O’s bad traits on display in 19-12 loss

How wide is the gulf between baseball’s worst team, the Orioles, and the best, the visiting Boston Red Sox?

So wide that the Red Sox’s 19-12 win Friday night atCamden Yards, which came after the Orioles led by five in the third inning, doesn’t even do it justice. All these two teams had in common Friday was the baseball — and that’s even with the Orioles’ 12 runs flattering to deceive.

They scored early and often because debuting center fielder Cedric Mullins, batting ninth, twice turned the lineup over to continue big four-run innings. They couldn’t stop Boston from scoring because they traded their best defenders and lost their best relievers to trades and injuries.

What’s left? A team that fell to a league-worst 35-81, thoroughly beaten on a night when its Opening Day starter, Dylan Bundy, couldn’t make eight runs of support stand up, and the relievers that followed him was just as ineffective.

Before all the Orioles’ bad traits emerged, their one new bright spot defined the game. Mullins doubled home a run in his first at-bat during the Orioles’ four-run second inning, following a solo home run by Chris Davis and before Adam Jones scoredMullins and Caleb Joseph on a two-out single.

That reversed what had been a 3-0 Orioles deficit on Xander Bogaerts’ three-run home run in the first inning. By the time Mullins came up again in the third inning, the Orioles were building a big lead of their own. Therookie center fielder hadtwo on with a run already in when he singled off the glove of second baseman Brock Holt for his second run-scoring hit of the day, and like the previous time, he scored fromsecond on a single to extend the Orioles’ lead to 8-3.

That was about as good as it got.