OAKLAND – After falling 5-1 last night and allowing four unearned runs in the series opener, the Orioles play at Oakland again tonight. It’s the second of a four-game series and 10-game road trip.

The Orioles took two of three at home versus the Yankees, but are now 2-2 in series openers and they are looking for their first road win tonight at 0-4 away from Oriole Park.

While Orioles pitching has been stellar to start the season, the Baltimore offense continues to struggle, with multiple players and the team overall not getting much going yet with the bats.

The Orioles have scored 22 runs for the season and 12 over the last five games. They have hit just four home runs, the fewest in the major leagues, and have just one over the last five games. The O’s have scored two runs or fewer seven times, going 2-5 in those games. The five runs they scored Sunday were the most they've had in a game so far this year. The nine hits they got in that game also marked a season high.

Hitter notes:

OAKLAND – When I talked with Trey Mancini before Monday's road trip opener, he - like much of Birdland - was hopeful that the eighth inning on Sunday would be a turning point for the Orioles offense.

They scored five runs and got three big hits with runners in scoring position in beating the Yankees 5-0. But whatever good was created there didn’t make it to the West Coast, at least for the series opener. The Orioles lost 5-1 at Oakland and were held to seven hits and went 1-for-7 with RISP. They have yet to have hits in double digits in a game in 2022.

On the plus side, the O’s pitching has obviously far exceeded expectations at this early stage. But we are seeing some quality stuff from several arms - in both velocity and secondary assortments - and the Orioles are executing their pitching game plans extremely well through 10 games.

The staff ERA went down Monday night, to 2.86, which is fifth-best in the majors and a far cry from the 5.85 team ERA for the 2021 season.

Mancini is, of course, impressed with the pitchers, including one he noted that pitched last night and continued to get noticed.

OAKLAND – For the Orioles, the opening game of this long road trip in Oakland had a familiar look.

For five innings it was close and low-scoring. The Baltimore offense was scuffling for runs again but the Baltimore pitching was getting the job done. Yet again they were.

On a night when the Orioles reduced their team ERA from an impressive 3.04 to an even better 2.86, they still lost. Four unearned runs in the last of the sixth doomed them to a 5-1 defeat at Oakland.

But right-hander Spenser Watkins was the latest O’s starter to throw well. He allowed two hits and one run over five innings on 67 pitches. He made a bid to stay in the rotation.

“That is always up to Skip on those (rotation) decisions,” Watkins said in the Orioles clubhouse. “But, I’m ready to take the ball whenever they give it to me and I’m going to compete.”

The Orioles and New York Yankees have exchanged wins at Camden Yards this weekend. The Orioles won 2-1 in 11 innings Friday night in a four hour, 15-minute game. And the Yankees won 5-2 last night in a game twice delayed by rain.

The Orioles (2-6) continue to struggle to produce offense. They have scored two runs or fewer six times in eight games and scored just 16 runs for the year. They are 2-3 on this homestand that ends today and have scored 12 runs in those games. The O’s season high for runs in a game is the four they scored in the second game of the Milwaukee series, in a 5-4 loss.

They scored their runs last night on one swing. Cedric Mullins absolutely crushed a two-run homer to right against New York right-hander Jameson Taillon in the O’s third inning to produce a 2-0 lead. Mullins drilled No. 2 on the year and it went 433 feet with an exit velocity of 107 mph. The blast came on a 3-0 pitch.

Right-hander Tyler Wells gave the O’s a good start last night before the pitch count got him lifted. He threw four scoreless innings on three hits with two walks and three strikeouts. He threw 64 pitches and lowered his ERA to 6.35.

Lefty Bruce Zimmermann, who was on the mound when this homestand began Monday, will be on the mound when it ends this afternoon.

O’s left-hander Keegan Akin had a poor spring training, but when the bell rang and he was on the Orioles' opening day roster, things quickly took a turn for the better.

So I had a simple question for Akin earlier on this homestand: What happened? What made the difference between his previous struggles and his throwing so well in his first two games of 2022, against Tampa Bay and Milwaukee?

Akin allowed five runs and six walks in 5 1/3 innings in spring training. But in his first two regular season outings he threw 5 2/3 scoreless on just two hits with no walks and four strikeouts. His WHIP right now is 0.35. Big difference.

Akin relates that he continues to become healthier the longer he is removed from the core surgery he had early in the offseason after last season. And since this season started he has been in attack mode, going right at hitters. Easy to say, harder to do. He’s doing it. And with success to date.

“A little bit of it was just trying to get over the hump, get back into things coming off the injury in the offseason,” Akin said. “I knew I had to get over that hump, getting back into game speed. And we knew there would be some discomfort to start, the nature of the beast, you can’t get that adrenaline going in the offseason. It was moreso, my main goal was to come out of spring healthy. Obviously, the numbers were not what I wanted and it was a poor showing the first two outings. I put one good one together there at the end.

A few observations from the Orioles’ first six games. They went 1-5, but played close, competitive games against two 2021 division winners in the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers.

Rotation concerns: It’s too soon for their rotation to be in crisis, but there is some reason for concern. They have uncertainty with what they are doing with the No. 5 starter and now reason to worry about lefty John Means.

Means left after four innings last night with left forearm tightness and didn’t sound too concerned in his postgame interview. An MRI could show the club and fan base if there is any real reason for concern. But how can there not be some worry about a pitcher that has had shoulder issues in the past and is having this issue after just two starts?

Means is not only very talented but is a leader on the pitching staff. Losing him for any length of time would be a blow.

The Orioles have both Grayson Rodriguez and Kyle Bradish in the rotation right now at Triple-A Norfolk and both threw four scoreless in their season debuts. Tonight is Rodriguez’s second Triple-A start. The Tides had listed right-hander Kyle Brnovich to start tomorrow night and southpaw Kevin Smith on Saturday.

It is a marquee pitching matchup to wrap up the Brewers-Orioles series tonight as O’s lefty John Means (0-0, 2.25 ERA) faces Milwaukee right-hander Corbin Burnes (0-0, 5.40 ERA) at Camden Yards. Tonight’s winner takes the series after Baltimore’s 2-0 win Monday and Milwaukee’s 5-4 victory last night.

Burnes won the 2021 National League Cy Young Award in a close vote over the Phillies' Zach Wheeler and Max Scherzer, who was with the Nationals and Dodgers last year. In the final vote tally, Burnes came up with 151 points to 141 for Wheeler and 113 for Scherzer. The 10-point margin of victory was the closest in the NL and tied for the fourth-closest overall since the ballot expanded from three to five pitchers in 2010. The closest in the American League was in 2012, when the Rays’ David Price outpointed the Tigers’ Justin Verlander 153-149.

Some Orioles fans will certainly remember that the closest election in the AL before that occurred in 1969 with the only tie in Cy Young Award balloting, between the O’s Mike Cuellar and the Tigers’ Denny McLain, the last year when voters could select only one pitcher.

Burnes is the first Brewers pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in the NL. The only other Cy Young Award winners for the Brewers, Rollie Fingers in 1981 and Pete Vuckovich in 1982, did so in the AL. The Brewers moved to the NL in 1998.

Burnes went 11-5 with an ERA of 2.43, best in the NL, in winning the award. Over 167 innings, he recorded a WHIP of 0.94, allowed just 6.6 hits per nine and only seven homers for a homer rate of 0.4. In 2021, he recorded 58 strikeouts before issuing his first walk on May 13. The Brewers went 19-9 in his starts.