Rutschman's Two-Homer Night Powers Boston Past Baltimore, 6-5
Adley Rutschman went 2-for-4 with two home runs, two RBI, and three runs scored to carry Boston past Baltimore 6-5 on Thursday. The story of the night was a game that flipped directions four times before Nick Sogard's eighth-inning blast finally broke Baltimore's back.
The first inning set the tone for what this game would become: a slugfest with no patience for pitching leads. Rutschman opened the scoring with a 377-foot shot to right center, but Baltimore answered immediately when Alonso hit a sacrifice fly to center, scoring Alexander and knotting it at 1. That back-and-forth wasn't a fluke — it was a preview. Baltimore grabbed its first lead in the fourth when Luis Robert Jr. went deep to left at 387 feet, and Alonso followed two batters later with a 392-foot shot to center to push it to 3-1. Jake Bennett had allowed three earned runs over six innings with seven strikeouts and zero walks, but the Orioles' power had put Boston in a hole.
Boston clawed back methodically. Rutschman hit his second homer of the night in the sixth — 389 feet to right center — cutting it to 3-2. A Kiner-Falefa single to right scored White in the seventh to tie it at three. Then came the moment that decided everything: in the eighth, Sogard launched a 395-foot shot to right center with Rutschman aboard, swinging Baltimore's win probability from 54% to 16% — a 38-point collapse on a single swing. That two-run blast made it 5-3 Boston, and Roman Anthony added a solo shot to left center in the ninth at 370 feet to push the lead to 6-3. The game looked over.
It wasn't. Encarnacion-Strand hit a two-run homer to left center at 385 feet in the bottom of the ninth — Henderson also scored — to make it 6-5 and give Baltimore a pulse. But Garrett Whitlock closed it out, throwing a scoreless ninth with two strikeouts and no hits allowed. Whitlock and Erik Miller combined for two perfect innings of relief to preserve the win. On the Baltimore side, Brandon Young was sharp in a losing effort — 6.2 innings, four hits, three earned runs, seven strikeouts — but his bullpen couldn't hold the lead Boston erased. This looks like a game Baltimore will point to as a missed opportunity: they led by two heading into the sixth and had the home crowd behind them, only to watch Rutschman and Sogard dismantle the advantage in back-to-back innings.