Craig Albernaz didn’t point fingers after the Baltimore Orioles got swept by the New York Yankees. He pointed straight at himself.
The rookie manager said the team’s inability to put together steady baseball is his problem to solve, and after a rough three-game set at Camden Yards, he made it clear he’s not interested in excuses. The Orioles have now dropped four in a row, and the Yankees series landed as the sharp opposite of what Baltimore had just done to the Tampa Bay Rays.
A week earlier, the Orioles had won three straight from the American League-leading Rays and briefly sat alone in a wild-card spot. Against New York, everything flipped. “It was kind of opposite of the Tampa series we just played,” Albernaz said after the game.
The offense never found a rhythm. Baltimore scored only five runs in the series, and every one of them came on solo home runs - Coby Mayo on Tuesday, Pete Alonso on Wednesday, and Dylan Beavers on Thursday.
The finale was a 6-1 loss to Gerrit Cole, who held the Orioles in check at Camden Yards. On top of that, Baltimore struck out in double digits on back-to-back nights.
When asked why consistency has been so hard to find all season, Albernaz owned it without hesitation. “It's something that, myself, I've been actively trying to problem-solve and put a finger on,” he said.
“I'm the manager of the team and the guy in charge, and it's my job to figure that out and I haven't yet. And that's on me.
That's the biggest thing.”
He kept circling back to the same point, saying the challenge is on him to find a way to get the club playing the same brand of baseball more often. “We have to figure out how to keep our guys playing that consistent brand of baseball, and actively trying to figure that out,” he said. “Right now, it's not, and like I said, that's just on me.”
Baltimore also wasted a strong start in the opener. Shane Baz struck out 10 over 6.1 innings, but the Orioles couldn’t back him up and fell 3-1. It fit a frustrating pattern for an offense that has been, as one account put it, solo-homer or bust since June.
“We just couldn't get the big hit, and when we needed to get runners on base, we had a tough time doing that,” Albernaz said. “And you can't give any big-league team extra outs. That's what hurt us today.”
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