NEW YORK – The Orioles had the winning lottery ticket and secured a champagne party at Yankee Stadium late Tuesday night.

The winning numbers were 9-6-2-5-2-6, which in baseball scoring means right field to shortstop to catcher to third base to catcher to shortstop.

That's how long it took the Orioles to throw out Gleyber Torres, who was inexcusably caught on a rundown in the seventh inning, ending a two-run Yankees comeback that should have seen Aaron Judge at the plate with the tying run on third base and the lead off on first base.

Torres ran home because he thought Juan Soto was going to be eliminated after his RBI hit while trying to reach second base. The out ended the Yankees' last chance to secure the AL East title that night.

Instead, the second-place Orioles secured a spot in the playoffs and celebrated a 5-3 victory after the game.

The Yankees might already be division champions and on the verge of having the best record in the league if Torres hadn't added more baseball stupidities to his resume.

“My mistake,” said Torres.

Damn right.

The mistake was so bad and so costly that Torres was publicly confronted by the Yankees captain, which almost never happens

“I think he was trying to score, saw the stop sign and was just in no man's land,” Judge said. “When it comes down to it, something like that can't happen. We can't keep shooting ourselves in the foot with mistakes like that on the basepaths.”

Torres is in his seventh season as a major league player and still sometimes behaves like an 18-year-old rookie league player on the bases – and has also accumulated 18 errors this season, by far more than any other second baseman in the major leagues.

Torres, who spoke about his “dumb” mistakes and more in an interview with NJ Advance Media last weekend, has been thrown out at the batting plate eight times this season, the most in the major leagues, but his protector did his best to downplay that ugly stat.

“Do you know the context of all the outs at home plate?” asked manager Aaron Boone. “Some of them are two-out bang-bang plays on an aggressive send. It's important to know the context. He's actually making some mistakes on the bases. He's improved a lot from last year and the year before that when he got himself in trouble a lot.

“I think he's tone down his aggressiveness a little bit, but tonight is also about protecting a runner.”

This major blunder came at a time when Torres had been the Yankees' best hitter for over a month, having batting averages below .200 for most of his walk season leading up to free agency.

This came one batter after Torres' third hit of the night, a ground-rule double to right with two outs that made the game 4-2 and put Soto on the line with a two-run lead.

When Soto hit a strike to right to bring home Anthony Rizzo from third base, Torres should have listened to the third base coach and stayed at third base as Anthony Santander rushed in to intercept the strike and fired a missile toward home plate.

Then Soto rounded first base and headed for second. When Torres saw that, he took off running to get home. Then he slammed on the brakes and started to swerve when he realized he was going to be miles out.

“It's a fast game,” Torres said. “I was just trying to protect Soto, but I feel like I need to be a little more aggressive when I make that decision.”

How about just staying on third base and not risking taking the bat out of the best hitter in the league?

The captain is also back in top form. At the start of the game, Judge hit his third consecutive home run, his 55th of the season.

“I think (Torres) thought Soto was going to be thrown out,” Boone said. “You either go or you bluff him. He pulled out and got caught in the middle.”

Thank you for relying on us for journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.

Randy Miller can be reached at [email protected].