Monday’s nightcap was an immediate return to bad baseball for the Orioles

Well, the Orioles had a one-game respite from their losing ways.

By Monday evening, though, they were back in the loss column – with authority.

The Orioles (25-66) dropped the nightcap of a one-admission doubleheader, 10-2, to the New York Yankees after snapping their six-game losing streak earlier in the day.

In the first game, the Orioles resurrected their old blueprint of success: passable starting pitching, two homers, good defense and a strong bullpen effort.

In the second game, not so much.

It was back to the basics, complete incompetency that has made this season so utterly terrible. Hope you enjoyed those few hours of bliss during Monday’s early evening.

Right-handed rookie Yefry Ramirez picked up the start in the second game and, in his fourth big league outing, didn’t get out of the fifth.

Ramirez at least filled out the linescore. He allowed nine hits, two walks, four earned runs, one homer, one wild pitch and one hit-by-pitch while striking out four. He threw 92 pitches – 56 for strikes – in four-plus innings. It was by far the 24-year-old Ramirez’s worst start for the Orioles.

“Yefry, once he got out of the first inning, I thought he did pretty well for a couple of innings,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. “Changeup came into play, breaking ball. Good young man, learning on the job a little bit.”

Ramirez had allowed four runs in his first 14 1/3 innings in the big leagues in his career.

“I will take it as a learning opportunity, as a growing experience, getting the feedback from the veteran guys,” Ramirez said of Monday’s outing. “Hopefully, I can have better success in the next starts.”

Rookie Ryan Meisinger threw three shutout innings, but the bullpen after him faltered, with Brad Brach giving up four runs (three earned) while retiring only two batters. Brach’s ERA ballooned to 4.63 this season.

Lefty Tanner Scott wasn’t much better. He allowed two runs on four hits and three walks in one inning – with one of those outs coming on a play at the plate.

To further the overall ugly performance, the Orioles defense was shaky, Jace Peterson made a baserunning mistake and the offense couldn’t score against Luis Cessa, who was making his second start of the year. Cessa allowed three hits and three walks in six shutout innings.

The Orioles only runs came on a two-run homer by Tim Beckham in the eighth.

It was a thorough show of ineptitude, wiping out what was a solid performance in Game 1.

And now the Orioles are back to 41 games under .500. Back to what’s become their norm for 2018.