Orioles need Adam Jones to start hitting like Adam Jones

12:30 AM ET

BALTIMORE – So far, the Baltimore Orioles have done just fine without Adam Jones.

When they ripped off a franchise-record seven straight wins to start the season, they did it largely without Jones, who was nursing a rib injury and wasn’t in the starting lineup for the last five of those W’s.

In the three weeks since then, the O’s have managed to win enough ballgames to stay atop the AL East entering Wednesday. They’ve done that largely without Jones too, whose struggles at the plate have made it seem almost as if he’s not there. Those struggles continued on Wednesday.

Long before the wheels fell off the Camden Yards cart — and they undoubtedly did when Baltimore gave up three runs during a sloppy sixth inning and another four during an equally sloppy eighth en route to a 7-0 loss to the last-place Yankees — the Orioles had their chances.

Facing CC Sabathia in the first inning, Jones came up with one out and Manny Machado, who’d just doubled for the nine thousandth time this season (actually, he has a league-leading 13 doubles, but who’s counting?), at second base. The five-time All-Star proceeded to ground out to third base. In the third, with the game still scoreless, Jones came up with one out and runners on first and second. Swinging at the first pitch, he grounded into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play.

In a vacuum, 0-for-2 with a GIDP doesn’t seem like cause for alarm. But anyone who’s been watching Jones over the last few weeks knows that this isn’t a vacuum.

A career .293 hitter before June, April and May are historically his best months. Yet so far this …

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