Baltimore thought it had a run. Jackson Holliday crossed the plate on Samuel Basallo’s fly ball in the fifth inning Monday night at Camden Yards, but the Orioles’ latest push came off the board after Seattle challenged the play and replay showed Holliday had not touched home plate before the tag.
The play came in a 6-3 loss to the Mariners that left Baltimore at 31-36 and added another painful moment to a night when the Orioles finished 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position and stranded 10 men. Josh Naylor’s grand slam in a five-run fifth had already put Seattle in control, and the overturned run only underscored how quickly the game had slipped away.
Holliday said third base coach Buck Britton had prepared him for exactly that kind of moment. Britton told him, “Make sure we run hard through the base there.” Holliday said, “He kind of informed me, I guess. I knew that could be a possibility. We made an aggressive play, and they made a good throw.”
It was one of the few clean chances Baltimore created late. With runners on the corners and one out, Basallo drove a ball 381 feet to center field, Holliday tagged from third, and Blaze Alexander broke from first and tried for second on the throw. Julio Rodriguez delivered a strike from near the warning track to throw Alexander out, and the Mariners then challenged whether Holliday had scored before the tag. Replay showed his foot had not touched the plate, so the run disappeared and the inning ended.
Manager Craig Albernaz said he loved the aggressiveness from Alexander, and he said Alexander had room to read the throw and stop because first base was open. That fit a game in which Baltimore kept pressing but could not turn activity into production, a pattern that has shown up too often in recent weeks. A misread bunt against Tampa Bay recently kept Holliday from reaching third in extra innings, another mistake that cost the Orioles in a close spot.
The loss was Baltimore’s third straight and came in Albernaz’s first season as manager. Seattle improved to 35-32. The teams were scheduled to meet again Tuesday at Camden Yards in the four-game series, and the Orioles will spend another night trying to turn hard contact and aggressive running into something that actually stays on the board.
