May 20, 2022: Rougned Odor’s walk-off blast caps Orioles’ 13-inning thriller

To say the Baltimore Orioles struggled against the Tampa Bay Rays in 2021 is an understatement. The Orioles ended the season 1-18 against the Rays, getting outscored 71 to 150. It was a dismal year overall in Baltimore, as the Orioles went 52-110, their third straight full-length season with at least 108 losses.1 Tampa Bay topped the American League East Division at 100-62.

For Baltimore, the start of the 2022 season was just as miserable, both against Tampa Bay and in general. The Orioles dropped all three games of the opening series at the Rays’ Tropicana Field, bringing their losing streak against Tampa Bay to 15 games.2

By the time the teams faced each other again, in May at Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Orioles were already sitting in last place in the AL East with a 15-24 record. Coming into the series, Baltimore had been swept in three games by the Detroit Tigers, then lost three of four to the New York Yankees, salvaging the final Yankees game on Anthony Santander’s ninth-inning walk-off homer.

The Rays were off to another great start, brandishing the third-best record in the AL at 23-15. Entering the Baltimore series, Tampa Bay had won two of three from the Tigers and the Toronto Blue Jays.

Tyler Wells, at age 27 in his second major-league season, took the mound for the Orioles in the series opener on Friday night, May 20. Wells had looked shaky so far in the young season, with a 1-3 record and a 4.18 ERA in seven starts.3 His worst start was on April 10 in the opening series against the Rays, when he allowed four runs and did not make it out of the second inning.

Rays manager Kevin Cash chose Jalen Beeks as his opener, giving the 28-year-old lefty his first start since August 2019. Beeks was having a good season, allowing just three runs in 15⅔ innings pitched, with all of the runs coming in one appearance against the Los Angeles Angels.

Both teams were scoreless through the first four innings, with Baltimore gathering only two hits against Beeks and Ryan Yarbrough, who replaced his fellow left-hander in the third inning, and Tampa Bay still searching for its first hit against Wells.

That changed in the top of the fifth when Randy Arozarena, the previous season’s AL Rookie of the Year, led off with an infield single and took second on shortstop Jorge Mateo’s throwing error. One out later, a walk to Isaac Paredes put two men on base. Then veteran catcher Mike Zunino crushed a homer off the top of the left-field foul pole.

Chris Owings doubled down the third-base line with two outs in the bottom of the inning, but Brett Phillips threw him out at the plate on Cedric Mullins’s single to right, and, after five innings the Rays were up 3-0.4

Yarbrough maintained the lead with a scoreless sixth, but the Orioles rallied in the seventh. Tyler Nevin led off with a double and moved to third on a single by Ramon Urias. Cash replaced Yarborough with another lefty, Brooks Raley, whose second pitch to Robinson Chirinos was wild, allowing Nevin to score. Urias came home when Arozarena dropped Chirinos’s fly ball to left for an error.

Four batters later, with J.P. Feyereisen on the mound for the Rays, Trey Mancini slapped a line-drive single into center field to score Chirinos, and the game was tied, 3-3.

The bullpens traded scoreless innings to get the game to extra frames. Baltimore’s Keegan Akin left Yandy Díaz at second in the eighth. A ninth-inning single and a wild pitch put Arozarena on second, but Bryan Baker came from the bullpen to strand him there. Jason Adam and Colin Poche set down the Orioles one-two-three in the eighth and ninth.

With Baker still pitching for Baltimore, the Rays got to business quickly in the 10th. After a sharp lineout from Francisco Mejia, batting for Zunino, Phillips laced a double into the right-field corner to score the automatic runner,5 Taylor Walls, from second. Diaz’s single scored Phillips, putting the Rays up 5-3.

The Orioles were far from giving up hope, though. Mullins started the bottom of the inning at second, and Matt Wisler’s back-to-back walks to Austin Hays and Mancini loaded the bases with no outs, bringing the crowd to their feet.

Santander delivered, sending a 1-and-0 slider into left field for a base hit. Mullins scored easily from third base, and Hays wasn’t far behind him, sliding just under Arozarena’s throw and Mejia’s tag to tie the game again. The next three batters went down in order, and action continued into the 11th.

Baltimore’s Dillon Tate had closed out the top of the 10th, but with one out in the 11th, Arozarena’s hard groundball deflected off him. It was scored a single and Rays were at first and third. Cionel Pérez was brought on to face Kevin Kiermaier and gave up a single to left field, driving home pinch-runner Vidal Brujan. Tampa Bay 6, Baltimore 5.

For the second inning in a row, the Orioles were down to their last three outs. Urias was the runner at second. Baltimore’s hopes started to dwindle as Rougned Odor, batting for Chirinos, started the inning with a strikeout against Ryan Thompson. They continued to drop as Anthony Bemboom, pinch-hitting for Owings, grounded out.

Mullins was intentionally walked, leaving it all up to Hays, with two on and two out.

Hays fouled off the first two sliders from Thompson, quickly going down 0-and-2, but the next three pitches were all way outside. Hays got an inside slider and blooped it into left field, the ball landing just in front of Arozarena. Urias scored, and the game was even once more, 6-6.

The 12th inning came and passed; both teams went down in order, with their automatic runners staying put at second.

