Baltimore, meanwhile, arrived banged up at the position that matters most behind the plate. Both Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo are on the 10-day IL and won't even begin baseball activities until the upcoming homestand, and Ryan Mountcastle's foot rehab keeps getting pushed back. Throw in Chris Bassitt still working his way back from the 60-day IL, and it's a lineup playing without several key pieces — the kind of group that shouldn't have had 9 unanswered runs left in the tank against Detroit's bullpen. It did anyway.
Detroit built exactly the kind of lead that should end a series on a high note — 3 in the second, 2 more in the fourth, 2 in the fifth, up 7-0 with Skubal on the mound. Then the Orioles' bats, silent for 14 straight innings against this same club, suddenly woke up. Five runs in the seventh cut it to 7-5, two more in the eighth tied it, and after both teams traded 2-run innings in the 11th, Baltimore scratched across the game-winner in the 12th to escape with a 10-9 win.
It's a brutal way for Detroit to close out a series it controlled for six innings, and it comes at the worst possible time. The trade deadline hits August 3, and rival executives have been calling about Skubal even as the Tigers' front office reportedly wants to hang onto him for a playoff push that keeps getting harder to justify. Games like this — blowing a 7-run cushion at home to a sub-.500 team playing without its top catchers — are exactly the kind of results that make that decision tougher by the day.