masn-baseballs-orioles.jpgOAKLAND, Calif. – Players aren’t punching holes in walls or flipping over tables or using the postgame spread to decorate the ceiling. To describe the mood of the Orioles clubhouse, a popular question during the most trying times, it’s not necessary to wield brushes and paint colorful descriptions.
It’s actually pretty bland.
Guys sat at tables and quietly ate last night, poking their forks in pasta and speaking in hushed tones. One player politely asked that media members give him a little…

OAKLAND, Calif. – Players aren’t punching holes in walls or flipping over tables or using the postgame spread to decorate the ceiling. To describe the mood of the Orioles clubhouse, a popular question during the most trying times, it’s not necessary to wield brushes and paint colorful descriptions.

It’s actually pretty bland.

Guys sat at tables and quietly ate last night, poking their forks in pasta and speaking in hushed tones. One player politely asked that media members give him a little room at his locker and he apologized for making the request. No one is having a meltdown, but everyone understands that hopes of reaching the playoffs are dissolving, the club now tied with the Reds for the worst record in baseball.

“They’re frustrated as heck,” said manager Buck Showalter as he sat in his office before a 6-4 loss to the Athletics. “I can be a lot stronger about it. I’m not mad at them, I’m just frustrated for them because I know how much they want this. But they’re not going, ‘Ah, que sera sera, it’s just a bad stretch we’re going through. It’ll turn.’ They’re trying to make it turn every pitch and sometimes that can be a detriment.

“One night we score some runs, we don’t pitch. And one night we pitch, we don’t score some runs. And we have some downfalls defensively. You don’t hang it around one person or one phase of the game. You want to hang it around, hang it around me. We’re responsible for these things being better than they have been. The effort’s there, the preparation.

“We’ve tried a lot of different things as far as changing a lot of different things and not getting so routine, whether it’s lineups, whether it’s pregame routine, postgame routine. We’re trying a little bit of everything, so anybody out there who thinks we’re just staying with the same old thing, even though there are some guys with proven track records, you do have to try something different and we’ll continue to do that.”

What’s repeated are the losses, including 10 straight on the road.

During the trip in Detroit, where the Orioles were in the process of being swept, center fielder Adam Jones set May 3 as an arbitrary date when they would be in serious trouble if unable to stop their skid. He was reminded last night that it was past midnight and now May 5 back home.

“Damn, ate my own words, didn’t I?” he said.

jones-bat-gray-yankees.jpg“It is (too deep in the season). The reality of it is that it is. In our division, you can’t get back deep in our division because Red Sox, Yankees, Toronto, Tampa, these are teams that are cutthroat and don’t have any sympathy for the next team, as they shouldn’t. Obviously, it’s so cliché, but we’ve got to start our routines, continue to play the game the right way, and like I said, we have to get back to playing 27 outs. We have not done that all year.

“The second that we give up an extra out to the other team, they hurt us. And it goes vice versa. If another team gives us an extra out, we’re going to hurt them, too. We’ve just need to get back to playing 27 outs.”

A three-run rally last night in the sixth inning enabled the Orioles to tie the game 4-4, but they immediately surrendered the go-ahead run after the second of their three errors. They can grow more frustrated by such a cruel tease or view it as a sign that they’re ready to bust out.

“I was thinking to myself, obviously with all the negatives that are going around, we had a lot of positives today,” Jones said. “Obviously, (Andrew) Cashner gave up four in the first, but didn’t give up any in the second, third, fourth. Obviously, pitch count, but there’s a positive. Another positive is we put ourselves in a situation to tie the game, to take the lead. That’s another positive. I’m encouraged by all the positives.

“The little small-ball parts of the game, we’re not very good at that right now. We need to play 27 outs. When you play any team in the major league, if you give them 29, 30 outs, they’re going to make you pay. No matter who the team is, the lineup, it’s the major leagues. So we played a good game. Unfortunately, we had three errors that were three extra outs for them. And they’re a big league team.

“You see in the first inning with that one error (on Jace Peterson), that cost us four runs. We just need to continuously play fundamental baseball. That’s what our style of baseball has been the last six, seven years for our success. Right now, we’re not playing fundamental baseball. That’s our creed, to be fundamentally sound.”

And to avoid showing any outward signs of their frustration. To keep the mood light, or at least bland. Nothing that’s going to be mistaken for panic or surrender.

“We’re grown men, we’re professionals,” Jones said. “We know how to handle trials and tribulations. But the most important part is we’re here to win. We’re not here to just be part of a country club. We can join any country club in various cities that we live in. What we need to do is get back to the mindset of winning. If we lose a game, the mindset of like, ‘Dang, how did we really lose that game?’ as opposed to ‘Dang, we lost a game, here’s another. Here’s another spinner going down.’

“We just have to be better. I can say what I want. We’ve just got to be better and the guys in there know that. We’re frustrated overall as a group because we’re professionals, and we know that we’re better than this. But at the same time, we understand that this is part of the game. It’s just not the part that we like. We’ve got to be better. No team is going to lay down and let us beat them.”

The Orioles fought back in Anaheim to tie a game in the ninth and lose on a walk-off. They rallied for three runs last night after getting into the Athletics bullpen. To come away empty-handed is a donkey kick. It’s also an indication that they’re capable of playing better baseball.

They can get key outs and key hits. They just can’t string together wins.

“I don’t think we’re that far off,” Cashner said. “You look at the ball that C.D. (Chris Davis) hit, you look at the play at first with Jonesy, the ball doesn’t pop out of his glove, it stays in. All the little things just aren’t going our way. We’ve got to change that and I’ve got to pitch better.”