For the second straight day, the Orioles entered play with the ability to clinch a playoff spot if things broke right. For the second straight day, things didn’t break their way.

The Orioles fell to the Detroit Tigers, 4-3, on Sunday afternoon in their final home game of the regular season. Infielders Jordan Westburg and Ramón Urías made their respective returns from the injured list and helped fill out the box score, but Albert Suárez surrendered four runs in five-plus innings and the lineup stalled outside of a three-run rally in the fifth.

“Just didn’t seem like we could catch many breaks today,” manager Brandon Hyde said.

Baltimore (86-69) was able to clinch a postseason berth with a win coupled with a loss by the Seattle Mariners. The Tigers, who went into the contest a half-game behind the Minnesota Twins for the final American League wild-card spot, ensured that wouldn’t happen. Outfielder Kerry Carpenter hit two home runs off Suárez and a parade of relievers put together a solid bullpen game to limit the damage from the Orioles’ offense.

Orioles fans navigated a traffic nightmare in downtown Baltimore caused by a five-alarm fire blocks from the stadium to fill 44,040 seats at Camden Yards for their eighth sellout of the regular season. The club’s final attendance of 2,281,129 for the year is its highest total since 2015 when the Orioles pulled in just 73 more fans for a total of 2,281,202.

Fans watched as the Orioles fell behind 3-0 early. Suárez retired the first five batters he faced before first baseman Spencer Torkelson hit a solo home run to left field. The 356-foot line drive down the third base line was the shortest home run by an Orioles opponent since the team moved the left field wall back in 2022.

“He’s aggressive,” Suárez said of Carpenter. “Every time I tried to get him out, it didn’t work out the way I wanted. It was tough.”

Detroit tacked on another run two batters later when shortstop Trey Sweeney hit an RBI double on a deep flyball that dropped between center fielder Cedric Mullins and right fielder Anthony Santander. Carpenter then left the yard for the first of his two solo blasts in the third. It marked just the fourth time this season that Suárez had allowed multiple home runs in a start.

That 3-0 lead held until the fifth inning when the Orioles finally strung enough hits together against Tigers bulk reliever Ty Madden to get on the board. Urías got the rally started with a one-out single and Mullins followed with a two-run homer to right field for his 18th of the season. Gunnar Henderson then singled and scored from first when Westburg doubled into the left-center field gap. The Orioles nearly pulled ahead by two when Colton Cowser gashed a ball to straightaway center field but Parker Meadows robbed him with a catch over the wall.

“I want to be a ballplayer so as soon as they cleared me to kind of get back to being one, I wanted to push myself as hard as I could,” said Westburg, who received a standing ovation from the crowd ahead of his first at-bat. “That’s kind of who I am, that’s who I pride myself on being, a hard worker.”

While they did manage to tie the game, the Tigers took the lead right back in the top of the sixth when Carpenter ended a streak of eight straight batters retired by Suárez with a wall-scraper of a home run to right. Hyde sent Suárez back out for the sixth despite the top of the Tigers lineup coming up for the third time and Detroit made him pay, chasing the right-hander with back-to-back hits to begin the frame.

“I take it back now,” Hyde said of not using left-hander Keegan Akin, who was warming in the bullpen. “I was going to send Suárez through [Matt] Vierling and bring in Akin for [Riley] Greene because he was at a low pitch count. We felt like in the dugout that his stuff was improving over the last couple innings. He snuck one over the fence.”

The Orioles’ bullpen combined for four scoreless innings to keep them within one run, but the offense never got the big hit to turn the game around. Adley Rutschman led off the sixth with his 20th double of the season and Heston Kjerstad joined him on base with a one-out walk, yet both were stranded in scoring position when Mullins struck out to end the inning.

Cowser also nearly went deep for a two-run homer again in the seventh and flew out to the warning track.

With the loss, the Orioles have dropped five consecutive series including two against Detroit — a team that could wind up facing them in the wild-card round. Baltimore will get the day off Monday before heading to New York, where it will look to clinch its playoff berth in a three-game series with the Yankees.