Tony Mansolino didn’t get much sleep Saturday night.
He has a hard time resting when the clutter in his head is too much, he said, so he spent the late hours wrestling with how to right the ship that he is suddenly the captain of.
The Orioles are now his team. He was named the interim manager Saturday afternoon after Brandon Hyde was fired, and identifying where to even begin fixing this team is a lofty task. The Orioles are struggling in all facets, from pitching to hitting to basic defensive cues, and getting them back on track won’t be easy.
After another devastating loss on Sunday — this one 10-4 to the Washington Nationals — it doesn’t seem as if Mansolino will be getting rest anytime soon. Even Zach Eflin, the one steady presence they have been able to count on since they acquired him at the trade deadline last July, is troubling.
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The Orioles have dropped six in a row, losing every game on the homestand as they were swept in back-to-back series. Sunday, their 45th game of the season, was their 30th loss, a mark they didn’t hit until their 79th game last year.
The team has talked about needing to wash off bad games — like Saturday’s 10-6 loss to the Nationals — but it showed yet again on Sunday that it is unable to do that. Like clockwork, it took just a few minutes for the game to seem out of the Orioles’ hand.
CJ Abrams took Eflin’s first pitch of the game and sent it to right field, giving the Nationals a 1-0 lead before most fans had even found their seats.
By the end of the second, Mansolino could barely watch, his head down in the dugout as Eflin allowed not one, not two but three home runs that inning as the Nationals took a 7-0 lead. Three of the four home runs were on pitches sent directly down the middle, the Nationals taking advantage of uncharacteristic mistakes from Eflin.
Prior to Saturday, Eflin had not allowed more than three runs in any of his Orioles appearances. In 5 1/3 innings on Sunday, he allowed eight, tied with the career high he last set in 2017. That was his second major league season, when Eflin’s performance could be chalked up to inexperience. Sunday, he had nothing but poor command to blame.
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He walked off the mound with his head down to a chorus of boos, Eflin not even stopping to greet catcher Adley Rutschman, as is customary for Orioles pitchers to do so, regardless of the result.
And, while an eight-run deficit would have been hard to overcome even for the hottest of offenses, this margin would have taken a nearly spotless performance from the Orioles to close. They found offense late — Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday and Cedric Mullins all homering — but they still missed opportunities, leaving seven men on base.