BALTIMORE _ For seven innings Friday night, it looked like the Orioles had already packed up their bats for the winter.
They had floundered for six innings against one of the most ineffective starters in the National League and appeared dead in the water against one of the losingest teams in baseball. It had reached the point that the announced crowd of 37,815 was just happy to be going home with those cool Hyun Soo Kim Korean-language T-shirts.
Then something almost miraculous happened. The Orioles rediscovered their power stroke just in the nick of time. Mark Trumbo homered to lead off the 12th inning as the Orioles came back to score a dramatic 3-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks at Camden Yards.
Pedro Alvarez finally got them off the deck with a long home run off reliever Enrique Burgos in the eighth inning and Matt Wieters led off the ninth with a flag-court shot to tie the game. The Orioles (83-71) came close to winning it in the ninth when Adam Jones delivered a one-out single with J.J. Hardy on second base. But Hardy was thrown out at the plate on a play that manager Buck Showalter challenged in case catcher Welington Castillo had illegally blocked home plate.
The Orioles loaded the bases in the 11th but failed to score before Trumbo crushed his major league-leading 44th homer to left field to finish off the Diamondbacks.
For the first seven innings, it was the same old story. The Orioles could not get any offensive traction even on a night when the Diamondbacks sent a pitcher to the mound with a 2-12 record and a 6.90 ERA. Shelby Miller had not delivered a scoreless outing of any length this season, but he held the Orioles to just three harmless hits over six shutout innings Friday.
Showalter always does the classy thing in these situations and gives the opposing pitcher the credit when the Orioles don't show up at the plate. But that's a hard sell now that the Orioles have scored three runs or fewer in seven straight games and 11 of their past 15 games.
Orioles starter Yovani Gallardo wasn't overpowering, but you can bet that Showalter would have signed up in blood to get the performance he delivered. Gallardo allowed single runs in the first and second innings, then shut down the Diamondbacks until it was time to line up the short-relief crew.
If this were a week ago, Showalter would not have used his "win" relievers in a game that the Orioles were trailing, but they have run out of rope here. The Detroit Tigers have replaced them in the second wild-card slot and seemed poised to push them back another game with a lopsided victory over the Kansas City Royals.
Darren O'Day, Brad Brach, Mychal Givens, Zach Britton, Tommy Hunter and Oliver Drake pitched scoreless innings to buy some time and the offense finally came to the rescue in a game the Orioles could not afford to lose.
