Cubs fall to Orioles 9-3, give up five home runs in slugfest

BALTIMORE — Pushing back the left-field wall during the offseason didn’t do much to temper the slugfest Tuesday at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

The Cubs lost to the Orioles 9-3 in a game that featured seven home runs.

Rookie Christopher Morel sent the first pitch of the game over the fence for his first career leadoff homer, but things went downhill from there for the Cubs.

Right-hander Keegan Thompson, who was making his second start as an official member of the rotation — he had made three spot starts earlier in the season — allowed seven runs in three innings.

‘‘My off-speed stuff was just spinning and staying arm-side,’’ Thompson (6-1) said after his first loss of the season. ‘‘Looking at older pictures and a couple of pictures from tonight, it looked like my stride was a little shorter maybe than normal. So my arm might have been dragging a little bit behind. I’ll look into that a little more tonight and tomorrow.’’

The Orioles matched Morel’s leadoff homer and surpassed it with long balls by Cedric Mullins and Trey Mancini on back-to-back pitches to kick off the bottom of the first.

In the second, Thompson hit consecutive batters before giving up a three-run home run to Jorge Mateo.

Thompson kept the ball in the yard in the third, but the Orioles found other ways to score. Anthony Santander led off the inning with a single through the left side of the infield to beat the shift before Austin Hays hit a double down the left-field line.

Left fielder Ian Happ fished the ball out of foul territory and the relay from shortstop Nico Hoerner took an on-target long hop to beat the runner, but the ball glanced off catcher Willson Contreras’ mitt as he tried to put down the tag.

Hays then scored on a sacrifice fly by Ryan Mountcastle to give the Orioles a 7-1 lead by the time Thompson walked off the mound.

Right-hander Alec Mills, who was just activated from the 60-day injured list (strained right quadriceps), made his season debut as he replaced Thompson.

‘‘It was nice to get back out there,’’ said Mills, who allowed two runs in five innings to finish the game. ‘‘Obviously, the situation was not the best. You don’t ever want to come in early after a starter, but that’s why I’m here.’’

The home-run derby wasn’t over.

In the fifth, Contreras launched a first-pitch homer over the left-field wall. It was his 10th round-tripper of the season, making this his sixth season with double-digit homers. He only fell short of that mark in the shortened 2020 season.

While Contreras’ homer cleared the recently deepened left-field wall with ease, Hays took the prize for the most imposing long ball of the night. His solo homer in the fifth landed in the second deck. At 464 feet, according to Statcast, it was the longest homer by an Orioles player this season.

By contrast, Orioles third baseman Ramon Urias used the unique new dimensions of the field to his advantage. In the sixth, he dropped a solo homer into the corner of the Orioles’ bullpen, which juts out into left-center field. Happ crashed into the perpendicular wall as Urias accounted for the Orioles’ ninth run.

While homers were responsible for most of the scoring, they didn’t account for every run. Morel, who extended his franchise-record on-base streak to start a career to 21 games, also hit an RBI triple in the sixth.