BALTIMORE — The Orioles face the possible end of their season Wednesday after squandering a brilliant outing by ace Corbin Burnes in a 1-0 loss to the Royals.

Here are five things we learned from the game:

The Orioles are on the brink of a long offseason and a heap of harsh judgements

A string of flailing at-bats from their best hitters, a single loose inning from their ace, and the Orioles found themselves right back on the brink, contemplating the reality that their season might be over in 24 hours.

That’s the hell of playoff baseball, which exists entirely out of proportion with the six-month season that precedes it.

The Orioles learned this last year when their 101-win fever dream ended with a three-game clobbering at the hands of the molten-hot Texas Rangers. Their 2024 exit could be even swifter if they don’t pull themselves together Wednesday against Cy Young Award contender Seth Lugo. The questions that follow would be heavier this time around.

How could a team that has won 192 regular-season games over the past two years, fueled by the most lauded prospect pipeline in the sport, fall so flat? How could an offense that seemed like it might be the best in baseball in June go silent in October?

We’re not there yet. The Orioles could easily rewrite their narrative by winning Wednesday and Thursday. But there’s real tension hanging over Camden Yards after 2 1/2 months of wayward baseball and another punchless postseason defeat.

Manager Brandon Hyde neither downplayed the severity of the moment nor evinced any concern that his club will shrink from it in Game 2.

“I don’t think it’s a team meeting rally cry,” he said. “I think everybody fully understands what the situation is.”

Players sat somberly at their lockers, eyes fixed on their phones as Bob Marley’s “Jamming” thrummed softly in the postgame clubhouse. They know how close the end could be, how badly the ensuing self-examination would hurt. They thought they had begun to reclaim the “mojo” general manager Mike Elias talked about with five wins in their last six regular-season games.

How fleeting that proved to be.

“It’s win or go home,” said Gunnar Henderson, the team’s best player. “You can’t sit there and sulk about the loss today. It happens, but [you’ve] gotta go out there and play your butt off. Just play as hard as you can. I feel like that’s what we’re all going to do.”

Corbin Burnes thrived in the moment the Orioles acquired him to meet

Kansas City second baseman Michael Massey began the game by dropping the droopiest blooper imaginable into a free patch of left field. A bad omen for Burnes?

The Orioles ace did not accept it as such.

The Royals, despite ranking a respectable sixth in the AL in runs scored and featuring likely AL Most Valuable Player runner-up Bobby Witt Jr., came in ice cold. They had scored just 20 runs over their past 11 regular-season games.

Burnes kept them in the freezer, rolling through his first eight innings on 83 pitches. He busted bats with his cutter, missed them with his curve and sweeper. This was the guy we saw in three masterful September starts against the playoff-bound Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees.

“From pitch one, he set the tone,” said Zach Eflin, who will start Game 2 for the Orioles. “That’s exactly what a No. 1 does. He’s done it all year and his whole career. He was super-special tonight.”

The Orioles traded for Burnes precisely so they would not have to worry who would pitch Game 1 of a playoff series. He more than lived up to his end of the bargain.

That said, his inability to control the running game — a looming concern against the aggressive Royals — did bite him. He walked No. 9 hitter Maikel Garcia in the top of the sixth. After a near-miss pickoff attempt, Garcia easily stole second. He moved to third on a fly ball and scored when Witt lined a cutter between shortstop and third. Six of the best-pitched innings in recent Orioles postseason history, and Burnes trailed 1-0.

He was actually angrier about the walk that put Garcia on base than he was about the steal. “If I attacked him a little better, we get through there and we’re in a 0-0 ball game,” Burnes said. “We got a chance.”

The club can only hope this was not the impending free agent’s first and last postseason start at Camden Yards. We knew Burnes might be the fastest of hired guns for one season in Baltimore. His aim was true when it mattered most. His luck was off.

Great as Burnes was, young Cole Ragans matched him

It took no time at all for Ragans to show off the arsenal that made him the second best left-handed starter in the American League this year.

He induced Henderson to fly out on an 88 mph cutter. He caught Jordan Westburg looking with a 97 mph fastball. He went back to that mighty four-seamer to get a pop-up from Anthony Santander.

Ragans, who began his Sandy Koufax imitation right after the Royals acquired him for reliever Aroldis Chapman in June 2023, was going to be a problem.

