The Chesapeake Baysox closed out their 2026 season with a 3-1 win over the Richmond Flying Squirrels on Sunday afternoon, riding a late go-ahead home run from Wehiwa Aloy and another strong outing from the pitching staff.
Chesapeake (38-29 second half, 67-68 overall) trailed 1-0 into the eighth inning after leaving the bases loaded in the seventh. The Baysox opened the eighth with a Griff O’Ferrall single and a Frederick Bencosme walk, and after Richmond left-hander Dale Stanovich (L, 3-4) struck out the next two batters, Aloy turned on a pitch for a go-ahead, three-run homer to left field. It was Aloy’s 10th home run with the Baysox in 39 games since being promoted to Double-A; his 25 home runs this season between High-A and Double-A rank second among all Orioles minor leaguers.
Right-hander Pat Reilly turned in the finale’s headline pitching performance, allowing just a first-inning run on a Sabin Ceballos single before working 5 2/3 innings, scattering six hits, striking out seven and walking none. It capped a strong second-half stretch for Reilly, who posted a 2.08 ERA over his final six starts with the Baysox — 7 earned runs in 30 1/3 innings with 41 strikeouts — and never allowed more than two runs in any of those outings, including a career-high seven innings the previous weekend against Portland.
The bullpen finished the job from there. Richard Guasch recorded the final out of the sixth on a single pitch. Keagan Gillies (W, 1-0) stranded a pair of two-out singles in the seventh, and Alex Pham worked a perfect eighth. Closer Brock Moore (S, 2) allowed a one-out single in the ninth before getting a grounder to shortstop O’Ferrall, who started a 6-4-3 double play with second baseman Aron Estrada to end the game and the season.
O’Ferrall, Estrada and Aloy each had two hits Sunday. O’Ferrall closed the year hitting 10-for-20 in the series against Richmond and .410 over his final 11 games of the Double-A season. Estrada finished 2026 as the Baysox’s team leader in hits (130), home runs (24) and RBI (76).
Sunday’s win gave Chesapeake four wins in five games in Richmond to close out the season. The Baysox finished the second half with 22 road wins — the most of any Eastern League team and the second-most of any Double-A club since the league’s records reset on June 22. Over their final 70 games, the Baysox pitching staff posted a 3.36 ERA while the team went 41-29, a stretch that led all of Minor League Baseball in staff ERA dating back to June 19. Chesapeake’s rotation was even sharper down the stretch, posting a Double-A-best 2.61 ERA over its last 40 games dating to July 29.
The finale wraps up a second-half turnaround that the Chronicle tracked in late August, when Chesapeake had climbed from an 18-15 second-half mark in early August to a winning record entering the season’s final weeks after a losing 2025 campaign.
