Orioles offense fizzles in familiar fashion to lose wild-card opener

For so much of the second half of the season, this has been the script: a runner in scoring position, a swing and a miss at the plate, a grimace and groan from players, coaches and fans alike.

The Orioles were nothing if not consistent Tuesday at Camden Yards, managing as they have since the All-Star break. They had a runner on second with no outs and stranded him. They had runners on the corners and one out and stranded them. They had two on with two outs in the eighth and stranded them, too. And when put beside the near-flawless gem from right-hander Corbin Burnes, the faulty offense will leave an extra ache among the thousands of fans who waited for a reason to erupt.

The Royals, meanwhile, had one such opportunity and cashed in. Maikel Garcia reached on Burnes’ lone walk and promptly scored, giving Kansas City the only run necessary in a 1-0 victory against Baltimore in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series.

“Bottom line is, you’ve got to find a way to score runs,” said Ryan O’Hearn, who reached as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning. “There were really good pitchers on the mound on both sides, and everyone’s locked in on defense, and it’s hard to score runs in the postseason, and that’s our job. We just need to figure out how to do that tomorrow.”

There were two mistakes, and Kansas City’s ability to capitalize on a miscue left the Royals with a one-game lead in the best-of-three series while the Orioles are still searching for their first postseason win since 2014.

The gift to the Orioles came in the fifth, when left fielder MJ Melendez overran a sinking liner from Ramón Urías and fell to the ground, allowing the ball past him for a one-out double. It gave Baltimore a runner in scoring position for the second time, and Urías reached third with one out when Cedric Mullins looped a single into center field.

But then James McCann swung at three straight pitches and walked back to the dugout. And Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore’s young superstar shortstop, followed by striking out against dominant left-hander Cole Ragans as well.

Meanwhile, that walk of Garcia — the only blemish on Burnes’ day, and a tiny one at that — came back to cost the Orioles.

Garcia stole 37 bases this season despite having an on-base percentage of .281. He swiped second, reached third on a groundout and then Bobby Witt Jr. — the Royals’ young superstar shortstop — drove him in with a single that sent Garcia leaping into the air even before reaching home.

“The walk hurt. The walk cost us the game,” Burnes said. “I attack him a little better and don’t walk him, we get through there and it’s a 0-0 ballgame and we’ve got a chance. Unfortunately, the one big swing today from Bobby decided that game.”

The Orioles had more opportunities than the fifth. They finished 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position, a dismal continuation of a second-half slide that seemed over when Baltimore won five of its last six games.

Instead, there was no room for error from Burnes. He almost didn’t need any, with the way he pitched.

“It was a heck of a pitched game by both sides, and Burnes-y going into the ninth inning and only allowed one run,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “So, he did his part. He pitched absolutely fantastic, and he showed you all year what kind of pitcher he is and he stepped up his game even more today.”

The pitching matchup had the potential to be a duel of this magnitude. Ragans entered with a 3.14 ERA and Burnes held a 2.92 ERA. One is a burgeoning star and the other is already there, bolstering his market in free agency with every scoreless inning.

Burnes and Ragans lived up to the hype. Burnes peppered the zone with cutters, a pitch he tweaked to reintroduce more depth and run — using eight of them in a nine-pitch first inning. He allowed a leadoff bloop single but retired the next 12 batters he saw before Yuli Gurriel dropped a single into center field to begin the fifth inning.

Then Ryan Mountcastle gave Burnes a major assist.

On a low line drive from Melendez, Mountcastle snared the ball and flung his body around to touch first base. He doubled off Gurriel and Burnes did the rest, notching his third strikeout to keep his line scoreless through five.

But in the sixth, the walk to Garcia proved costly. Burnes struggled holding runners for much of the season, but he improved his timing to the plate late in the year. In August, the secondary lead for baserunners on steal attempts was 13.8 feet — calculated by subtracting a runner’s distance from first base at the first movement of Burnes’ leg compared to how far they got at the ball’s release.

In September, Burnes said he “went back to what we did in ’21 and ’22, which makes me a little bit shorter to the plate” — and it showed. The average distance gained between first move and the release of the pitch dropped to 9.9 feet in September.

But Garcia is a flyer. He was not the player Burnes wanted to walk, and soon Garcia reached third on a groundout.

There were two outs and a base open; the Orioles could’ve intentionally walked Witt to face Vinnie Pasquantino, who was activated Tuesday after recovering early from a right thumb fracture. But Hyde said, “I’m letting Corbin Burnes, the way he’s throwing the baseball right there, determine who he wants to go get,” so he pitched to Witt.

Burnes began his three at-bats against Witt the same way: a cutter on the outside edge. Witt fouled it off in the first appearance, took it in the second and then, when faced with it again, he jumped on the first offering.

“I went at him,” Burnes said. “We did a good job the first two ABs against him, a cutter down and away that he took some pretty bad swings on, weak contact. So, it was a pretty good pitch that he didn’t hit very hard. It just found a hole. That was the difference in the game.”

Still, Burnes finished with eight innings and one run against him to become the first Orioles pitcher to have a postseason line so dominant since Mike Mussina pitched eight scoreless in Game 6 of the 1997 American League Championship Series. That was another 1-0 loss.

Burnes’ outing was worthy of a better result.

“It’s easy to sit here and play Monday morning quarterback, but if that ball [from Witt] goes right at Gunnar, we aren’t even having this conversation,” said McCann, the catcher. “That’s the way this game works. He came up with the big hit and that’s the only run that got scratched across.”

The Orioles had their share of opportunities but fumbled them away. Mullins, who finished the 2023 postseason 0-for-12, began this year’s postseason 2-for-2. His first knock was a leadoff double in the third, and while Jordan Westburg’s two-out fly ball would’ve been a home run in 28 of 30 ballparks, per Statcast, it was an out in Baltimore.

The fifth-inning chance went by the wayside, too. Perhaps Urías could’ve scored, but he had to freeze to ensure Mullins’ single made it through before breaking for third. The eighth-inning opportunity failed too, with a two-out walk from Henderson and single from Westburg ending with Anthony Santander’s groundout. And in the ninth, O’Hearn’s leadoff walk didn’t amount to anything, either.

“Give them credit,” Hyde said. “I thought their pitchers were absolutely fantastic.”

The Orioles, as it turns out, went down with a whimper offensively. They wasted a superb start from Burnes and are immediately looking postseason elimination in the face in Game 2 on Wednesday.