Hit or error? Play that ended Orioles pitcher's perfect game bid sparks debate.

Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino was only thinking about one thing when he saw his starting pitcher field a ground ball just four outs away from a perfect game.

“Set your feet.”

Brandon Young didn’t, and his throw sailed past first baseman Coby Mayo as former teammate Ramón Urías cruised into second base. The play was officially ruled an infield single with a throwing error on Young, spoiling the 26-year-old right-hander’s bid for the 25th perfect game in MLB history and the first by an Orioles pitcher.

“It’s a hard play,” Mansolino said after Baltimore’s 7-0 win over the host Houston Astros on Friday night, but the 42-year-old baseball lifer isn’t so sure that it should have been ruled a hit.

Urías played five-plus seasons with the Orioles before getting traded to Houston ahead of the July 31 trade deadline and all but one of them with Mansolino on the coaching staff. So the interim skipper, who took over after Brandon Hyde was fired May 17, is pretty familiar with Urías’ game — and his speed.

“Uri’s a really good hitter, but we’ve seen him hit that same dribbler 100 times and get thrown out by a couple steps a lot,” Mansolino said. “So I just think in that scenario, if BY does set his feet, I think he’s got a little better shot to make the play.”

While Urías is a Gold Glove Award winner at third base and a more-than-capable hitter, posting a .728 OPS in more than 500 games with the Orioles, he’s not a burner on the base paths. He ranks in the 38th percentile in sprint speed this season, according to Baseball Savant.

So when Young’s throw sailed past first base with Urías not yet at the bag, fans immediately began to question whether the scorekeeper made the right decision.

“I would totally rule that an error,” John Ourand, an Orioles fan and sports correspondent for Puck, posted on X, echoing similar comments from several fans.

“That’s a terrible scoring decision against Brandon Young,” another fan posted on X. “An on-target throw would have been an out by a couple steps. Giving an infield single and error is weak hometown scorekeeper stuff.”

Young, for his part, thought that he could make the play.

“I got there in time,” said Young, who struck out six and threw only 93 pitches to finish eight innings. “I think I had a little more time to maybe take a step and make a better throw. Obviously rushed it, yanked it. Sucks. Definitely want it back.”

That play wasn’t even the first tense — or controversial — moment for Young and the Orioles, though.

Before Urías stepped to the plate, Astros catcher Yainer Diaz hit a long fly ball to deep right-center field that Orioles center fielder Greg Allen caught just before running into right fielder Daniel Johnson. Both players had their gloves outstretched to make the catch, and it could have easily dropped between them or fallen out of Allen’s glove after the collision. Young was shown on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network cameras with his hands on his head in disbelief as the play unfolded.

Earlier in the eighth inning, Astros manager Joe Espada came out of the dugout to argue with home plate umpire Chad Fairchild after a called second strike to batter Christian Walker. The 94-mph fastball was well inside the strike zone, but there was a brief delay as Espada protested the call. He wasn’t ejected, and Young threw two straight balls before eventually striking out Walker swinging on a 2-2 fastball.

In the sixth inning, Astros speedy outfielder Taylor Trammell attempted a drag bunt that was fielded by Young, who casually tossed the ball to first for the out. It’s an unwritten rule in baseball to not attempt a bunt when the opposing pitcher is in the middle of a bid for a no-hitter or perfect game.

“We’re just trying to put quality at-bats together and get something going,” Espada said after the game when asked if the offense felt more pressure to get on base as the game went on. “Our offense, any minute, can explode and put up a crooked number and that’s what we’re trying to do. We just couldn’t get it done.”

As frustrating as it might be to some fans, it’s not uncommon to see a play like Urías’ grounder be ruled in favor of the hitting team. MLB is on pace for a record-low number of errors this season, and there are several theories about why dating to 2023 that include the pitch clock, the ban on shifts and, perhaps most importantly, the official scorer’s discretion. With MLB offensive numbers trending downward in recent years, some have speculated that the league is favoring hits instead of errors on close calls.

Mansolino wasn’t surprised with how the play unfolded.

“The way [Young] was throwing the ball, it was going to take something like that,” Mansolino said of Urías’ dribbler. “Maybe it’s a hit, maybe it’s not, I’m not so sure. I understand how this whole thing goes.”

It’s not the first time a scorer’s decision has played a big role in a potential Orioles perfect game either. When John Means pitched a no-hitter against the Seattle Mariners in 2021, the Orioles’ first solo no-hitter since 1969, all that kept Means from Baltimore’s first perfect game was Sam Haggerty reaching on a third-strike curveball that bounced underneath catcher Pedro Severino with one out in the third inning. Severino then threw out Haggerty trying to steal second as Means became the first MLB pitcher to record a 27-out no-hitter in which the only batter reached base on a dropped third strike.