BALTIMORE — Samuel Basallo put the Orioles up for good two pitches after Pete Alonso’s walk on Sunday afternoon, and Baltimore never gave the Giants much of a chance to recover. Five of the Orioles’ six runs came with San Francisco one out away from ending a frame, a pattern that kept turning a manageable game into a long one.
That was the story from the first inning on April 12, 2026: the Giants kept getting close to shutting down innings, then losing the final out. Alonso walked after taking a 1-2 sinker for a ball, and Basallo followed two pitches later to give Baltimore the lead it would not give back. It happened again in the fifth, when another two-run rally against Adrian Houser began with the bases empty and two outs already recorded.
The numbers said enough. Five of six runs with San Francisco an out from escaping a frame is not a fluke; it is a game slipping away in real time. Baltimore did not need a barrage so much as a series of small openings, and the Giants kept handing them over.
That is what made this one sting for San Francisco. The Giants were not buried by one disastrous inning or one crushing swing. They were worn down by missed chances, by not finishing at-bats and not finishing innings, and by letting the Orioles keep adding on when the outs were there to get.
Basallo, described in the source as another scuffling big man, delivered the swing that changed the game without offering much else in the way of detail. Even so, his hit fit the afternoon perfectly: a brief pause, a pitch too many, then another run for Baltimore and another inning that the Giants could not quite close.
For the Orioles, that was enough. For the Giants, the damage was not just the score. It was the sequence, repeated until the game was out of reach.
