TORONTO — There was a lot of bad baseball in between, but the Orioles bookended their first half with their best stretches, beginning with a 4-2 road trip to open the season and ending with the 5-4 spell that carried them into the break.

That such spans of success are so easy to pick out, and came with three months in between them, says plenty about the way this season is going. But the past week has been a nice refresher on something that it seems the Orioles truly lost touch with: if they don’t make mistakes, no matter how wide the talent gap is against the opposing team, they at least have a chance.

The Orioles’ goal for the second half should be leaving the ballpark each night feeling as if they’ve accomplished that, and not leave weeks and months in between that obscure the organization’s long-term view.

“It’s never easy to feel good about everything that’s happening going into the game and have things not work out during the game,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “That’s happened a lot this first half, so to see guys get rewarded and feel good after the game. That’s what I talked a lot about the first couple of months — I feel bad for some of our guys. They’re invested, and to not feel good about how the outcome of the game went, that stinks, so we’ve played pretty good these last seven or eight games, these last couple series.”

The last time the Orioles left a road trip feeling as good about their play as they did Sunday was likely that first series here in Toronto. When they won, their offense came in bunches, their starting pitching came through and the relievers held up their end. They also didn’t give runs away on defense, something they knew needed to be cleaned up after a disastrous trip out west last month.

“That wasn’t happening for us for a little bit there,” right fielder Trey Mancini said. “We were just struggling to do some basic things right, and I think we cleaned that up a lot. We kind of had a team meeting a couple weeks ago and since then we’ve been cleaning things up. There’s still some work to do as far as base running mistakes and little things in the field, especially.”

“If you watched us on the West Coast, it was just horrendous defense,” starting pitcher Andrew Cashner said. “A lot of plays where we’re trying to get outs at home, we’re trying to create things. When you’re struggling, you’re always trying to create. But I think as a pitching staff, we’ve done a lot better job of minimizing the damage.”

The challenge, of course, is continuing to play this way after the All-Star break.

There’s a long homestand against playoff aspirants when they return, then another long trip out west and the possibility that some of the team’s best players will be dealtas the team continues it’s focus on the future.

But the first three-plus months have really just shown that a major league team full of second-chancers and fringe players doesn’t have to lose in the manner the Orioles did for large stretches of May and June. What made the bad losses feel worse is that the formula is simple. They are 22-26 when Cashner, John Means or Dylan Bundy start, and Sunday’s loss dropped them to 5-36 when anyone else takes the mound in the first inning.

Stabilizing those other days allows the bullpen to be a bit more settled and those pitchers to be put in a position to succeed. And having three out of five days in which you have a real chance to win engages the position players both at the plate and in the field, something that’s not always the case.

When things go badly, though, it makes all of the instruction and player-development effort the Orioles are prioritizing at the major league level feel a little hollow.

“I think it’s been tough,” Hyde said. “I think we’ve had positives and negatives. I think it’s not easy to go through our situation, and we can talk about this process we’re in, we can talk about that we’re looking into the future, but it’s not easy to lose. It’s never easy to lose, and it can beat you up and wear on you, wear on your club.”

jmeoli@baltsun.com

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