BALTIMORE — The drill had been repeated so frequently it largely lost its mojo. “Now batting, Jackson Holliday …” followed by fans pushed forward in their seats, cellphone cameras at the ready, awaiting the inevitable: Jackson Holliday’s first major league hit.

It took him four games in five days, split by a day of rest, and an 0-for-13 start with nine strikeouts before he ended the drought in a 6-4 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. It came in the seventh inning on a single to right field that moved Jordan Westburg to third base. Holliday passed the baton to Gunnar Henderson, who also singled to right, scoring Westburg to tie the game as Holliday went from first to third and beat the throw by inches. Adley Rustchman was next. He grounded into a double play, but Holliday scored the go-ahead run.

The energy each ensuing Holliday at-bat became sequentially drowsier. His first at Camden Yards was met with an entire ballpark of standing-room-only fans. By Sunday, those same fans seemed less convinced the next one was going to be the one.

“[It’s] normal stuff for a 20-year-old,” Orioles co-hitting coach Ryan Fuller said before the game. “We’re not worried at all. I mean, he’s had all the cameras in his face. A lot of stuff going on the first couple of days. We can’t wait to just have him be in a normal routine, be one of the guys and come here and not feel like he has to get a hit today.”

Holliday’s single wasn’t the hero play in Baltimore’s narrow win. But it was the seventh-inning spark the offense so desperately needed, having combined for six runs over the previous two games, both blowout defeats. And it was the poetic sequence of Westburg, the 30th pick in the 2020 draft, followed by three consecutive No. 1-ranked prospects in baseball that ultimately saved a streak that has partially defined the turnover to an Orioles post-rebuild era.

With the win, Baltimore’s American League-best run of regular-season series without being swept extends to 96, dating to May 2022.

The streak had its arms draped over the ropes, its head dipped back. For much of Sunday afternoon, it appeared Milwaukee could be responsible for the knockout punch that put the third-longest streak in MLB history to bed.

Ryan O’Hearn’s RBI single in the first and second homer of the year, sandwiching a Cedric Mullins solo shot, wasn’t going to be enough.

Thus, it was Holliday’s first major league hit that ushered in offensive momentum and reignited life throughout Camden Yards, tipping this game back toward the home team. Colton Cowser piled one in the eighth inning with a solo homer of his own, continuing his offensive breakthrough this season.

Closer Craig Kimbrel allowed two hits in the top of the ninth but struck out the side for his 420th career save and third of the season.

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