NEW YORK — In the first two games of the series, the New York Yankees took early leads over the Baltimore Orioles and looked like the far better team throughout the entire game.

On Sunday, the Yankees waited until the eighth inning to prove that fact.

The Orioles played sloppy defense and couldn’t get the big hit, but they were down only one run in the late innings. That is, until the Yankees pummeled Baltimore’s bullpen for seven runs in the eighth to hand the Orioles an 11-3 loss.

“We just couldn’t stop the bleeding that inning,” manager Craig Albernaz said.

The defeat is Baltimore’s season-worst fourth straight after it got back to .500 on Thursday. The Orioles are 15-19 — a season-low four games below .500 — and are a loss Monday away from being swept in a four-game series by the American League-best Yankees (23-11).

“A lot of different things,” catcher Adley Rutschman said when asked what’s causing the team’s rut. “We gotta keep ourselves in some closer ball games to be able to give ourselves an opportunity to win. There’s not a lot of lack of effort on our team. Guys come out every day and do what they can. But tomorrow’s a new day.”

The lone slight positive of the afternoon was Trey Gibson, the Orioles’ No. 1 prospect who made his MLB debut on the mound. While he gave up three runs in 4 2/3 innings, the 23-year-old right-hander was composed and gave the Orioles a better start than Kyle Bradish, Cade Povich or Brandon Young did during this losing streak.

It didn’t take long for the Yankees to welcome Gibson to the big leagues.

After Gibson retired Yankees leadoff hitter Trent Grisham, Ben Rice took the young right-hander deep to right field. Of all the players to give up your first home run to, Rice could end up being one of the better ones. So far this season, Rice has been one of the best players in baseball, entering Sunday with a .330 batting average and 1.164 OPS.

Two innings later, Gibson gave up a long ball to an even better hitter. Gibson hung a 1-0 curveball right down the middle, and Aaron Judge did what Aaron Judge does for a two-run shot to put New York up 3-1.

Aside from those two pitches, Gibson was solid, especially considering it was his first big league start and at Yankee Stadium. He is the first starting pitcher in Orioles history to make his MLB debut at Yankee Stadium — both the House that Ruth Built and the new one. Gibson walked only one batter and gave up the three runs on homers while striking out two and flashing his impressive pitch mix.

“A lot of excitement,” Gibson said of his MLB debut with his parents, JR and Karen, and friends in attendance. “Also, really grateful for everyone that’s come into my life to help me get to this spot. I had some people come here in the day, and I think the best part of the day was just being with them on the field after the game and just to be able to say, ‘Thank you.’ This is definitely a day I’m not ever going to forget.”

When Gibson was pulled, the game was tied at 3 after his offense gave him more run support than they gave Povich or Bradish in the series’ first two contests.

After the offense scored 10 runs in the first game of the Orioles’ doubleheader Thursday, the bats were no-hit through three innings in each of their next three games. It looked like that would be the case again Sunday against Yankees starter Max Fried, one of the best left-handers in baseball, and without Gunnar Henderson, who was out of the lineup for the first time this season. But third baseman Weston Wilson smacked a leadoff single and later scored to tie the game on shortstop Blaze Alexander’s bloop single.

After Judge’s homer, the Orioles tied the game in the fourth after loading the bases on an infield single from Leody Taveras and a ground-ball double play from Jeremiah Jackson, which killed the rally. The double play was the first of three that the Orioles grounded into in the defeat.

The Yankees retook the lead in the sixth inning off reliever Grant Wolfram on an infield single from Ryan McMahon on a play that Coby Mayo couldn’t make at first base.

New York then broke the game open in the eighth against reliever Andrew Kittredge on a two-run homer from Jasson Domínguez, a two-run single from Paul Goldschmidt, a sacrifice fly from Grisham and a poor defensive play by Mayo after he moved over to third base. Mayo tried to field a bunt that was going foul, which gave José Caballero an infield single and loaded the bases with no outs.

The merry-go-round continued when the Orioles brought in left-hander Dietrich Enns, who gave up a sacrifice fly to Jazz Chisholm Jr. and an RBI double to Domínguez for runs charged to Kittredge. The veteran righty allowed seven hits and seven runs while recording only one out.

“Hard to say,” Kittredge said about what went wrong. “A lot of balls weren’t hit that hard, just kind of got baseballed a little bit, some of those ground balls finding holes. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I threw the ball really well. I definitely don’t think it was as bad as it looked. It’s one of those things where some balls find some holes, ball gets out that’s probably a home run in this park only, just kind of one of those days, unfortunately. Doesn’t look good.”

Mayo’s miscues were two of several from the Orioles’ infield on a rough day defensively. The Orioles are one of five MLB teams to have negative defensive runs saved (minus-2) and outs above average (minus-7), ranking in the bottom 10 in both.

“Yeah, definitely disappointing,” Albernaz said. “Like we keep on saying, we can’t give another team [more than] 27 outs, especially [the] Yankees and their lineup. We got to convert those outs all the time, not just today. We got to do it all the time.”

The Orioles will hope to prevent a sweep Monday night with Shane Baz on the mound opposite Yankees flamethrower Cam Schlittler.

____

©2026 The Baltimore Sun. Visit at baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.