The Orioles have packed their bags and headed out to the West Coast after a demoralizing opening homestand. Six straight losses at Camden Yards prompted fans frustrated and embarrassed by the direction of manager Dave Trembley's ballclub to wear paper bags.
As brutal as that homestand was for the reeling Orioles, things will only get tougher on their 10-game road trip, which starts tonight in Oakland and wraps up April 25 at Fenway Park.
And if the Orioles continue to find ways to blow games, it's no sure thing that Trembley (left, photo by AP) will still be managing the team when they return to Baltimore a week and a half from now.
After all, Orioles brass have finally decided to judge the manager based on wins, right? And the Orioles have somehow mustered just one in nine games this season despite keeping the score close in most of them. That's why it's not too soon for Trembley to start worrying about his job security.
Their latest loss, a 9-1 drubbing at the hands of the Rays on Wednesday, was by far the ugliest. Afterward, a stunned Trembley had no explanation for the team's bad fortunes. "We certainly had a lot of opportunities to win our fair share of the games, and we didn't," he said.
The Orioles have allowed 21 runs in the eighth inning or later. Fundamentally, the Orioles have limited mistakes. But when they have screwed up — like the two errors by Miguel Tejada and bad baserunning by Felix Pie — it has ended up costing them.
The biggest problem, though, has been the team's poor performance at the plate. The Orioles have scored just 27 runs, are batting .232 as a team, are 10-for-66 with runners in scoring position, and have stranded 67 runners. You can't exactly use offensive strategy when your players can't put the barrel of the bat on the baseball.
But fair or not, much of the blame for this dud of a start will fall on the manager.
Trembley is clearly getting desperate.
He filled out a pair of quirky lineup cards Tuesday and Wednesday to shake things up. He called for a hockey-style line change near the end of Wednesday's loss. Right now, he's just throwing stuff against the wall to see what doesn't suck. It all has.
"Maybe this is the final purge," Trembley said. "Maybe we got it all out of our system. Maybe this is the last of it. Let's hope."
But if whatever has been plaguing the Orioles isn't out of their system before they come back to Camden Yards, finding a cure might be another manager's job.
Trembley said Tuesday he has to make do with the team handed to him. But the Orioles shouldn't be this bad. Not 1-8 bad.
Fair or not, it all comes back to those wins and losses, remember? Trembley might be a fun guy to invite over for a cookout, but there have been legitimate concerns for a while about his ability to turn the Orioles and their young nucleus of talent into winners.
Before Orioles club president Andy MacPhail considers pulling the plug on Trembley, he needs to see how the team responds to this adversity away from home.
Trembley's Orioles could snap out of the nasty slump on the road trip. But hopefully he packed a light suitcase — just in case.
Matt Vensel is a content creator for b. Follow him on Twitter, @mattvensel.