Tyler O'Neill gave the Orioles the kind of lift that can change a game in a hurry. It still was not enough. He hit a pinch-hit home run to start the seventh inning and added another in the eighth, but Baltimore lost to the Cubs 9-7 on Tuesday night after allowing eight consecutive runs.
The reason O'Neill is the name drawing attention now is simple: two home runs in one game usually rewrite the frame of the night, especially when one comes off the bench. Instead, his first swing only began Baltimore's comeback and his second trimmed the gap further, leaving the Orioles to chase a game they had let slip away earlier.
Dean Kremer was hit hardest when the Cubs seized control, and the damage came fast. He allowed three home runs in the fifth inning, and that burst helped put Baltimore behind before the seventh-inning rally even had a chance to matter. The Orioles had to piece together offense after that, and they used three singles to manufacture their fifth run of the game before O'Neill's first homer made the crowd believe the lineup might still catch up.
That belief never fully matched the scoreboard. Seiya Suzuki added a three-run home run in the seventh, and the Cubs kept stacking pressure until Baltimore's late push ran into the larger problem of eight straight runs against it. Coby Mayo later launched a ball to the second deck in left field in the eighth, Jackson Holliday finished with four hits, and Tyler Wells tossed a scoreless ninth, but the Orioles were still left with too much ground to make up.
The loss carried extra weight because Baltimore entered the homestand needing a series win to keep its slim playoff chances afloat, then dropped the opener and kept sliding in this game. O'Neill's two-homer night mattered, but it ended up as proof that one hot stretch from the middle of the order cannot erase the damage of a long inning and a bigger collapse before it. The Orioles now need the next game to be more than another rally that arrives after the chance has already passed.
