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Orioles finish on a high note, thanks to back-to-back big innings

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September 27, 2020 at 7:53 p.m. EDT
The Orioles celebrate after their season-ending victory against the Blue Jays. (Jeffrey T. Barnes/AP)

Big innings have eluded the Baltimore Orioles for weeks, but they managed to string a pair together in Sunday’s season finale against the Toronto Blue Jays at Sahlen Field in Buffalo to finish the year with a 7-5 victory.

“For us, it did mean a lot to be able to end the season strong and with a win,” Manager Brandon Hyde said. “We felt like that was important.

“I thought we did a lot of good things today — some young players doing some really, really good things on the baseball field. It was definitely nice to end the season with a win after a tough few weeks.”

Trailing 4-1 in the fourth inning after a pair of home runs chased rookie starter Keegan Akin, the Orioles tied the score when Cedric Mullins drove in two runs with a triple and scored on a sacrifice fly by Austin Hays.

Baltimore pulled ahead with a three-run fifth inning in which Rio Ruiz had a run-scoring double, Hanser Alberto grounded out to push across a second run and Pat Valaika had a single to drive in a third.

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Sunday’s victory meant the Orioles finished 25-35, which is a 68-94 pace in a 162-game season, and allowed them to end the year ahead of the last-place Boston Red Sox.

It was a far fall from the ­40-game mark of the season, when the Orioles visited the New York Yankees with the playoffs in reach.

Still, Hyde felt like the season was a positive one. Considering the backdrop of the novel coronavirus pandemic, completing the year seemed like an achievement in its own.

But for an Orioles team that had to deal with star player Trey Mancini’s cancer diagnosis in spring training along with the three-month coronavirus shutdown and a stringent set of protocols during the season, it was even more challenging to get to this point.

“We’ve all gone through a lot this year. It’s been a grind in a lot of ways, and I really like our club,” Hyde said. “I thought we did a lot of really good things, and we were thinking about it today — how summer camp feels so long ago and spring training 1.0 felt so long ago, just because of everything that we have gone through. So, yeah, there’s just been a lot of ups and downs, and a lot of things come our way this year that none of us have ever dealt with before.

“It’s over. That’s always a strange feeling.”

— Baltimore Sun

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