BALTIMORE — Colton Cowser’s 13th-inning home run off Jesse Scholtens lifted the Baltimore Orioles to a 9-7 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, saddling the Rays with consecutive losses for the first time since a three-game skid from April 19-21.

The defeat — Tampa Bay’s fourth walk-off loss of the season — came one day after Aaron Judge ended the Rays’ series finale at Yankee Stadium with a walk-off homer of his own. Despite the back-to-back setbacks, the Rays reached the Memorial Day marker with the best record in the American League at 34-17.

“That’s who we are as a team. Obviously, we’d love to come out on top, so it’s frustrating,” catcher Nick Fortes said. “But I mean, we’re never going to stop fighting. That’s just the brand of baseball that we play, so we’ll come back tomorrow and do the same thing.”

The Rays held the lead four separate times — 1-0 after six innings, 4-2 in the 11th, 5-4 in the 12th and 7-5 in the 13th — and could not close the door. Shane McClanahan pitched 5 1/3 scoreless innings before the bullpen unraveled, and the club committed four errors, its first four-error game since July 20, 2021.

“It’s frustrating,” Scholtens said. “The offense, they gave us multiple chances to win the game today. We didn’t do our job on the pitching side.”

Jonathan Aranda opened the scoring with a solo homer in the sixth off Kyle Bradish, but defensive miscues let Baltimore back in during the seventh. Leody Taveras walked, stole second and advanced to third on an errant pickoff throw by Hunter Bigge. Blaze Alexander singled home the tying run, then scored the go-ahead run when Victor Mesa Jr. threw a two-out hit over third baseman Junior Caminero and into the camera well. Yandy Díaz doubled and Richie Palacios singled to tie it in the eighth, and the four-hour, 12-minute marathon rolled into extras.

“[When] you’re in tight games, you’ve got to limit your mistakes,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “And early on, we just didn’t do that very well.”

Mesa, thrust into right-field duty because of injuries, crushed a two-run homer off Tyler Wells in the 11th for his first hit as a Ray. But the Orioles answered immediately, capitalizing on a Chandler Simpson throw home that bounced into Adley Rutschman on the basepaths and an RBI single that caromed off Caminero’s glove. In the 12th, a pair of long outs by Caminero and Aranda scored Simpson, but Cowser slid home safely on a play at the plate after Aranda stopped a hard-hit grounder by Gunnar Henderson. Cowser was initially ruled out, but a replay review overturned the call.

“I slapped the tag down as hard as I could,” said Fortes, who twisted his left wrist on the play but said he was fine. “He just got in there.”

Center fielder Cedric Mullins, a former Oriole, swatted a go-ahead single to left in the 13th after Richie Palacios reached on a bunt single. But Scholtens immediately surrendered an RBI double, a single and a game-tying sacrifice fly before falling behind Cowser and leaving a slider over the plate for the walk-off blast.

“I’m proud of the guys, the way they went about that game. There was a lot of back and forth, and both teams did everything they could to win,” Cash said. “We just came up on the short end of the stick. Appreciate Scholty’s efforts, for sure.”

“I liked the competitive nature that we had out there, liked the fact that we kept digging deep, kept digging deep every single inning,” Mullins said. “Just didn’t work out.”

The Rays continue their series in Baltimore on Tuesday.