Wander Franco, the Rays’ 21-year-old shortstop, was the automatic runner in the top of the 13th. Nick Vespi, Baltimore’s seventh pitcher, came in to make his major-league debut. Vespi struck out the first two batters, then Arozarena was intentionally walked.

Kiermaier stepped up to the plate and stroked a ball into shallow left-center. Though the throw from Hays was a little offline, Franco didn’t slide into home. He was initially called safe, but after review, it was clear that a diving Bemboom – who had replaced Chirinos at catcher – managed to tag him on the knee just before he crossed the plate.

The Orioles went into the bottom of the 13th looking to send the fans home happy. Nevin was the automatic runner, and Baltimore, playing for one run, called on Urias to sacrifice him to third, bringing up Odor.

The 28-year-old Odor, in his ninth major-league season and first with Baltimore, had remained in the game at second base after pinch-hitting. He was batting an abysmal .204 so far in the season, with only one home run in 103 at-bats – disappointing by the standards of a player who’d reached the 30-homer plateau three times.6

He faced off against Ralph Garza Jr., the Rays’ ninth pitcher, who had pitched just eight innings in the season thus far.

On a 1-and-1 count, Garza hung a cutter over the middle of the plate, and Odor got every bit of the ball, pulling it deep into the night sky and over the out-of-town scoreboard in right. Less than half an hour before midnight, the crowd erupted as Odor was mobbed by his teammates at home in a frenzy of blue Gatorade and smiling faces.

After a hard-fought battle, the Orioles had finally taken a game from the Rays, for the first time since July 19, 2021.

The Orioles ended up taking the series, helped in part by the debut of the major leagues’ number-one prospect, catcher Adley Rutschman, on May 21. Sunday afternoon’s series finale was another thriller, with Baltimore tying the game on Hays’s two-out, two-run single in the ninth and winning when Odor drove in Rutschman in the 11th.

Adding Santander’s game-winning homer on the day before the Rays’ visit, the Orioles had three walk-offs in four days,7 which seemed to spark them for the rest of the season. From June 11 through September 3, the Orioles went 47-26, including a 10-game win streak in July, their longest in over 20 years.8 They closed the season over .500 for the first time since 2016.9

The Orioles finished the season at 83-79, taking 9 of their 16 remaining games against the Rays after the season-opening sweep. While Baltimore just missed the playoffs that year, coming in three games behind Tampa Bay for a wild-card spot, they shocked the world10 with their improbable run, becoming the first team since 1900 to have a winning percentage above .500 after losing 110 or more games the previous year.11

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL202205200.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2022/B05200BAL2022.htm

Notes

1 The Orioles were 47-115 in 2018 and 54-108 in 2019. They went 25-35 during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

2 Joe Trezza, “Frustrating Loss Ends Rays’ Streak vs. O’s,” MLB.com, May 21, 2022, https://www.mlb.com/news/rays-win-streak-vs-orioles-ends-at-15-games.

3 Andrea SK, “Orioles-Rays Series Preview: The Al East Isn’t Exactly Fair,” Camden Chat, May 20, 2022,

https://www.camdenchat.com/2022/5/20/23131370/orioles-rays-series-preview.

4 The 30-year-old Owings had made Baltimore’s 2022 Opening Day roster after coming to spring training as a nonroster player on a minor-league contract. It was the third season in a row that Owings had turned a minor-league contract and nonroster invitation to spring training into a position on a major-league club’s Opening Day roster. Justice delos Santos, “Owings Trying to Grind Way to Another Opening Day Roster,” MLB.com, March 11, 2023, https://www.mlb.com/news/chris-owings-eyes-pirates-opening-day-roster.

5 The automatic-runner rule, implemented in 2020, gives each team a runner on second base at the start of each extra inning.

6 Odor also hit 10 home runs in just 38 games in 2020, when the season was greatly shortened by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

7 Zachary Silver, “‘We Don’t Quit’: O’s Win on 3rd Walk-Off in 4 Days,” MLB.com. May 22, 2022, https://www.mlb.com/news/rougned-odor-drives-in-walk-off-winner-vs-rays#:~:text=The%20grind%20simply%20resulted%20in,to%20the%20Elias%20Sports%20Bureau. Accessed February 18, 2023.

8 C.J. Doon, “The Best Facts and Figures From the Orioles’ 10-Game Winning Streak,” Baltimore Sun, July 16, 2022, https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-winning-streak-stats-20220716-mfbdow32zrcfdamkoul7jjxoie-story.html.

9 Blair Young, “Orioles 162-Game Report: O’s First Time Over .500 in 6 Years,” WBALTV.com, October 5, 2022.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/orioles-162-game-report-os-first-time-over-500-6-years/41533306.

10 Before the season, ESPN predicted the Orioles’ record at 58-104, 30th out of 30 teams. ESPN’s David Schoenfield wrote, “If everything goes right … the Orioles win … 70 games.” 2022 MLB Season Preview: Power Rankings, Playoff Odds and Everything You Need to Know for All 30 Teams,” ESPN.com, April 4, 2022. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33647294/2022-mlb-season-preview-power-rankings-playoff-odds-everything-need-all-30-teams.

11 Young, “Orioles 162-Game Report.”