Peter Schmuck: Nothing plus nothing leaves Orioles without much left to play for

Welcome to the nightmare on Russell Street.

The Orioles came back from a semi-successful road trip this past week with a chance to make a statement in a critical four-game series against the division rival Boston Red Sox. Instead, they will enter today’s series finale at Oriole Park with their playoff hopes in critical condition.

And that might be a generous characterization after their season of offensive inconsistency reached a new low with a second consecutive shutout loss that pushed the O’s deeper into the American League East cellar and dropped them three games behind the ascendant Toronto Blue Jays in this year’s strange wild card hunt.

What made it even worse was the raucous presence of thousands of Red Sox fans who took over the ballpark and probably didn’t know what to do with the free Zay Flowers baseball jerseys that were given away to herald the start of the Ravens season next Sunday.

It can’t get here fast enough.

The Orioles have now lost five in a row and have stacked so many zeroes this weekend that even manager Craig Albernaz couldn’t sugarcoat the obvious.

“We’re just falling on our faces right now,’’ he said. “But we’ve been saying all year and I know it’s tough for the fans to hear, but we’ve been in this spot multiple times this year and our guys continue to find a way to keep on going and that’s all we can do. We’ll show up tomorrow and continue to play and play the game that’s in front of us.”

Even before his team took the field for Saturday night’s game, Albernaz was asked at what point it would become necessary to shift the September focus from competing for that final playoff berth to taking a more development-oriented approach toward the remaining games on the regular-season schedule.

He didn’t answer the question directly but echoed the post-trade deadline comments by president of baseball ops Mike Elias that the Orioles can move forward on both paths.

“That’s a good question,’’ Alvarez said, “My mind is always development-focused, and you can do both and win. As a coaching staff, if there’s a change to be made to get the player better, we should already have done that change. To me, there is no point in waiting, if the player is not playing at his best and there’s a change that our guys see, we’re going to address it right away. I’m not a fan of waiting until the offseason…We’re always trying to get our players better, because ultimately when our players get better, we’re going to win more games and that’s the goal.”

The Orioles obviously will win more games over the final three weeks of the season, but probably not more than all of the other teams that are in contention for that last postseason berth.

Clearly, they are what their 69-74 record says they are.

Sad but true.