Tony Mansolino stood on the top step of the Orioles’ dugout this afternoon with his arms folded. He extended them while leaning against the railing with his fingers locked. He pulled out a card from his back pocket. He did all of it within about a minute in the top of the second inning, while another game got away from the team he now manages.

Like his players, he couldn't get comfortable.

The Nationals hit four homers off Zach Eflin on four different pitches in 1 1/3 innings to tie his career high. They hung seven runs on the board through the second. And they became the latest opponent to sweep the Orioles with a 10-4 victory before an announced crowd of 37,264 at Camden Yards.

The loss is the sixth in a row for the Orioles, 12^th in 14 games and 19^th in 25 to lower their record to 15-30. They didn’t lose their 30^th game last year until June 25.

"I don’t think there’s really any words I can tell you," Eflin said. "It’s frustrating, it sucks. Losing is not fun by any means. We’re not necessarily having fun right now. We want to go out and win every single game that we play, and it’s just not happening right now. Don’t really have much more to elaborate on that."

The Orioles have lost 30 of their first 45 games for the sixth time in club history and the first since 2019. They've dropped eight home games in a row for the first time since a 10-game skid in August 2021. But they aren't reaching for the white flag in May.

“It takes just one good month to get that going," said Gunnar Henderson. "It starts with one win, get one win and see what happens. I feel that’s what we need to think about. Just really try to do is get one and see what happens after.”

Eflin hadn’t allowed more than three runs in his 13 starts with the Orioles dating back to last season. He was charged with eight today in 5 1/3 innings. The 10 hits fell one short of his career high.

“It comes to a point in the second inning where you go like, ‘How many innings can I suck up?’” Eflin said. “Understand we threw a lot of arms yesterday, and there’s a need for me to go deep today. I didn’t necessarily do that. I was able to go as long as I could, but that wasn’t obviously the plan going in. Plan was to go deeper, less runs, keep the guys in the game. Just frustrating.”

The best part of his day was being able to give the Orioles 5 1/3 on 93 pitches and keep Mansolino from depleting the bullpen or using a position player before the trip to Milwaukee.

“A couple balls caught a middle part of the plate,” Mansolino said. “They hit a couple balls hard, you got to give those guys credit. But I also think if you kind of look at some of how hard they hit the ball and what the trajectory of it was, I think the wind probably helped some of the balls, right? So it’s just a tough day.

“Hanging in that game as long as that he did and kind of helping us in the way that he did was probably more the story for me than a couple balls that probably weren't hit that great that got out. So, Ef actually hung in there. Did a great job today.”

CJ Abrams hit Eflin’s first pitch, a cutter, for a home run to right field at 105.2 mph off the bat. Luis García Jr. homered on the second pitch of the second inning, a towering fly ball to right off a changeup. Dylan Crews delivered a three-run shot at 106 mph on a sinker and Abrams followed with his second of the day on a curveball.

Keibert Ruiz added a two-out RBI single and was thrown out trying to steal with García at the plate again. James Wood had a sacrifice fly in the fourth after José Tena doubled and Crews reached on an infield hit.

The Orioles were down 8-0, and it didn’t matter where or how Mansolino watched the game.

"Think a couple balls off the plate were hit, thought a lot of balls that weren’t hit very hard ended up being good for them," Eflin said. "It’s kind of just a weird day to pitch, honestly. But at the end of the day, I’m paid to stay in the game as long as I can. I’m paid to be competitive every single pitch until the ball’s taken away from me. It’s just kind of flush and move on."

Home runs by Cedric Mullins, Henderson and Jackson Holliday shrank the deficit but couldn’t change the result. Josh Bell produced the Nationals’ fifth homer with a 433-foot blast off Bryan Baker in the eighth.

Today marked the third time this season that the Orioles surrendered five home runs, most in the majors.

Day 2 of Mansolino’s managerial tenure didn’t go any better than the first, when Kyle Gibson allowed six runs in the opening inning and was designated for assignment today.

“I don’t think I slept a whole lot last night,” Mansolino said this morning. "I was telling somebody earlier, when my bedroom’s messy, I have a hard time sleeping. Any type of clutter. So the clutter in my ears definitely kept me up over the course of the night.”

