For the honor of breaking the arbitrary three-run ceiling for the first time in a week, the Orioles got plenty of mock praise and a seventh straight loss for their troubles, 8-5 to the New York Yankees after a 104-minute rain delay Saturday at Camden Yards.

How the American League's least-productive offense at 3.7 runs per game managed to score even that many, considering the context of this winless homestand, this second seven-game losing streak in five weeks and this sorry season, goes to show just how hard it has been for them to do anything productive at the dish of late.

“We've been talking about that for a while, just putting together a lot of quality at-bats,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. “One of our strengths has been when we've got — I'm not going to get into other people or who they are — we've just been able to make a pitcher really grind all the way through the batting order. And we haven't done that this year.”

Consider this: Before Saturday, the last time the Orioles got a leadoff man on base and scored him was a full week ago, in the seventh inning of their eventual 5-1 loss at the Tampa Bay Rays. That kicked off this losing streak, and an even more ignominious stretch of 13 straight leadoff men who have reached base for the Orioles not to score.

Four were left in scoring position, including Jonathan Schoop in the fourth inning Saturday. Seven were erased by double plays, including Chance Sisco after his fifth-inning single. Craig Gentry, who singled to open the ninth inning with the Orioles down 2-0 on Wednesday and was thrown out trying to steal third base with the go-ahead run in the batter's box, qualifies in his own special category entirely.

Only Manny Machado's home run to open the sixth inning Saturday ended that ignominious run, albeit on a technicality. As with most all things to do with the Orioles offense this year, he had to do it himself. It was his team-leading 18th home run, which moved him into a tie for second in baseball.

And after all that futility, they broke it for real when Danny Valencia doubled to lead off the ninth inning and Jones scored him with a single.

But about those home runs — the first three Orioles runs came on solo shots Saturday. Adam Jones hit his 10th of the season in the first inning, and Joey Rickard's third of the year came in the third.

Before Valencia doubled home Schoop with two outs in the sixth inning, the Orioles had gone 27 full innings without scoring on something other than a home run.

A second straight shaky start for Kevin Gausman, in which he struck out eight in the first four innings and nine overall but also allowed two-run home runs to Miguel Andújar and Giancarlo Stanton, didn't help.

Nor did the sixth inning that chased Gausman, which featured a pair of Yankees runs on three straight plays that involved Orioles errors. Gausman (3-5) allowed six runs (five earned) on nine hits in 5 1/3 innings.

With the loss, the Orioles fell to a major league-worst 17-41.

Fielding mistakes costly: In recent years, the Orioles’ fundamental focus on playing strong defense helped them overcome some other weaknesses, like not having power arms or a consistent batting order. But as the Orioles have bottomed out this season, owning baseball’s worst record, the team’s biggest decline might be on defense.

The Orioles committed three errors in their 8-5 loss to the New York Yankees on Saturday, and not only did all three of those errors come in the same inning but came on a string of three consecutive plays in the sixth that allowed the visitors to score two costly runs.

“There’s a lot of things that happened in that game, but those are some things that we know have been a challenge,” Showalter said. “Especially against a good team, you can’t do those things. I’ve said many times, you look out at the error column at the end of a game, it usually tells you who won the game. The players are so good at this level, giving them extra outs just seems to always, it may not bite you that inning, but it makes you do a lot of different things. And we had some other things that didn’t show up in the error column, too.”

The Orioles entered the day ranked last in the majors with minus-51 defensive runs saved, 11 runs behind the next worst team – the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Orioles entered Saturday’s sixth inning – which was played through steady rain – trailing 4-2. After Giancarlo Stanton opened the inning with a single, Gary Sánchez hit a ball to shortstop that was a tailor-made double play. Machado made an underhand feed to Schoop for the force out at second, but Schoop’s throw sailed high and past Chris Davis at first, allowing Sánchez to reach and move up to second base.

eencina@baltsun.com

twitter.com/EddieInTheYard

jmeoli@baltsun.com

twitter.com/JonMeoli