NEW YORK – Adley Rutschman had his goggles over his forehead, not his eyes – a rookie mistake for a third-year player. Seranthony Domínguez, who had just closed down a victory on Tuesday, sneaked up behind him and doused his catcher with beer.
“When it gets in your eyes,” Rutschman said, squinting and blinking and smiling, “it’s so bad.”
Rutschman and the Baltimore Orioles, who clinched a playoff berth with a 5-3 victory at Yankee Stadium and a loss by the Minnesota Twins, have felt that sting before. The good kind was when they clinched the AL East last September and partied at Camden Yards. Then came the bad kind, when the Texas Rangers swiftly kicked them off the stage on their way to a title.
“We were really close, and we ran into a team that was swinging it better than anybody else,” said Dean Kremer, who was thrashed for six runs in the season-ending loss in Arlington. “You threw the ball in the zone and it was getting whacked for damage. We did our best.”
Their best added up to 101 victories, the most for the Orioles in 44 years. At 87-70, they’ll fall far short of that total this season – but now, officially, it doesn’t really matter. Kremer’s five strong innings, backed by homers from Anthony Santander, Ramón Urías and Colton Cowser, got the Orioles their ticket as soon as the Twins’ game ended.
“Putting ourselves in those tight ballgames is definitely a test, and we love it – it’s good for our guys and they always persevere,” Rutschman said. “They understand that baseball is a game of ups and downs. We’re trying to get going, and this is a great momentum thing for us.”
The Orioles greeted playoff-bound Jackson Holliday (still 20 years old) with his own little clubhouse display after clinching. Adorable. pic.twitter.com/7lwCfuFtp4
— Tyler Kepner (@TylerKepner) September 25, 2024
Technically, the Orioles are still alive for the AL East crown, but they’d have to win their five remaining games while the Yankees lose all of theirs. They are all but certain to open the playoffs in Baltimore next Tuesday as the top wild card, hosting the second wild-card winner in a best-of-three series.
The Orioles avoided that round last October, then got swept for the first time all season right when it mattered most. They traded for a rental ace, Corbin Burnes, to give them a better chance in 2024.
“Last year, winning the American League East was just such an achievement for us, and the expectations were much lower,” general manager Mike Elias said. “And we came into this year with higher expectations. We made a lot of moves that kind of pushed some chips in for this year, and then we just didn’t have the fortune that we would have hoped for. I think today is a sense of relief.”
It wasn’t supposed to be so hard for the Orioles. On June 27, the halfway point of their schedule, the team was 51-30, on pace to win 100 games again. Rutschman, the cornerstone of their rebuild, was hitting .300 with 15 homers. Grayson Rodriguez, their best homegrown starter, was 9-3, a second ace to pair with Burnes.
Since then, Rutschman has hit .183 (43 for 235) with four home runs, and Rodriguez has been lost to a shoulder injury. Urías sprained his ankle, Jordan Westburg fractured his hand, Ryan Mountcastle hurt his wrist. All are back now, but wayward closer Craig Kimbrel was released on Tuesday and the bullpen has been a nightly adventure.
“It’s been a tough few months,” manager Brandon Hyde said, after needing six relievers to hold off the Yankees on Tuesday. “Every game that we win is like this, it feels like. It just doesn’t come easy. And hopefully that makes us, you know – we’re adversity tested, with the injuries we’ve had, with just the bad luck a lot of nights, too. We just haven’t caught a whole lot of breaks in the second half. And I feel like it could turn quickly.”
It could, because baseball is weird like that. The Rangers had the worst regular-season bullpen ERA of any playoff team last fall. Yet their relievers were nearly flawless throughout their championship run.
Domínguez has been burned by home runs since taking over as closer after a trade from Philadelphia, but he has converted 10 of 11 save chances for Baltimore. And with Burnes, Zach Eflin, Kremer and Albert Suárez, the Orioles have a respectable group of starters.
“We feel good about the playoff rotation and the bullpen,” Elias said. “I think we have a decent enough mix to go to battle with. It can always be better, but Corbin and Eflin, that’s a hell of a start to a playoff rotation. And those are guys that have been there before, too. So that’s going to be a lot of fun for us to have two horses like that.”
It feels impolite to mention that Burnes and Eflin lost their starts in the wild-card round last October, Burnes for Milwaukee and Eflin for Tampa Bay. Elias understands that everything’s a guess, a story waiting to unfold.
“It’s so hard to put narratives on baseball,” he said. “That lull that we’ve been through the past few months, that’s the first time this group has had a dip down since we kind of came up. We’ve all kind of processed that now and been through it. We’ve gotten the relief of getting to the playoffs.
“I hope we can finish strong enough to keep the homefield advantage, and we’ll see. Maybe we come into the playoffs with a little more of a peaceful state of mind, given how we arrived there.”
As rough as it’s been since that charmed first half, the Orioles still made it. They will take their chances again in October. It is a feat worth celebrating, and a chance worth savoring.
“I think this is going to be kind of like a fresh start, like we don’t have to grind now,” Kremer said. “We’re in.”
(Top photo of Orioles’ clubhouse celebration: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
