DETROIT -- Orioles players and management knew that by handing the ball to a youth movement this season, especially for the perpetually brutal second-half schedule, the club's win-loss record could end up unseemly.
If the first 20 games after the All-Star break are any indication, however, the Orioles could continue to teeter on a near-historic line of futility for the franchise.
After losing, 7-3, to the Detroit Tigers Thursday afternoon, the Orioles have dropped six of their past seven and 15 of 20 since the All-Star break. They are a season-worst 18 games under .500.
Perhaps most disheartening given the backdrop of 11-plus years of anguished ineffectiveness, the Orioles' 45-63 record ties for their worst mark at the 108-game point since the 1991 club went 43-65 en route to a 95-loss season.
"You've got to understand who we are, what we have, the direction we are going," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said. "We have a lot of young players. Look at our starting staff. There's no secret there. There is one guy there [Jeremy Guthrie] that was there at the start of the year. They are all new kids."
One of those kids, David Hernandez (3-4) lasted just three innings Thursday, yielding five runs on seven hits and two walks. It was the 24-year-old's 10th start in the majors, and his shortest.
"I think that's what you are going to get out of young guys. You are going to get inconsistency," Trembley said. "You are going to have a couple great ones, you are going to have so-so and you are going to have bad ones. Today was a bad one."
The Orioles were trailing 6-0 before they picked up their first hit, a single by Ty Wigginton against Detroit's 20-year-old rookie Rick Porcello (10-7) to lead off the fifth inning.
The Orioles scratched out single runs against Porcello in the fifth and sixth and one more against the Tigers' bullpen in the eighth, but the game was well out of hand by then.
"Losing is not fun," said Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts, who had one of the Orioles' seven hits Thursday and has hit safely in nine of his past 10 games. "I think we are all trying to focus on the future, but day-in and day-out we are still here to do our jobs and we are still here to win games. And that's not happening."
Only Melvin Mora, who is a free agent at season's end, has been with the club longer than Roberts, who debuted in 2001. That year, the Orioles also were 45-63 at the 108-game mark, and on their way to a 98-loss season, third worst in franchise history.
