MILWAUKEE — Nothing has come easily for the Orioles, so it was no surprise that Tony Mansolino‘s first win as interim manager would require two blown saves and extra innings.

By the end, though, the Orioles exorcised some demons. Jackson Holliday lashed a run-scoring single through the middle, and Adley Rutschman followed with a three-run home run that must have lowered Mansolino‘s rising blood pressure. The late outpouring of runs covered for what had been another maddeningly similar game, but wash that away for a moment.

Enjoy this, instead, because there sure have been few of them.

The Orioles finally snapped an eight-game losing streak and salvaged the final game of the series at American Family Field with their 8-4 victory in 11 innings Wednesday. With the way things are going — the Orioles have a 16-32 record and fired manager Brandon Hyde last weekend — a step in any direction but backward was sorely required.

The Orioles needed this one. Badly. For the first time this season, the Orioles won a game in which they trailed after six innings. They had been 0-27 before.

“It was nice to stop the bleeding today,” Mansolino said.

The underlying issues were still ample. They stranded runners for much of the game. They blew two saves. But the Orioles have a win — and when faced with a record that is 16 games below .500, they have to start somewhere. One win, one day at a time.

“It’s definitely a test,” Rutschman said. “You’re always going to get adversity over the course of a season, but you never know in what form it’s going to come or when. But it always comes. I think we’ve got a great group in this locker room and a lot of guys with high character.”

Even then, this might be too large a hole from which to climb. Baltimore still needs to attempt the climb, however. The Orioles rose one rung when Ryan O’Hearn’s fourth hit of the game drove home a go-ahead run in the 10th. Right-hander Bryan Baker allowed the automatic runner to score, sending the game to an 11th inning, but the clutch hits from Holliday and Rutschman provided the Orioles a respite ahead of a four-game series in Boston.

There was always going to be a time when the Orioles threw caution to the wind to send closer Félix Bautista to the mound on consecutive days. When Hyde was manager, he indicated that time might not come until the second half of the season.

With Mansolino, that time came Wednesday. And it didn’t turn out well.

Bautista threw 26 pitches in Tuesday’s loss, during which he allowed a home run. He returned Wednesday and allowed the game-tying run after walking two. Caleb Durbin, with two outs, poked the run-scoring single to right field. That marked Bautista‘s first blown save of the season, and it featured more of the troubling command of late.

Bautista said through team interpreter Brandon Quinones that “my command hasn’t been there, but I don’t think it was necessarily because of the back to back. I think more so it might be because I didn’t pitch for four or five days before this.”

Added Mansolino: “The idea of getting him in the game would be to just kind of get him going and stop having so many long layoffs so we can continue to build his arm back up to where it was.”

The timing to use him on consecutive days was interesting, nonetheless. To this point, Baltimore has been cautious since Bautista’s 2023 Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery. But Mansolino agreed with Bautista that the closer’s lack of usage (there haven’t been many save situations, after all) played a role in Bautista‘s control issues.

Still, Bautista‘s usage in the loss meant he wasn’t fully rested for the save situation. And now he’s on the shelf longer, presumably, because he threw 50 pitches in less than 24 hours.

Any trickle-down effect from that decision will play out in the coming days. For the moment, however, Baltimore can exhale slightly. The Orioles salvaged the final game of the series. In reality, it could’ve been a blowout much earlier.

The Orioles had enough opportunities with runners on base to turn it into one. Even with breakthroughs from Cedric Mullins and Heston Kjerstad, who drove in runs in the eighth, Baltimore left 11 runners on base.

Mansolino took special notice of Kjerstad. The 26-year-old entered with a .164 average since April 19, so the RBI single was a good sign. Further, three defensive plays late in the game stood out from Kjerstad, and that helped render the runners left on base moot.

That can still weigh on a team, even in a win. The frustration was apparent in the fifth, when Gunnar Henderson struck out with Rutschman on second base. He saw two fastballs and a sweeper, left in the middle of the strike zone by left-hander Rob Zastryzny. Henderson fouled off a pair and swung through the third, a 93 mph fastball down the middle.

He slammed his bat in the dirt.

The frustration in that moment encapsulates what the Orioles have felt for most of the season. They missed a chance to extend a lead in the fourth, when Henderson, Ryan Mountcastle and O‘Hearn dropped in three consecutive softly hit singles to take a 1-0 lead. With runners on the corners and no outs, Mullins and Emmanuel Rivera struck out and Kjerstad flied out.

Those instances made the outing more difficult for right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano. Mansolino called Sugano a “stopper,” the kind of pitcher to end a losing streak. Baltimore needed him, and Sugano turned in a quality start that was deserving of a win.

“It’s not an easy thing to stop a losing streak like this, but all I thought was to make sure I don’t give them a run first,” Sugano said through team interpreter Yuto Sakurai.

He was let down by the offensive support. Sugano allowed two runs in six innings, and while Rhys Hoskins’ sixth-inning homer was hit hard, few other balls were.

The two runs against Sugano came immediately after Baltimore stranded runners. Henderson’s fifth-inning strikeout preceded a masterful baserunning gambit from Durbin, who doubled to lead off the bottom half of the frame. On a swinging bunt from Brice Turang, Durbin never stopped at third. He kept running and slid in safely ahead of a throw home.

The sacrifice fly from Mullins and Kjerstad’s much-needed RBI single handed a lead to Bautista. Then the Orioles handed a lead to Baker. And, finally, they handed an even bigger lead to right-hander Seranthony Domínguez, who ultimately completed a wild day of baseball.

But the Orioles will take a stressful extra-innings win just fine, thank you very much.

They’ll take any win, any way, at this point.

This article has been updated.