Darren O'Day talks about the Twins' three-run rally in the eighth

This time Orioles right-hander Darren O'Day could not pull off the magic act of getting out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam.

The Minnesota Twins scored three runs off him in the eighth inning tonight to beat the Orioles 4-3 at Camden Yards. The Orioles lost for just the second time all year when leading after seven innings. They are now 51-2.

A walk, a bloop hit and a hit by pitch loaded the bases and the Twins plated all three runners to come from behind and get their fifth win in five games against the Orioles.

"Leadoff walk is never good," O'Day said. "So that's not good. Then (Trevor) Plouffe hits a ball, he didn't it hard. Could have been caught. Just in a tough spot and that happens. Then I can't hit Torii Hunter to load the bases.

"From there on, hits happen like that. They didn't smoke any balls, but that's baseball and it happens. I made some good pitches, but it didn't turn out. Late innings, sometimes you have to be able to strike out guys and I was able to do that when I needed to."

American League batters were just 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts with the bases loaded against O'Day this year coming into tonight. And they didn't get any bases loaded hits off him tonight. But they got a sac fly to advance all three runners with the sacks full and then a bloop two-run single and the damage was done.

"You are raising the stakes (when you load the bases)," O'Day said. "Any hit scores two runs and ties it up there. I'm not scared to pitch with bases loaded, but it's not ideal. Like I said, in that situation you have to get some strikeouts. I wasn't able to do that."

O'Day had not allowed a run in his previous 11 games over 11 1/3 innings and he gave up a season-high three runs. It was the first time he allowed three or more in a game since Sept. 2, 2014 against Cincinnati when he gave up four runs.

"If you really go back and examine the inning, there are a lot of little things that went wrong," he said. "The walk is probably the thing I'm most frustrated about. Hit by pitches happen. Sometimes righties lean out. Torii didn't lean out, I just hit him. Even on the single Plouffe hit. If the ball doesn't hit off John (Schoop's) leg, (Gerardo) Parra might pick it up and throw (Miguel) Sano out and it's different inning. Some of those bounces go my way usually, but they didn't tonight.

"Sometimes I throw a pitch right down the middle and a guy hits it hard and it goes right at the left fielder. You have to remember that when a guy hits a duck fart basehit."

Schoop said he almost caught the Plouffe bloop hit in the eighth.

"I think I tipped it," Schoop said. "It was a bad route by me. When I looked up the ball was a little bit back. It was a really tough loss. They battled and they're a good team too. Darren has been really good and it's part of baseball."

Wei-Yin Chen gave up just one run over six innings and talked about being beaten by another AL wild-card contending team.

"Of course, when you are in contention, every game is very important," Chen said through his interpreter. "Tonight we lost to another team going for the wild card and it hurts a lot. All we can do now is to try and play better and get into the playoffs."