The Orioles gave him help he did not need, consistently falling behind in counts. In the third inning, with Cedric Mullins on second and one out, an overeager Henderson swung at Ragans’ first-pitch slider and grounded out weakly to first.

When the Orioles mounted a rally in the fifth, putting runners on first and third with a pair of flares, Ragans blotted it out. He struck out James McCann on three pitches and fooled Henderson with a 2-2 slider.

Despite the Orioles’ 1-for-7 mark with runners ins coring position, Hyde didn’t see a pile of wasted at-bats.

“Yeah, we didn’t have many opportunities because Ragans was really good,” he said. “He’s shoving it into our right-handers. He mixed speeds really well. We did catch a break, and we didn’t cash in.”

It took cramps in Ragans’ left leg to push him from the game.

Give him his laurels. The 26-year-old had never pitched under this kind of pressure, and he matched an on-form Burnes. He had hinted that he might be made for such moments when he pitched six shutout innings last week to help the Royals break a seven-game losing streak. But that was against the Washington Nationals.

He’s now playoff-minted.

For better or worse, this wasn’t last year

This time, there was no week-long build as a city’s hunger for playoff baseball — unsatisfied for seven excruciating years — infiltrated every corner of daily life. There was no sense of a young team testing its footing on a grand, unfamiliar stage.

A year ago, Baltimore baseball fans gave themselves over completely to pride, hope and desperate anticipation. Tuesday’s wild-card opener, by contrast, felt almost routine. The Orioles had played just two days earlier. Before the game, they spoke not as postseason neophytes but as established winners going about their business after the peaks and valleys of a long season. The stands at Camden Yards were hardly packed at first pitch, with large expanses of green seats staring at the Orioles from the upper deck in left.

Did they miss the happy insanity of 2023?

“That was — it felt like a week, which almost it was, of just kind of waiting and anticipation, and it was an amazing week,” Hyde recalled. “Because there was so many positive things said about our team, and anywhere you go, the fans were incredible to us and couldn’t wait to watch us play. Our guys are doing SportsCenter Live through one of our workouts, all sorts of things. … This is a little bit different. But it’s still going to be for me the same intensity when the game starts.”

Perhaps this more matter-of-fact tone would work to their advantage. After all, the euphoria of last October led directly to that brutal sweep against the Rangers.

It’s impossible to judge how such intangible factors might affect a team’s performance. Probably not much in a 1-0 game that turned on a few errant pitches, a pair of rallies that didn’t quite come together.

Win or lose, however, the Orioles have entered a different phase in their development. They’re no longer the most charming story in baseball with nothing but open road in front of them. If they go down, they will be judged as just another contender that couldn’t play its best ball in the end. Fans will be less forgiving, more let down and more apt to call for change.

Zach Eflin is the right man for a moment when the Orioles can’t afford mistakes

With no room for error left, the Orioles will turn to Eflin, the other pitcher they acquired to steady their postseason rotation.

He’s a man fit for such a moment, given his inherently calm demeanor and tendency not to beat himself. He pitched some of the best baseball of his career in the 2022 World Series, 4 1/3 scoreless relief innings that helped his Philadelphia Phillies wage tense war against the Houston Astros.

“I think at the end of the day, you treat it like any other game,” Eflin said after Game 1. “Obviously, knowing the circumstances behind the game, but you’ve got to be free and easy and play this game like that. So I keep telling you guys, we’re going to have some fun tomorrow and play some good baseball.”

Cool as a cucumber or the other side of the pillow or whichever cliche you prefer.

The Royals are still a cold-hitting team, and Eflin won’t help them with walks or long, tortured innings. He has given the Orioles a chance to win in each of his nine starts for them since the trade deadline.

That’s exactly what they need Wednesday — a chance against the Royals’ other Cy Young candidate, Seth Lugo, who was so dependable down the stretch as he cleared 200 innings for the first time in his career.

The Orioles knocked Lugo around in April. Perhaps that will give them the speck of confidence they need to turn the tide. But like Eflin, he rarely beats himself. He walked just 2.1 batters and gave up 0.7 home runs per nine innings in his breakout season.

Eflin vs. Lugo feels like the recipe for another afternoon of nerve-racking baseball at Camden Yards, not the tension-shattering laugher the Orioles could use at this point.

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