Red Sox, but their 4 errors prove costly

BOSTON — Craig Albernaz, as managers are wont to do, downplayed the significance of this series.

“The baseball season is constantly trying to trick all of us into overreacting, right?” Albernaz said before the hot Orioles faced the even hotter Red Sox at Fenway Park on Monday. “It’s a long season.”

It is a long season — there are 162 of these games, and while it can be rightly argued that any game from late March to late September means as much as any other, that would be ignoring the feeling that comes from certain matchups. Grudgingly, perhaps, Albernaz acknowledged that there is a certain feeling around these parts for this series.

“It’s July 20 right now,” Albernaz said, “and this is as big a series as it gets for a July 20 matchup.”

Enter Baltimore and its seven-game winning streak. Enter Boston and its 13-game winning streak.

By the end of the night, one was snapped.

The Red Sox (51-48) extended their winning streak to 14 games by taking advantage of four errors by the Orioles. Boston finally took the lead for good in this 6-5 victory when Caleb Durbin walloped a solo homer off right-hander Tyler Wells in the eighth inning.

When the ball sailed off Durbin’s bat, Red Sox players spilled out of the first-base dugout in delight. Their magical run continued. The Orioles (49-52), meanwhile, looked much too prone to self-destructive tendencies, as evidenced by the errors and hitters’ 15 strikeouts.

“That’s a game we could have won,” infielder Jeremiah Jackson said, “and probably should have.”

The Orioles don’t have much room, if any, to give away games. They are hanging on to postseason hope largely because of the tepid American League.

After the All-Star break, the Orioles got off to a strong start in the sprint to the Aug. 3 trade deadline. Baltimore swept the Houston Astros, another one of those mediocre American League teams still masquerading as a playoff-caliber club in this mild wild-card race, to move within two games of the Red Sox.

Boston held the final of three wild-card spots, making this mini-season stretch important. Three in Boston, then nine more games before the trade deadline, could decide the direction of the organization — to buy or to sell.

That decision is still to come. The trade market is likely to come together slowly and much closer to the deadline because of how many teams remain in an uncomfortable two-step between a playoff opportunity and late-summer ignominy.

“I feel like we’ve done a good job of just treating everything the whole season the same,” right-hander Shane Baz said. “It would feel just like it felt if we lost this game on opening day. It’s just kind of: Look at what we can do better and try and do it the next time. I think we’ve done a good job of just keeping our heads down and trying to win a game every single day.”

Be that as it may, the seven-game winning streak didn’t drag the Orioles back to .500. At this point, their record is poor.

Two of the four runs off Baz were unearned. In the third inning, a throwing error by Jackson at second base allowed Ceddanne Rafaela to reach base, then Wilyer Abreu drove him in with a double.

Jackson said his footwork was off, which led to the misfire. The inning was compounded when shortstop Gunnar Henderson threw wildly toward home, allowing Abreu to reach third on his double. That allowed for another miscue to bring home a run a moment later.

Willson Contreras hit a line drive above Henderson’s head. His leap ensured his glove was high enough, but he mistimed it. The ball deflected off Henderson’s wrist, allowing Contreras to reach and Abreu to score. The play was ruled a single, but Henderson would want it back.

When Albernaz reflected on the four errors, he said the one from Jackson “hurt the most” because it prolonged an inning and directly led to unearned runs.

Asked whether he was concerned that his team had recorded eight errors in the last three games, Albernaz responded with one word: “No.”

The back-and-forth game continued with a few big moments from Christian Encarnacion-Strand. After hitting 17 homers in 61 games for Triple-A Norfolk, the infielder clubbed a solo shot to lead off the fifth in his second game for the Orioles. He and Jackson added RBI singles in the sixth to chase left-hander Payton Tolle from the game.

Almost immediately, another error haunted the Orioles. Baz fielded a dribbler from Abreu but threw it away, allowing the outfielder to reach second. Contreras then lofted an RBI double off the Green Monster.

“I made a real bad play on that little swinging bunt, got stuck in my glove a little bit,” Baz said. “But we made some great plays, too. But yeah, just flushing it and kind of start from scratch every hitter that comes up.”

That approach allowed Baz to complete six innings and extended his streak of allowing three earned runs or fewer to 11 of his last 12 outings.

But the Orioles and Red Sox traded runs in the seventh inning, and Durbin’s blast in the eighth proved the difference. He clobbered a high cutter from Wells.

“Durbin put a good swing on it,” Albernaz said. “The Monster’s right there, and credit to him, he put a good swing on it. But Wells has been outstanding for us.”

Baltimore still had a chance after Colton Cowser walked to lead off the ninth against left-hander Aroldis Chapman, and Henderson drove his third left-on-left double of the game to put runners on second and third with two outs. But Tyler O’Neill, who hit an RBI double in the first inning to get the scoring started, was robbed of a hit by the lunging Tsung-Che Cheng at shortstop.

Being that close to a win considering the rash of strikeouts and errors is a sort of accomplishment. But wins are required. And to win, it’ll take better baseball than was on display Monday.