BALTIMORE _ Kevin Gausman was past the 100-pitch mark and he had not been nearly as overpowering as he was against the Red Sox at Fenway Park six days earlier.
David Ortiz, in the final two regular-season weeks of his long career, was still David Ortiz.
That's really all you need to know about the Orioles' damaging 5-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night at Camden Yards. The Red Sox have it all going on and the Orioles need to refocus on the wild-card race, because they have very little choice now that they're five games out of first place with 11 games to go.
Ortiz, of course, launched another moonshot in the seventh inning to break up a tight game, and the Red Sox won their sixth straight while the Orioles continued to limp around the ballpark where they used to have the best record in the major leagues.
Since they left Boston after Guasman's uplifting 1-0 victory over 20-game winner Rick Porcello, the Orioles have lost four of six games and plummeted out of a division race in which they were just one game off the lead five days ago.
Gausman had held his own before the Ortiz homer Tuesday, but he was not the same pitcher who stifled the Red Sox at Fenway Park. He pitched with at least one runner on base in each of the seven innings he took the mound. He tried to wriggle off the hook after giving up a pair of no-out singles to Marco Hernandez and Mookie Betts, but after striking out Xander Bogaerts he could not put a dent in Ortiz's retirement tour.
He jumped ahead 1-2 on the count before Big Papi hammered a towering drive over the center-field fence to cheer the usual heavy Red Sox presence among the crowd of 20,387 and deliver a gut punch to the Orioles faithful that felt things were turning around after rookie Trey Mancini homered in his major league debut.
Curiously, Orioles manager Buck Showalter did not have spot left-hander Donnie Hart warming in the bullpen for that situation. Showalter does not like to use his short relief guys in games when the club is behind, but this was _ by most accounts _ a must-win situation if the O's were to have any chance of winning the division title.
It didn't look like it was going to matter through the early innings. Former Orioles prospect Eduardo Rodriguez carried a no-hitter into the fifth inning before Mancini finally brought the crowd to life with his two-out shot into the visitor's bullpen.
