Orioles battle back but fall short in 4-3 loss to Nats

Sam Cohn, The Baltimore Sun on Apr 23, 2025

Published in Baseball

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WASHINGTON — Tomoyuki Sugano watched Nationals ascendent youngster James Wood rip a sinker 116.3 mph off the bat, 431 feet over his head toward the right-field bleachers. It was the eighth hardest hit ball in Major League Baseball this season. Josh Bell followed Wood’s lead moments later with a two-run home run off Baltimore’s best healthy starting pitcher.

It had been 20 minutes. Sugano had thrown 14 pitches. Two of them landed in the right-field seats, putting the Orioles in an early 3-0 hole — a deficit they had overcome only once this season.

With the way the Orioles have been hitting as of late, three runs was a mountain to climb. A 4-3 loss to the Nationals on Wednesday night marked their third straight, tying their longest drought of the season.

Even on a night when Sugano flushed that first inning, holding Washington scoreless in his next six innings, Baltimore couldn’t capitalize. He struck out one batter and walked none, giving up five total hits.

Washington retook the lead on a sacrifice fly by Luis García Jr. to center field that scored Alex Call in the eighth. A play earlier, Baltimore reliever Gregory Soto nearly escaped the jam by inducing a chopper to shortstop from Nathaniel Lowe, but the double play try was a hair slow.

Baltimore (9-14) had its chances.

With two on in the third, the Orioles failed to push either across home plate. Mid-Atlantic Sports Network cameras caught Gunnar Henderson punching his helmet into a dugout cubby and ripping his gloves off, inherently frustrated after dragging out what is now a 1-for-14 slump.

There were two more runners stranded in the fourth. One in the fifth. Etcetera, etcetera. The Orioles’ last chance came in the ninth. Henderson singled. Ryan Mountcastle put the go-ahead run at first. But Tyler O’Neill’s strikeout and Heston Kjerstad’s game-ending pop out sucked the air out of the visiting dugout.

Twelve total players were left on base by night’s end. All that traffic was for naught, as Baltimore went 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position.

And it came, in part, against the worst bullpen in MLB. The Nationals’ relievers’ collective 7.09 ERA is more than a full run worse than the next team. They have a collective 74 strikeouts this season, seventh worst in the league.

This appears to be Baltimore’s reality until its best bats return to form.

Mountcastle’s single in the ninth ended an 0-for-6 skid. Ryan O’Hearn is 0 for his last 7, as is O’Neill. And Jordan Westburg was hitless in six consecutive at-bats before tripling late in Wednesday’s loss.

These are small April samples coming at a time when Baltimore needs its offense to reignite.

“Our expected offensive numbers are a little better than the actual numbers are right now,” manager Brandon Hyde said pregame. “We’re a better club than we’ve shown so far. And we have a lot of confidence in these guys, especially offensively, to start putting up numbers.”

Instant analysis

For all of Baltimore’s pitching woes over the first month of the season, here’s a glimmer of positivity: Nobody on the current staff flushes away frustration quite like Sugano. He let up a pair of home runs in the first inning, digging his team into a 3-0 hole. Sugano forgot about it and retired the next nine batters. He’s the only Orioles pitcher who has shown an ability to keep a bad inning from unraveling an entire outing.

On deck

The Orioles dropped a nail biter on a night they needed to right the ship. The last of this three-game series will pit lefties Cade Povich and MacKenzie Gore. Then Friday, 26-year-old righty Brandon Young will take the ball for his second big league start, the first of a weekend set in Detroit.