Colton Cowser turned a Colorado walk-off into stunned silence Monday night, and the Orioles are somehow sitting at .500 in September because their center fielder treats the outfield wall like a decoration instead of a boundary.
Baltimore led the Rockies 2-1 in the ninth inning of a game that started late because of rain and rolled deep into a Denver night, and it was one swing from being over. Colorado’s Jake McCarthy got hold of a pitch with two outs already in the book and drove it toward the wall with a two-run walk-off in the air. Cowser turned, ran it down, and timed his jump so precisely that his back hit the padding at the exact moment the ball landed in his glove, a sequence Larry Brown Sports broke down frame by frame. No dive, no lucky hop, just a center fielder robbing a home run with a division race hanging on it.
This one needs the replay more than the description. Watch him time it:
https://twitter.com/barstoolsports/status/2094651788725035083
Andrew Kittredge had the ball on the mound for that final out, and he was out there congratulating Cowser before the celebration even got going. Nobody needed to say much about what that catch just did for a bullpen that’s been shaky with the game on the line all year.
Four straight wins now. That stretch pulled Baltimore to .500 for the first time since the spring, and to a half-game back of Cleveland for the last AL Wild Card spot, which is not a playoff berth and nothing close to clinched, just enough daylight to make the next month unbearable if you care about this team.
Cowser has turned into the best defender on this roster right when Baltimore needs someone patrolling center field like his job depends on it, which, fairly, it does. A bullpen that can’t be trusted with a one-run lead in the ninth needs outs from somewhere, and lately it’s getting them from 400 feet away instead of 60 feet, six inches.
The glove is buying a lineup time it hasn’t fully earned yet.
The funniest part: Baltimore’s front office sold off pieces of this exact roster at the trade deadline in early August, shipping Adley Rutschman to the Red Sox, Taylor Ward to Seattle, and Tyler Wells to Tampa Bay, while sitting just 2.5 games out of a wild card spot at the time. The people running this team looked at this exact race and decided it wasn’t worth the roster spots. The guys still in the clubhouse apparently didn’t get that memo.
My mom’s dental office has sports radio running all day, and I’d bet real money somebody in the chair right now is yelling about a division Baltimore’s own front office had already given up on.
Cowser doesn’t care what the front office thinks he can do. He just keeps doing it at the wall.
