Orioles squander 5-run lead as Rogers, Cano wilt in 6-5 loss to Blue Jays

BALTIMORE - Trevor Rogers was on his way to posting one of his best starts of the season when he left the mound after six scoreless innings.

His next trot to the dugout was more somber.

The left-hander allowed a pair of two-run homers to the Blue Jays, undoing what had been a masterful outing and cutting the Orioles' lead to one.

Tyler Wells kept it there, then manager Craig Albernaz called on Yennier Cano, who had been dominant against right-handed batters. Three of them sat atop the Toronto lineup. But Cano was just two days removed from leaving an appearance with hamstring discomfort.

Three straight hits against Cano scored two more runs. In a flash, a healthy Baltimore lead and an encouraging start by Rogers were erased in a 6-5 loss Friday, the Orioles' second straight defeat after sweeping the Rays earlier this week.

It's the Orioles' 10th, and largest, blown lead this season.

Friday was Rogers' first time completing six innings since April 7. He worked efficiently through the Blue Jays' order with 28 pitches through three frames and 74 through six.

Rogers was the beneficiary of some luck, although he'd surely argue that he deserved some. Taylor Ward plucked Brandon Valenzuela's 107.1-mph liner with a diving grab in the third inning. Several Toronto batters flew out to the warning track or lined out sharply. Daulton Varsho was inches from a home run when he tripled off the center field wall in the second.

That fortune faded when Kazuma Okamoto slugged a two-run homer in the seventh. Then, after Varsho's opposite-field double, Charles McAdoo hit another two-run blast in his major league debut.

It'll go down as a complicated start for Rogers. Much of it featured his best pitching in weeks. It ended in disaster. But it's a slight improvement over the lines he'd been posting; Rogers had a 12.41 ERA in three May starts before Friday.

Albernaz hoped, or perhaps knew, that Rogers was due for an encouraging outing. Albernaz felt Rogers was trying to be "too fine" to break out of his early-season spiral, the manager said before Friday's game. In turn, that caused Rogers to more drastically miss his spots and too often leave offerings over the middle of the plate.

But Albernaz was impressed by Rogers' last start, in which he allowed four earned runs in 4 2/3 innings against the Detroit Tigers. So did the left-hander, who said then, "I really like where I'm headed."

"When your command eludes you a little bit, then you're playing catch-up," Albernaz said. "That's where Rogers was at. He's felt like he hasn't been himself, and when you're searching, it's tough to find your command."

Albernaz was right for most of Friday. He also expressed confidence that Cano, who threw in the bullpen hours before Friday's game, had avoided a larger setback from his injury on Wednesday. The right-hander was one of the Orioles' bullpen's most trusted options until allowing three hits and a run his last time out, which ended early when trainers removed him. Then he gave up two runs on three hits in a third of an inning on Friday.

The 5-0 lead Baltimore's pitchers gave away came from a lineup that pounced on Toronto opener Adam Macko and bulk reliever Austin Voth, led by Jackson Holliday's 2-for-4 night. The second baseman singled to open a two-run third inning that also featured a bases-loaded sacrifice fly from Samuel Basallo.

The kids kept it going in the fourth and fifth frames. Holliday crushed his second home run in 10 games since returning from a lengthy injured list stint, then Basallo followed Pete Alonso's solo home run with a long ball of his own to go back-to-back in the fifth and extend the Orioles' lead to five.

Rogers' dominance held the advantage there until he unraveled in the seventh. Cano's further implosion ensured that the power surge wouldn't matter.

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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 7:10 PM.