Orioles lose to Yankees again, continue to look awful

In the top of the second inning tonight, Orioles catcher Welington Castillo hit a two-run homer that gave the Orioles a 2-1 lead. He went to the opposite field with Chris Davis on first and it was fun. The Orioles aren’t going anywhere this year, but maybe they could still give us an enjoyable baseball game, one with home runs and a win.

They could not. The Yankees tied the game in their very next at bat and went on to score a total of eight runs, winning 8-2. The Orioles never got anything other than Castillo’s dinger. In fact they had just three hits, two of them in that second inning. The only other hit the Orioles got in the entire game was a double in the fifth inning by Pedro Alvarez.

Luis Severino started for the Yankees, and while he’s a very good pitcher, the Orioles really rolled over for him. The writing is on the wall that the Orioles have nothing to play for and it shows. He walked just one to add to the three hits he gave up, so the Orioles didn’t give themselves many chances in this game.

Gabriel Ynoa made his second start of the season and it wasn’t great. It wasn’t completely awful, but not great. He was pulled in the fifth inning having given up three runs. He was followed by Miguel Castro, Mychal Givens, and Richard Bleier. Every single one of them gave up at least a run. That’s the kind of game that it was.

One exciting thing to happen tonight was the fact that Austin Hays got the start in center field to give the perpetually banged up Adam Jones a day off. Unfortunately Hays didn’t get a hit in two at bats, and when his turn in the lineup came up in the eighth inning, Buck Showalter opted to pinch hit with Seth Smith. Why? Who knows. It would have been nice to see Hays play a full game.

There really isn’t much to say about the team at this point. When the game was still in hand at 4-2, Trey Mancini made a nice throw from the outfield to nab Chase Headley at second base. Mancini has proven himself to be better in the outfield than we might have expected, so that’s something.

With the loss the Orioles drop to four games below .500 with 14 games to play. I know that finishing with a non-losing record doesn’t really mean anything when the team misses the playoffs and finishes with such a miserable final stretch. But hopefully they have enough in them to make up those four games, because I am really not looking forward to seeing the team’s first losing record since 2011.

It feels certain to me that if they don’t end with a non-losing record, this will be the start of another long trek through the darkness, and I am really not ready for that.

Tomorrow the Orioles and Yankees play at 4:05 with Jeremy Hellickson pitching against Jordan Montgomery. Let’s hope the bats show up, shall we?