Again! Colton Cowser’s walk-off ends 13-inning thriller

This game was begging for a hero, and Colton Cowser delivered for a second day in a row. With the Orioles and Rays trading blows back and forth into the 13th inning, Cowser’s swing finally ended it.

His soaring two-run home run was his second walk-off in as many days. He lifted Baltimore over Tampa Bay, 9-7, in a four-hour marathon of a game.

The Orioles could’ve lost this one much earlier, of course. So could have the Rays. Instead, each team hand-delivered opportunities to the other, opening avenues back into this game when a more competent performance would have shut them down. So, to the 13th inning it went, and more craziness ensued.

The Rays scored twice against left-hander Dietrich Enns in the top half of the frame. But like the three innings before this one, the Orioles answered. Leody Taveras’ RBI double and Jackson Holliday’s sacrifice fly leveled the score again. Then Cowser unloaded on right-hander Jesse Scholtens’ thigh-high slider.

“Our guys did a great job of not trying to do too much and having great at-bats and passing the baton to the next guy. I couldn’t be more proud of this group,” manager Craig Albernaz said.

Right-hander Kyle Bradish, who pitched a gem of an outing but watched as “a fan” in the clubhouse, said he was “living and dying by every pitch.” To Bradish, that was Baltimore’s best game of the season “by far.” Cowser agreed.

“Probably one of my favorite wins on the Orioles,” Cowser said. “It was just a matter of time before we got that big swing, and it felt like we kept getting big swings there to tie the game, and I was fortunate enough to put one over the fence.”

The Orioles have won three of their last four games and began this three-game series against the Rays in much better fashion than last week’s sweep in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Baltimore is now 24-30 at the one-third mark of the season. Despite that start, the tepid American League leaves a wild card opportunity at least somewhat realistic if the Orioles can replicate this sort of energy.

“We kept on getting punched and we didn’t waver,” Albernaz said.

The 12th inning alone had enough action to satiate the fans who spent Memorial Day at Camden Yards. Of course, it didn’t end there. The Orioles extended this game when Cowser’s bang-bang play at the plate was overturned upon video review.

To even be in that position to make it so close took a superb play from Jonathan Aranda at first base. He snared Gunnar Henderson’s hard-hit grounder and threw home, where catcher Nick Fortes dove across the plate to tag Cowser. But Cowser snuck underneath the tag, forcing another frame.

“A lot of time with the contact play at home, when you go in with your feet your foot kind of has to get flat and just felt like my hand could get onto the plate quicker,” Cowser said.

If it hadn’t been for Cowser’s homer, that would have been his game-saving play. Instead, it was but one of his key contributions.

The 11th had its own drama, when Victor Mesa Jr., appearing in his first game this season, walloped a middle-middle slider from right-hander Tyler Wells to deep right field for a two-run homer. That Rays lead evaporated, too.

Buck Britton kept waving his arm, steering the formidable figure of Pete Alonso around third and toward the plate. Alonso had just plated one run, and when Jeremiah Jackson’s single deflected off a glove and trundled into shallow left field, Alonso began chugging.

This was chaos, good and bad. The Rays finished with four errors and the Orioles had one. They each had opportunities to seal the game and let those slip away. These division rivals — Tampa Bay leading the American League East and the Orioles looking up from well down the rankings — kept giving each other chances.

And that was only in the later extra innings. For instance, right-hander Rico Garcia’s tight-rope escape in the 10th inning almost fell under the radar. Right-hander Kyle Bradish’s quality six innings were similarly overlooked.

Manager Craig Albernaz walked to the mound in the 10th but didn’t signal to the bullpen for a pitching change. The bases were loaded with one out against Garcia, and he already pitched a scoreless ninth inning. Instead of grabbing the ball from Garcia, Albernaz entrusted his best reliever for the moment.

The trust paid off. Garcia struck out Richie Palacios and forced Cedric Mullins — the former Orioles outfielder who received a standing ovation earlier in the game — into an inning-ending lineout to first base.

Garcia pumped his fist, yelled, then crossed his arms to the sky — a gesture in honor of his grandfather.

“I love Rico in that situation, and I just wanted to make sure he was good,” Albernaz said. “As I was walking out there, I was yelling at him, because I wasn’t taking the ball. I just wanted to make sure how he was feeling, and kind of reset the infield, too. You never know what the Rays are going to be doing. Bases loaded, one out, they could be bunting. So I just want to make sure that everyone has their assignments, too, and slow down the defense a little bit. But also, check in on Rico.

“And Rico does what Rico does.”

That allowed for Cowser to hit his second walk-off homer in consecutive days, becoming the first Orioles player to do that since Fred Lynn in 1985, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

To even require those extra-inning heroics, though, Baltimore fell flat in key moments earlier.

In the sixth inning, for instance, the Orioles were threatening, on the verge of their first breakthrough in what had been a pitcher’s duel through five innings. Left-hander Shane McClanahan was finally out of the game, having hit Henderson and walked Rutschman. This was the key moment — unless Baltimore somehow fell on its face.

Or got picked off.

Right-hander Hunter Bigge’s pickoff move to second caught Henderson in a rundown for the second out of the inning. And after Alonso walked, pinch-hitter Samuel Basallo grounded out to end what had been the Orioles’ best chance to get on the board.

Henderson was the second Oriole to be picked off the bases Monday, joining Blaze Alexander. The anemic offense to that point — plus the two base-running mistakes — left Bradish in line for a loss despite producing one of his best games this year.

Bradish finished six innings with one run against him, which came on Aranda’s solo homer to begin the sixth. Four times Bradish stranded a Rays runner on base — thrice with a strikeout — and his season ERA is down to 3.86. He has been even better recently. In four straight outings, Bradish has pitched more than five innings with three or fewer runs against him.

“Just keep building where we’re at,” Bradish said. “Each start’s getting better and better. Today was one pitch [the Aranda homer], but if we stay there we’re going to win a lot of games.”

The late run support from Baltimore got Bradish off the hook. The Orioles took a page from the Rays playbook in the seventh inning, turning scrappy moments into a pair of runs. Leody Taveras walked, stole second, then took third when Bigge’s pickoff attempt skipped into center field.

Alexander scored Taveras with a single, and more mayhem on the bases worked in Baltimore’s favor when Taylor Ward singled to right field. Alexander raced from first to third. Victor Mesa Jr., attempting to make a play from right, threw well high of the base. The ball left the field of play after a deflection, which granted Alexander to score the go-ahead run.

“Our guys have that ability, and Leody set the tone,” Albernaz said of Baltimore’s baserunning aggression.

That lead hardly lasted. Yandy Díaz doubled against right-hander Anthony Nunez and reached third when Taveras bobbled the ball before he could throw it in. And Richie Palacios, a Towson University product, drove an RBI single to level the score.

That forced the game to extras, where the Orioles and Rays devolved into a manic display of back-and-forth play. Cowser, finally, ended this one.

After a slow start to his season, in which Cowser saw his everyday role become more of a platoon-oriented one, these two days show something more like the dynamic Cowser of 2024, when he finished as a AL Rookie of the Year finalist. He has worked behind the scenes for this. Now, with a deep fly ball, the work is paying off.

“To see it come through in the biggest moment at the biggest stage against a really good team,” Albernaz said, “couldn’t be happier or prouder of Colton.”