It was after 11 p.m. Friday when Baltimore Orioles manager Brandon Hyde entered the video call room in his clubhouse in the Exchange Street parking lot of Sahlen Field. Hyde was smiling and there was plenty of music and noise in the background.
A reporter tried to ask a question but Hyde couldn't hear. The racket was too loud. The manager apologized.
"We're partying like we won a wild-card game right here right now. And rightfully so," Hyde said. "We haven't had much to celebrate lately."
It was Game 76 of a season already lost only in late June but the Orioles had wiped out a 5-1 deficit in the eighth inning to pull out a 6-5, 10-inning victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Blue Jays gave up four runs in the eighth and Pat Valaika's bases-loaded walk with two outs in the 10th allowed the Baltimore Orioles to finally end their heinous road losing streak and escape Sahlen Field with a 6-5 win Friday night.
The rally came from nowhere. The Orioles had not scored an earned run in 30 innings, since Tuesday night. They had lost their previous two games, one at home vs. Houston and Thursday night's opener here, by a combined score of 22-0.
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And they had lost 20 games in a row on the road. Yes, 20.
It was the most in franchise history and two off the American League record set by the 1943 Philadelphia A's. It was also just part of a bizarre run of futility teams across baseball are having on the road this year.
Consider:
• Until early Sunday morning, the Arizona Diamondbacks were running the all-time record for road losses as they dropped their 24th straight game Friday night in San Diego when Fernando Tatis Jr. belted three home runs in an 11-5 Padres victory. The streak finally ended when the Diamondbacks beat the Padres in the second game of their series, 10-1.
• The Texas Rangers lost a franchise-record 16 in a row away from Globe Life Park, a streak that ended June 13 in Dodger Stadium with a 12-1 win. Amherst native Jonah Heim had three hits and homered off Dodgers ace Trevor Bauer in that game.
• The Colorado Rockies, who are 25-16 at Coors Field in Denver, fell to 6-30 on the road with losses Friday and Saturday in Milwaukee. Friday's collapose saw a 4-0 lead at the seventh-inning stretch turn into a 5-4, 11-inning defeat. Colorado's .167 winning percentage is even with the 1935 Boston Braves (13-65, .167) for the worst of all time.
• Even decent teams aren't immune to the trouble. The division-leading Chicago White Sox (17-18) and New York Mets (16-22) have losing records on the road and the Chicago Cubs entered Saturday a game out of first in the NL Central largely because they were 26-13 in Wrigley Field, but only 16-21 away from the Friendly Confines. The best road record in the NL East is from Washington, at just 15-20.
• • •
All-time road losing streaks
24 Arizona 2021
22 New York Mets 1963
22 Philadelphia A's 1943
20 Baltimore 2021
20 Philadelphia A's 1916
19 Pittsburgh 1985
19 Philadelphia A's 1945
19 Cincinnati 1933
• • •
There aren't any real theories as to what's going on here, although this is a large number of teams to be having trouble at the same time. It might have made more sense if this happened last year, when teams had severe protocols to follow on the road during the pandemic. But the Baltimore Sun, in fact, pointed out Saturday that only 28 teams in MLB history have endured road losing streaks of 16 games or more – and three of them have come this season.
For their part, the Orioles started well away from Oriole Park in Camden Yards by sweeping a three-game series in Fenway Park and improving to 11-6 on the road when John Means threw a no-hitter May 5 in Seattle. But that was their last road victory until Friday night. From 11-6 to 12-27. Yikes.
"I have no idea. I don't know," Hyde said. "I can't speak for the other clubs and I don't know what they're going through but we just have not played as good on the road the past month and a half or whatever it is. But I really don't feel like it's different than last year or two years ago. There's not something special that's happening on the road to teams that's different. I don't know the reason."
Starting pitching is a big factor, as Baltimore's ERA ballooned to 6.62 during the streak with Thursday's 9-0 loss here. And if you don't score, you don't win. But the Orioles finally found some solace against the bedraggled Toronto bullpen to steal a win.
"We're pretty excited getting a monkey off our back," said outfielder Cedric Mullins. "It was a great team win, a great comeback and everybody contributed to this. The last couple months have been tough. It's important for us to try to keep our morale up during times like this. We know we have a talented group of guys and it's just a matter of putting everything together."
D-Backs' major doldrums
Some explanation obviously is teams that are bad overall, and thus really bad on the road. Some is ballpark factors, with the Rockies built for Coors and the Cubs for Wrigley.
Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez is batting .237 with 13 HRs, a long way from last year's .147.
But it's hard to explain what's going on in Arizona, where old friend Torey Lovullo has been stymied to come up with any answers for the Diamondbacks' historic collapse away from Chase Field.
Until Saturday's win, they had not won on the road since April 25 in Atlanta, when Madison Bumgarner allowed no hits in a seven-inning victory. Until the Orioles won here Friday night, Baltimore and Arizona had combined to lose an astonishing 43 straight games on the road. Yes, 0-43.
"It's nothing we’re proud of,” Lovullo, the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Famer, told Arizona reporters last week when the D-Backs set the record with a loss in San Francisco. "On this journey when it started in spring training, we never set out to put us in a position to have these types of outcomes. It’s been an extended period of time. It weighs on you. It’s heavy.”
The Diamondbacks were swept in seven straight series, including a trio of four-gamers. Until Saturday, they had lost 14 straight roadies in the NL West and were 2-17 in the division away from home, with no wins since April 6.
The lowest moment was June 15 in San Francisco, when an early 8-0 lead turned into a 9-8 defeat courtesy of an eighth-inning grand slam into McCovey Cove by Mike Yastrzemski.
"I lay in bed at night thinking about different things,” Lovullo said. “Sometimes, I’m up until three, four o’clock in the morning trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together in my own head. It’s tough. It’s very challenging. First thing we need to do is relax, get under control, take care of what we can control, just do our job. And that’s what I’ve been saying to the group.”
Blue Jays surviving
The Jays are baseball's true road warriors, playing for the second straight year in Buffalo while border issues prevent them from getting back to Rogers Centre in Toronto. They entered Saturday 24-19 on the road and tied for the big-league lead in victories away from their temporary homes in Dunedin and Buffalo.
Manager Charlie Montoyo had a similar reaction to Hyde when asked about the road prior to Saturday's game.
"That's a good question. I got nothing on that. It goes from team to team but it's funny to mention that," Montoyo said. "We've been playing on the road the whole time and we've played well enough. I don't know why these other teams are struggling so much on the road."
Why are the Blue Jays surviving?
"Because we're used to it. We did it last year, too," a smiling Montoyo said. "It's great for our team because it's not easy to win on the road, as you see even with some of these good teams."
And as for the Orioles? They got drubbed here by the Blue Jays, 12-4, on Saturday. They hope that's not the start of a new streak. But in the big picture, that's 1-21 in the last 22 on the road.
