At the risk of infuriating every O’s fan and forever relinquishing any welcome I might still have in my hometown of 20 years, I need to bring the faithful down to earth: the Orioles are either the best worst team in baseball or the worst best team. Either way, collectively, the coaches and players — with a dash of general management and ownership — have so much to do to have any real hope of catching the New York Yankees or even of making the playoffs again this year (“Should O’s fans worry when Gunnar guns the ball?” June 12).

We all saw the sweep at the St. Louis Cardinals and subsequent head-scratcher losses coming in the 8-6 victory over the Chicago White Sox back on May 23. In that game, Grayson Rodríguez had no idea where any pitch was landing through the shakiest five innings and needed to be “relieved” by five bullpen pitchers to stave off a ninth inning comeback in a game there was no way the O’s could lose. Sadly, if we all collectively ask for the real Orioles to please stand up right now, that is this team’s identity.

While it is easy to ride the highs of Gunnar Henderson’s homers and recent free passes, a handful of walk-off wins, and relative “ace” pitching of Corbin Burnes, anyone who watches between the actual lines will see a team that has given away at least eight wins already this year, a first-time pitching coach whose staff has issues far beyond a spate of early-season injuries, two hitting coaches who have seen plenty of home runs while also overseeing a downturn in plate discipline, especially in situations with runners on base, and Brandon Hyde’s continued tinkering with pitching changes that have had a 50-50 return rate.

Case in point: two bad one-run losses to a really bad Toronto Blue Jays team. I feel bad for Cade Povich, but I can objectively be mad that he walked four by nibbling around the plate, three of whom scored. This deep-cut stat is held close to the chest by individual teams, but I would love to know the percentage of walked opponent batters that have scored thus far this season. Meanwhile, the Birds’ lack of plate discipline and a cohesive plan made Toronto’s Yusei Kikuchi who allows nearly six runs per game on average look like a Hall of Famer.

Though Albert Suárez only yielded two runs the night before, he labored throughout with a ball-to-strike ratio that made him lucky to make it through five innings without any real damage. Up and down the O’s staff, 2-0 counts have been too frequent, up-in-the-count “waste” pitches have been laughably high and wide and have only served to increase pitch counts. Too many 0-2 pitches have “missed” and have been turned around into hits.

The worst of it all has been the compounding of bad plays. Before his stint on the IL, Dean Kremer had outings in which he was unhittable for two innings, but then after a walk or an error, the mental wheels came off and the situation went from not bad to horrible in a heartbeat. The same happened in Kyle Bradish’s last start, and do not get me started on Keegan Akin. Too late: See if Colorado will take him for a cup of snow.

At the plate, the Colton Cowser on the lineup card during the first month of the season is AWOL and he is, for whatever odd reason, suddenly clueless as a hitter. The team’s stable of commentators needs to stop telling us how hard he and others are hitting balls. Hit it 70 miles an hour the other way because it might not be another loud out. As bad as Cedric Mullins has been as a hitter, he is no longer markedly worse than Cowser and deserves to be back in the lineup regularly because he has made solid contact in the last two series.

One would think that a primary charge of hitting and pitching coaches is to work on approach. Players’ inability to protect with two strikes, save Jordan Westburg, has been galling. Not being able to move a runner into scoring position has cost them countless runs. Compounding a harmless base runner with subsequent walks has been habitual. Paying needless attention to a runner on first base with two outs has resulted in walks and hits. Perhaps strangest of all is how the team has lost all of its aggressiveness on the bath paths, as if the hitting “approach” is simply to swing hard and hope.

From 620 miles down the coast, I have watched every pitch of every game thus far this season, proudly wearing my Baltimore Orioles shirts everywhere I go. That being true, I am on pins and needles because hoping for home runs is not a sustainable offensive model in a division even where other teams can win with station-to-station baseball and actual shutdown closers.

— Neil W. Gabbey, Savannah, Georgia