WASHINGTON _ How does a team with nothing to lose still manage to lose like this?
On Thursday night at Nationals Park, the Orioles fell 4-2 and dropped a league-high 52nd game that was made all the more puzzling in the way they almost avoided that fate.
After a returning Colby Rasmus, whose presence on the roster after an 11-week disabled list stint baffled much of the Orioles clubhouse, started one of the team's best defensive plays of the season with a double play from right field to home plate on a tag play to end the seventh inning, a tiring Mychal Givens allowed a pair of runs to on a double to 19-year-old Juan Soto to put the Nationals ahead for good in the eighth inning.
The Orioles were long done scoring by then _ their last of five hits came in the sixth inning _ but the offense had the honor of notching the first multi-home run game off Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer. There was not much else to speak of.
The scoring opened as improbably as anyone could have imagined. In his first at-bat after spending nearly 11 weeks on the disabled list with a hip injury that the Orioles wondered whether he'd ever come back from, Colby Rasmus clobbered a 95-mph Scherzer fastball to center field with one out in the second inning.
The Nationals got their run back in the third when Wilmer Difo singled, took third on a double by Pedro Severino, and scored on a sacrifice fly by leadoff man Bryce Harper. But the scalding Mark Trumbo's third home run in four games, this on an elevated Scherzer fastball, gave the Orioles their advantage right back.
Anthony Rendon jumped on a rare mistake by Gausman for a leadoff home run in the sixth inning and sent him into the dugout after six innings of two-run ball with another no-decision to show for his eighth quality start in 15 this year.
Rasmus had a second star-turn of his return in the eighth inning when, with one out after Difo tripled past him in right field, the veteran outfielder caught a line drive by Daniel Murphy, crow-hopped, and threw a rope home to Caleb Joseph whose tag got in just before Difo touched home to end the inning.
It was almost fated _ of course the man whose struggles, then injury was credited as having a lot to do with their slow start would come back and make an immediate impact for a team that hasn't won much and help them reverse that.
But instead, Rasmus was pinch-hit for by Craig Gentry as the game's final out. After leaving Givens in for a second inning because so much of the bullpen was unavailable after straining itself for five innings to secure Wednesday's win, manager Buck Showalter used his stocked bench of position players.
The Orioles head to Atlanta on Friday having lost four straight series and 11 of their past 13.
