Peter Schmuck: The Orioles are not helping me sleep at night

Damn right I’m worried.

It’s easy to look at the schedule and say it’s only early April, which is true of course.

It’s also easy to look at the American League East standings and say that nobody is running away from the pack, which also is quite true.

I could go on and on. Gunnar Henderson isn’t really up to speed after missing a big part of spring training and the first week of the regular season. We’re all waiting for Grayson Rodriguez to head off on a rehab assignment and hopefully get back in May. They’re 5-8 … not 2-11 for heaven’s sake.

This is when I’m usually counseling calm. This is when I should be writing that it’s no time to panic, but if i did I would have to deliver that advice with a caveat:

Are you going to believe me or your eyes?

The Orioles just don’t look right. The offensive talent is there and the back end of the bullpen has been good, though it hasn’t been needed much. The rest of this story is yet to be written, but like a lot of you, I’m having trouble visualizing a happy ending.

The starting rotation is a mess and that situation has gotten progressively worse. The loss of Zach Eflin to a “mild” lat strain is the latest gut punch, and it’s going to have a major impact even if he’s able to jump back into the mix after the minimum 15 days on the injured list.

The Orioles can take some comfort in the possibility that the second half of the season might feature the return of Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells, but there are no guarantees there, either.

Again, a 5-8 start isn’t exactly a disaster, but it is the way the Orioles got there that is disconcerting. The team that almost never hit into a double play last year is now leading the sport in them. The offense in general is the picture of inconsistency – scoring 42 runs in the five victories and 13 in the eight losses.

If you’re keeping score at home with your calculator, that last number works out to 1.625 runs per defeat.

The starting pitchers who are still healthy have been knocked around pretty regularly and the guys playing behind them have been as inconsistent with their gloves as they have been with their bats.

So what’s manager Brandon Hyde to do except put on a brave face and acknowledge what everybody can see with their own eyes. The Orioles are not a very good team right now.

Maybe we’ll all wake up in May and think that April was just a bad dream. Maybe the Orioles will show up Friday night at Oriole Park to a big cheering crowd and take out their frustrations on the first-place Toronto Blue Jays.

They haven’t won a series yet. They are 0-3-1 in that department, so keeping their old friend Anthony Santander and new half-billionaire Vladimir Guerrero Jr. out of the bleachers would certainly brighten the mood this weekend, but a lot more than that has to go right to keep the O’s from falling into a much deeper hole.