Jones: "Just keep your heads up, keep grinding"

NEW YORK - The solution to what's ailing the Orioles is right in Adam Jones' wheelhouse. He preaches the need to keep grinding, and now more than ever with his club tumbling into fourth place and only one game above .500.

"Just keep your heads up, keep grinding," Jones said following a 14-3 loss to the Yankees that completed a sweep. "Obviously, the scoreboard doesn't look pretty, standing out there ain't pretty, it ain't fun, but we all believe in each other. I know the three days up here, the last four actually, have been frustrating, but let's get the hell out of New York, let's go to Chicago and redeem ourselves and just flip the script.

"I know that's super-cliché, but when you've got 162 games, flipping the script is something that applies. Let's just get out of New York, everybody get a good dinner and come back tomorrow with that grinding attitude that we normally come and play with and let's just turn this stretch around."

The Yankees outscored the Orioles 38-8 in the series, outperforming them at the plate, on the mound and in the field. They had power and finesse. They constantly had the upper hand while pushing the Orioles 6 1/2 games back for the division lead.

"When you execute, the saying is good pitching beats good hitting," Jones said. "Right now they're swinging the bats. They're getting themselves in good hitter's counts and not missing the fastball. I mean, I've got the best vantage point and what I see is they're not missing.

"Tip your cap to them, they're out there grinding and doing their job, what they're supposed to do. We just need to execute a little bit better offensively, pitching, defensively, because you can't just blame one facet of the game. That's just not how it operates. It's a team game. Right now we're not playing good as a team, so like I said, just get out of New York. This place hasn't been too fun the last year or so.

"Let's get to Chicago and get on a winning streak and win an inning. That's the thing we need to start doing. Just worry about winning an inning instead of overall the game. Let's just win an inning."

Winning the first inning would be a start. The Orioles fell behind 6-0 in the first last night and 5-0 today.

"We're professionals, so you have to take it all in stride, with a grain of salt," Jones said. "You understand that you're down, but you have to understand not to give anything away. It's easy just to go up there frustrated and just give an at-bat away. The hardest thing to do is to go in there and stick your nose in there and have a good at-bat.

"They've had good at-bats, but when they have a lead, they can go out there and do whatever they want strike one and just throw all sorts of pitches up there and they're throwing them for strikes. This series, tip your cap to the Yankees and let's get the hell out of here."

The Yankees sent nine batters to the plate in the first inning, hung seven runs on Kevin Gausman in 3 1/3 and kept flexing their muscle against relievers Logan Verrett and Jimmy Yacabonis, the latter making his major league debut.

"Sometimes games, you're glad they don't count more than one loss," Showalter said. "Just like home runs, sometimes you're glad they're not more than one run as far as distance and whatever.

"The cliché thing to say is a loss is a loss, but when we're constantly getting behind like that and having to make all these pitching moves, it's hard to get any continuity from your pitching or your position players."

The Orioles have lost four in a row and six of eight. Pressure mounts for them to "shake things up," but exactly how should they go about it?

"We have," Showalter said. "How many pitchers have we had? Hopefully, we'll get Manny (Machado) back in the near future, some of the other people.

"I don't want to talk about the people out. It's an excuse. We fought through it every year that I've been here. It's gotten to be part of the M.O."

Manny Machado performed baseball activities this morning - hitting off a tee and swinging at soft tosses, fielding ground balls - and might be ready to come off the disabled list Monday night in Chicago after missing the last four games with a strained left wrist.

"Next step is to take some batting practice tomorrow, and if that's not an issue ..." Showalter said. "I want to wait and see if he's sore from today. It's a step forward. He's got a good face and feeling good about it. We'll see if what we see in batting practice tomorrow, hopefully if there's any repercussions from today it's enough to make us think he can play tomorrow.

"That's about as much of an update without guessing. We'll see how he feels tomorrow. We have a big turnaround. We had a short turnaround today, obviously."

More pitching moves may be on the horizon as the starters continue to leave games early and tax the bullpen.

"I know how I feel (about it)," Showalter said. "I want to get some other input from people. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to get through the game and get people off the field with a two-man bench with the catcher and Manny hurt. It's taken some imagination.

"If it was an educated guess, yes, but I've got to see who. We're kind of getting into the 'who' area now."

Gausman tied his career high with six walks.

"Just wasn't very good," Showalter said. "Obviously, the combination of us not pitching well, he's not throwing well and them swinging the bats real well. They've been doing that for most of the season. It's a bad combination, but Kevin ... really tough on the offense. We dig a hole there for us. It's hard to get any flow to your offense when we're constantly playing catch-up like that."

Plate umpire Alan Porter did a little squeezing, but Gausman conceded that he wasn't sharp enough to warrant the close calls.

"Yeah, a little bit, but obviously when you're as sporadic as I was, when you dot a fastball, you're probably not going to get that call. I was a little frustrated with that. It was just unacceptable on my part. To walk (six) guys, that's not me. That's the one thing I'm the most frustrated about.

"I know we really needed some length out of me today to get us rolling and get us off to a good start, and that first inning, it just got away from me. I tried to make some pitches to minimize. Just bad."

The Yankees were in full attack mode again today, with Gausman allowing five runs on 20 pitches in the first. They were patient enough to draw six walks off him, but it almost seemed to come while they were catching their breath.

"I think they swung at the first four pitches I threw, so obviously they're all feeling pretty high right now, feeling comfortable," Gausman said. "That's one thing I wanted to do, make them feel uncomfortable. I just got into so many situations where I felt like I had to make a pitch, I had a guy 3-2. Just getting behind every hitter, it's going to come back and bite you."

Does most of the blame fall on Gausman or the Yankees?

"Probably more me than them," he replied. "Obviously, they're swinging well, but anytime you walk (six) guys in 3 1/3, that's not going to play at any level. I threw some real good pitches, but I was all over the place today. Pretty frustrating.

"We obviously needed to get this last game and feel good going into Chicago. But we'll bounce back and hopefully we'll go into Chicago and get out of here and hit the ground running."

The Orioles will face-plant again if their rotation doesn't step up.

"I think the biggest thing is pounding the strike zone," Gausman said. "We've been walking way too many guys. And as a starter, when you get into a situation where you've had multiple guys who have gone short outings, you just try to be the one to stop the bleeding. We're putting a lot of pressure on those guys out in the bullpen and in effect because of that, we're having guys have to go up and down and having to make a lot of moves. So, we're making it tough on those guys down there.

"That's one thing that as a starter, all of us need to kind of pick our stuff up definitely."

The Orioles are confident that they have another run in them - and not just one guy crossing the plate. But we're back to whether the weekend slaughter was more about the Yankees or the Orioles.

Showalter's club must hope that it's the former and not the latter.

"You certainly don't go into it with rose-colored glasses or blinders," Showalter said. "Guess what? There's a game tomorrow, that we've got to be ready for another team. We came into this series, I think, 5-4 on the year on them. Obviously that changed, but there'll be better days."