The Orioles’ offense was backed into a corner.

Entering the fifth inning Saturday, their lineup had yet to produce a base runner against starter Bowden Francis with the Toronto Blue Jays leading 3-0. They had gone 15 consecutive innings without scoring a run and just watched one of their best players from a year ago hit his first home run with his new club against them.

Then they blasted their way out. Heston Kjerstad broke up Francis’ no-hit bid with his first homer of the season, Adley Rutschman crushed a no-doubter to tie the game and Cedric Mullins completed the comeback with a two-run double in the sixth to lead the Orioles (6-8) a 5-4 win over Anthony Santander and the Blue Jays.

“It’s huge for us to go through a game like today,” Mullins said. “We want to learn from a win like this. Continue to have confidence moving forward, we’re never out.”

Wearing orange-on-orange alternate uniforms for the first time since 2010, the Orioles broke out of a team-wide slump by stringing together four hits and two walks between the sixth and seventh innings. Francis had retired 13 straight Orioles to begin the game, but Mullins got their offense started with a one-out walk and, two batters later, Kjerstad smacked a 409-foot long ball to center field that injected some life into the announced crowd of 22,130.

“I thought it changed,” manager Brandon Hyde said of the energy in the Orioles’ dugout. “I thought we were pretty quiet. I think guys were really internal first four innings because everybody was trying to get something going, and we need to get better at that.“Those kinds of things kind of happened last year at times, too, where they were almost trying a little bit too hard and their at-bats were getting over a little bit early or they were getting frustrated with hitting a ground ball hard at somebody. But I’m really proud of how our guys really kept going, and Kjerstad kind of broke the ice for us and then got some big hits after that.”

The following frame, Rutschman one-upped Kjerstad with a two-out, 426-foot homer to right field that he knew was leaving the yard right off the bat. Francis then issued a walk to Ryan O’Hearn, threw a wild pitch and gave up an infield single to Jordan Westburg to bring Mullins back up with runners on the corners.

Blue Jays manager John Schneider opted to keep Francis to face the left-handed Mullins and he provided them with a dose of instant regret when he lined a 3-2 fastball into the gap in left-center for a double that brought both O’Hearn and Westburg home.

Baltimore’s rally prevented starter Tomoyuki Sugano from picking up the loss in his Camden Yards debut. The Japanese right-hander allowed a lot of hard contact early and only lasted 4 2/3 innings, but he limited the Blue Jays to three runs by producing six groundball outs including two double plays.

“I was very excited to pitch at home,” Sugano said through team interpreter Yuto Sakurai. “Obviously, it could have been a better outcome, but yeah, overall, I was just very excited going into the game.”

A base running gaffe by the Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. produced another two-for-one special in the fifth when Tyler O’Neill caught a flyball in right and threw it in to Jackson Holliday, who was signaled to throw the ball to Ryan Mountcastle at first after Guerrero failed to tag up.

Santander, playing his first game at Camden Yards since signing with Toronto over the offseason, greeted his former team with his first home run in a Blue Jays uniform off Sugano in his second at-bat. Fans gave Santander a standing ovation before his first plate appearance and he took a curtain call between the first and second innings when the Orioles played a tribute video on the center field scoreboard.

“Santander was due,” Hyde said. “You knew that was going to come eventually.”

The Orioles trotted out five different relievers to close out the game capped off by Félix Bautista securing the Orioles’ first save of the season and his first since tearing the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in August 2023.

Postgame analysis

Mullins is off to a spectacular start to the 2025 campaign, slashing .296/.415/.591 in 13 games to open the final year of his contract with the Orioles. He got the Orioles’ rally started with his fifth-inning walk and capped it off with his bases-clearing double in the sixth.

After finishing last season on a tear that reestablished him as a key member of the Orioles’ lineup, Mullins has carried over that success into the early goings of 2025. His 16 RBIs were tied at the time the game ended for fourth in MLB and second in the American League behind only the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge.

By the numbers

The Orioles went 13 consecutive games to start the season without converting a save, the longest streak of any team since the 2019 Colorado Rockies also went 13 in a row. Bautista put an end to that streak, locking down the Orioles’ first win in a game decided by two runs or fewer.

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