Mitch Garver’s third-inning grand slam proved the difference maker as the Orioles turned an  early blowout into a squeaker of a win for the Rangers Sunday.

Until this weekend, the last time the Orioles were swept in a series was in May, by the Blue Jays. During the regular season, the Orioles were a .642 team on the road. Now, they’re on the threshold of an American League division series sweep, but they’re counting on that traveling mojo to overthrow a Rangers team that won’t be overthrown without a fight.

Not after the Orioles turned a 9-2 blowout in the making into an 11-8 squeaker in Game Two Sunday. Not after the Orioles couldn’t do better than Aaron Hicks’s three-run homer with one out in the bottom of the ninth. Not after the Rangers battered them for nine runs in the first three innings, including and especially Mitch Garver’s grand slam in the third.

Not after the Oriole bullpen was so deeply deployed following a Game One loss that saw theirs ranks pressed into duty after four and two thirds. Today’s travel day from Baltimore to Arlington may not necessarily give them relief. Not facing a Rangers team that hasn’t played at home in a fortnight but hit 53 home runs more at home than on the road during the season.

“We just came up a little bit short today, but that built a lot of momentum going into the next game,” said Orioles leftfielder Austin Hays after Game Two. “Nobody laid down. We didn’t give away any at-bats. We continued to fight. We were able to get into their bullpen and work on those guys a little bit. I feel good moving forward, but we know we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

That’s a polite way to put it. They played .500 ball against the Rangers in six regular season games, but they blew their home field advantage to open this division series. A team that hasn’t seen home in a fortnight can be presumed hungry to put an end to this set as soon as possible, by any means necessary.

The Rangers proved that when they started Garver, a backup catcher who played in only half the regular season games, and sent him out for his first postseason appearance this time around. In a game the Orioles opened with a 2-0 lead after one full inning, but the Rangers slapped rookie Orioles starting pitcher Grayson Rodriguez silly with a five-run second, Garver checked in at the plate with one out followed by three straight walks.

Orioles reliever Bryan Baker left the pillows loaded for his relief, Jacob Webb. On 3-1 Webb elevated a fastball, and Garver elevated it six rows into the left field seats.

Rangers manager Bruce Bochy—who came out of retirement to shepherd the Rangers after all those years and those three World Series rings managing the Giants—said pregame that it was “just time to get [Garver] out there.” Garver may have given the boss the most expensive thank-you present of the postseason thus far.

“He’s got big power,” Bochy said postgame, “and that’s big at that point in the game. Really was the difference in the game.”

So were the eleven walks handed out by eight Orioles pitchers, including a postseason record five to Rangers shortstop Corey Seager. So were the mere three hits in thirteen Oriole plate appearances with runners in scoring position, which explains a lot about how the Orioles actually out-hit the Rangers (fourteen hits to eleven; .973 to .891 game OPS) but fell three short in the end.

Also in too-vivid contrast were the fruits of each team’s trade deadline moves. Or, in the Orioles’ case, lack thereof. The Rangers moved to bring future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer into the fold but also added starter Jordan Montgomery and reliever Chris Stratton in a deal with the Cardinals.

The Orioles moved to bring another Cardinal pitcher, Jack Flaherty, aboard at the deadline. But Flaherty, once a glittering Cardinal comer, hasn’t been the same pitcher since a 2021 oblique injury and a 2022 shoulder injury. He pitched his way out of the Oriole rotation and now looks to be the long man out of the bullpen.

He got a shot at showing what he could do in that role when it looked as though it would be just mop-up work Sunday. The good news: He surrendered only one run (on Garver’s double play grounder in the fifth) in two innings’ work. The bad news: He contributed to the Oriole walking parade with three of his own, including two in the fifth.

Some say the Orioles standing practically pat at the trade deadline instead of going for any kind of impact deal may yet come back to bite them right out of the postseason, especially after their own pitching depletion (losing top starter John Means and closer Félix Bautista especially) late in the season. Others fear the Orioles were more concerned with their usual penny pinching plus censoring a lead broadcaster over a positive graphic the team itself fashioned for a broadcast.

Montgomery handled the Orioles well following the two-run first, at least until he surrendered a pair in the fourth on an RBI single (Jorge Mateo) and a sacrifice fly (Ryan Mountcastle.) But when Orioles rookie star Gunnar Henderson greeted him with a full-count leadoff home run and Hicks followed with a base hit, Montgomery’s day ended and the ordinarily wobbly Ranger bullpen took over.

That bullpen kept the Orioles quiet until the bottom of the ninth, when Brock Burke handed Henderson a one-out walk and Hays singled him to second. Bochy reached then for José Leclerc, and Hicks—the erstwhile Yankee who never really found his best footing in the Bronx—reached for a one-strike service and drove it into the right field seats.

It was a little vindication for Hicks the day after he blew a hit-and-run sign in the Game One ninth, leaving Henderson a dead duck on the pond when he was thrown out at second, before Leclerc finished the 3-2 Rangers win. After his up-and-down Yankee life, Hicks looked like an Oriole blessing after he signed in May following his Yankee release. After Sunday, he looked like an Oriole hope once again.

An Oriole hope is just what Baltimore needs now. But Ranger hopes won’t exactly play to an empty house come Tuesday. At the end of the former, survival. At the end of the latter, a chance to play for the pennant.