Eight games, three teams to pass
Three games back with eight to play. That is where the Baltimore Orioles sit in the American League wild-card race, and the arithmetic gets uglier once you count the teams standing between them and the last spot. Three of them. All would have to fall over.
Overnight they had a chance to shave one game off the deficit and lost it in the tenth inning. Milwaukee took the series opener 6-5. Baltimore had come back twice by then, from 3-0 down and again from 5-3, then scored two in the bottom of the ninth to force extras before the Brewers escaped.
“Losing right now is tough,” infielder Coby Mayo said. “Obviously, we did a great job rallying back, and you’re going to have those games where you rally back and lose. You’re going to have the games where you rally back and win.”
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Milwaukee keep stacking wins
The Brewers have no such problem. At 96-58 they own the best record in baseball and sit two games clear of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the race for the top seed in the National League. Pat Murphy called Friday a night when his team did some good things and things worked out, which is roughly what a manager says when he is 38 games above .500 and nobody needs persuading.
Murphy spent longer on the opposition than on his own side. He said he did not know what place the Orioles were in, only that Craig Albernaz has them playing like a first-place team, with a crowd that sounds like it too.
Albernaz, sitting at 75-79, is less romantic about it. His players have clawed back all season, he said, and they also know exactly where they are.
Gasser against a pitcher who owns Milwaukee
Left-hander Robert Gasser (4-5, 4.30 ERA) starts for the Brewers this afternoon. He carries a 2.57 ERA through three September outings and gave up one run across five innings against Cincinnati on Sunday without picking up a decision. He has never faced Baltimore in three big-league seasons.
Trevor Rogers (10-10, 4.22) goes for the Orioles, and the history favours him. Rogers is 4-0 with a 2.84 ERA in five career starts against Milwaukee, and he has been the winning pitcher in each of his last three at home. His most recent outing was not one of those: four runs in six innings in an 8-1 defeat to Toronto, after a stretch of two runs allowed in 14 innings earlier in the month.
Bautista waits, Mancini signs off
Felix Bautista arrived in Baltimore at the start of the series. The closer has finished a minor-league rehab assignment following surgery last August on a torn rotator cuff and a torn labrum, though whether he goes onto the active roster this weekend may hang on how long the playoff chase stays alive. Albernaz said the decision comes down to how the player feels more than anything else.
Before first pitch the club honours Trey Mancini, who signs a one-day contract to retire as an Oriole. Seven hundred and one games in Baltimore between 2016 and 2022, a .270 average, 117 home runs, 350 runs batted in. He added five more games with the Angels this season and hit .308 in them.
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