Can Bundy bring what's needed again today?

Imagine that it's January and you're counting down the days until spring training, totally unaware that injuries would rob the Orioles of their No. 1 starter and closer. Or that Kevin Gausman would get off to a slow start and Ubaldo Jiménez would be headed back to the bullpen.

Perhaps you were braced for Jiménez's latest removal from the rotation, but he also may have raised hopes with his 2.31 ERA and 0.829 WHIP in September. You want to believe. There are 50 million reasons to be motivated.

Anyway, everyone had a clean slate over the winter. You're challenged to guess which pitcher would lead the team in innings toward the end of May. And you picked?

I'm figuring that Chris Tillman and Gausman were the most popular choices. Dylan Bundy probably fell down the list based on the assumption that the Orioles would slow-play him in the early stages of the season to make certain that he was still available down the stretch and that they hadn't piled too many innings on top of the 109 2/3 that he logged in 2016.

Bundy heads into today's start with a team-leading 64 2/3 innings, placing him ahead of Gausman (54), Wade Miley (53 2/3) and Jiménez (42 2/3). He's registered quality starts in nine of his 10 outings and cleared the sixth inning each time he's taken the ball.

Manager Buck Showalter keeps lamenting how too many starters are running their pitch counts to 100 by the fifth. Bundy has been a glorious exception. He's become the staff ace at 24 and with only one full major league season under his belt - the first half of it as a reliever.

The Orioles are hoping that Tillman and Gausman challenge Bundy for that honor, that Miley can break through that fifth inning wall more frequently and someone seizes the other spot in the rotation.

Is anyone going to seize it?

Bundy is making his first start against the Yankees this season and the third of his career among five appearances. He's 1-1 with a 5.40 ERA, with eight runs and 16 hits in 13 1/3 innings.

Brett Gardner is 3-for-7 against Bundy and Didi Gregorius is 2-for-6. Not much to go on here.

Rookie left-hander Jordan Montgomery faced the Orioles on April 30 at Yankee Stadium and allowed three runs and three hits with four walks over five innings. He struck out seven.

The Orioles won in 11 innings. Times were good.

Left-handers are hitting .192 against Montgomery. Chris Davis probably would have been out of the lineup Saturday night against Astros lefty Dallas Keuchel, but the bench thinned with Adam Jones unavailable due to a sore left ankle and hip. Davis could sit against Montgomery if Jones plays, with Trey Mancini moving to first base.

Davis struck out looking yesterday in his first two at-bats and went down swinging in his fourth. He's fanned 74 times in 47 games, with eight strikeouts coming in 12 at-bats in the Astros series. Mark Reynolds holds the major league record with 223 in 2009, followed by Adam Dunn with 222 in 2012 and Davis with 219 in 2016.

It's the called third strikes that continue to baffle the Orioles, who see the same things as the rest of us. They honestly do. And they're at a loss to fix it.

This isn't on hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh. He's not instructing Davis to keep the bat on his shoulder. Just like he isn't instructing others to chase anything in the dirt. It's ultimately up to the players to perform. They take early hitting, they watch video with Coolbaugh and assistant hitting coach Howie Clark. And then the game starts.

Davis told a small gathering of reporters at his locker yesterday that he's just not able to identify the pitch until it's too late. That's why he's been prone to taking fastballs right down the heart of the plate.

Fans are screaming for Davis to be removed from the lineup or at least moved down. Lowering him to seventh, for example, would require someone else to replace him in the middle. I know, I know, could it really be any worse right now? But you can't just come up with half of a solution, if that's what we're calling it.

Jiménez worked the last six innings yesterday after replacing Alec Asher in the third. He tried to save the bullpen with another day game on the horizon. The Orioles are trying to decide what to do with him.

They can't just stash him in the 'pen. He needs to get hitters out under any circumstances. Otherwise, you're back to having six relievers without the benefits of a five-man bench.

Jiménez handled his assignment yesterday in a fantastic manner after a two-run third. He contributed a little to the bleeding and then applied the tourniquet. How often does a manager use only one reliever after the starter goes two innings?

"I was making better pitches," Jiménez said. "(Welington) Castillo was calling a great game and I just executed pitches. They kept hitting ground balls or soft fly balls and behind the count we threw a lot of breaking balls. So we pitched.

"It's always good to finally have a good one and finally do something for the team, especially when they needed me. I was able to help the bullpen, so it feels good."

It isn't a smooth transition for Jiménez. He doesn't warm up quickly and requires more notice than other relievers, which isn't always possible depending on the game situation.

"It's pretty tough, especially because I haven't been in the bullpen a lot," he said. "My whole career has been as a starter, even in the minor leagues. But it is what it is. You have to find a way to get it going.

"For me, it's only the first inning. I think once I get loose I find my breaking ball and the movement on my fastball. But the first inning is always the toughest one."

Each loss gets tougher. We're up to seven in a row.

"It's tough, it's tough. There's no doubt about it," Jiménez said. "But this is baseball. We still have four more months to go, so we have to find a way to get back on track and keep being positive."

One more observation: The Orioles miss Craig Gentry, who's down at Triple-A Norfolk after being outrighted. He's their best backup in center field. Joey Rickard is better in the corners. And Gentry is a weapon late in games with his ability to steal bases.