And what constitutes this clutter?

“Getting the day organized,” he said. “Just all the different things that kind of go into this. When you’re managing in the minor leagues or you’re coaching in the minor leagues or you’re a third base coach here and doing the infield stuff, there’s information that you’re looking at on a daily and nightly basis that gets you through the day, that helps you make the best decisions you can. That information automatically changes when you’re sitting in the seat of a major league manager.

“Just trying to understand the information that I like that’s applicable for me and understand where our coaches can help move that process along and the load they can kind of help me carry. Just trying to get that part of the day organized.”

Mansolino is still wrapping his arms around the fact that he’s a major league manager, ditching the third base coaching box and standing in Hyde’s usual spot in the dugout.

“It’s hard to do that,” he said. “I don’t think that’s gonna come anytime soon. I think right now it’s just try to get up to speed, try to connect with everybody. This is very different from what I was doing. I had a nice little silo that I worked in and it was comfortable. This is about as uncomfortable as it gets right now. So just trying to communicate with everybody and connect the dots.”

The Orioles can’t get off the path that leads to nowhere. And they aren't blaming the managerial change or searching for excuses. They just need to fix it.

“This was tough yesterday, there's no doubt,” Mansolino said. “I don't think that when you walk in that clubhouse guys today, this morning or even yesterday, as the news kind of circulated and things settled in, I don't think that they're feeling sorry for themselves and I don't think that their compete has diminished in any ways. I think it’s just kind of an unfortunate set of circumstances coming out of the first couple innings the last couple days, certainly something that I think that will kind of solve here going into Milwaukee and then Boston.

“We love playing here. We love being home in Baltimore. This is a great yard. We love playing for our fans, who are passionate. But I do think any time you go on the road, the group shrinks and tightens. So, whether you're won 10 in a row at home or not, we all do like going on the road and kind of tightening up the environment.”

“It was definitely tough,” Henderson said, “but I felt like everybody knew what we needed to do and that's go out there and play baseball. You play for your teammates in here and then you play for the fans out there because they’re coming into the ballpark and supporting you. That’s the biggest thing is just going out there and playing for the guys beside you.”

Said Eflin: “I think there’s a lot of different ways we can go to reset. Flying to a different city and playing a new team is definitely something that can happen. We’re going to go into tomorrow expecting to win like we always do and just waiting for this thing to kind of all sync up together.

“We’re here to win baseball games, and we’re not winning baseball games. It’s hard to go much deeper than that when the goal is to win the game when we’re not winning the game right now. I didn’t help that today. We’re gonna maintain that mindset of showing up every day prepared and ready to go, having each other’s backs and ready for this thing to turn around.”

Michael Soroka, who had a 6.43 ERA in three starts, didn’t allow a run until Mullins’ leadoff homer in the fifth inning – his team-leading ninth of the season. He also is first with 27 RBIs, 10 more than runner-up Holliday, after his run-scoring double in the sixth that followed Ryan O’Hearn’s double and knocked Soroka out of the game.

Henderson led off the sixth with his seventh home run on a high fly ball to right, measured at 359 feet, that kept carrying. He struck out in his first two at-bats to give him nine in the series and 21 this month.

Holliday homered to left field off Brad Lord in the seventh to cut the lead to 8-4. The Orioles showed late life again under Mansolino but dug the same early hole that’s trapped them for most of the season.

“Yeah, it's tough,” Mansolino said. “I think as we've kind of had some of our worst moments this year, it was more this story than not. Recently, I don't feel like we've done this. I feel like our pitching has actually held up pretty good here over the last few weeks, seems like it's good. These last couple days, unfortunate how it's gone."

"I will say I'm proud of the guys for coming out and fighting and putting up those runs," Henderson said. "It's hard to do in those situations. We believe no matter what the score is and I feel like that's what you've got to do. Just go out there and continue to fight, chip away."

Kade Strowd made his major league debut in the ninth and allowed a run on an Abrams’ double and Wood ground ball single up the middle. He also struck out a batter and committed an error on an attempted pickoff.