The reprieve for the Orioles' top relievers like Mychal Givens and Paul Fry, tasked recently with protecting so many tenuous leads and until recently doing the job quite well, lasted all of one day.
So, too, did the break the Orioles got from having one of those nerve-wracking games.
Givens walked two and allowed a sacrifice fly in the Colorado Rockies' two-run ninth inning, making moot the Orioles' furious comeback from a 5-1 seventh-inning deficit and handing them a crushing 8-7 loss that's become more and more familiar of late.
That the bullpen — mostly Josh Lucas — held up Saturday in the team's first win in seven tries stood in strong contrast to the struggles of Givens and the rest of the bullpen of late.