Eflin: Orioles 'starting to feel it' again after awful start to season

The Baltimore Orioles are beginning to look like one of Major League Baseball's best teams again after a terrible start to the season.

"I understand we dug ourselves a big hole, but you can always climb out of it," pitcher Zach Eflin said after the Orioles swept the Seattle Mariners on Thursday to win their sixth straight game, according to MLB.com's Jake Rill. "It's a 162-game season. None of us have lost confidence. None of us have gone home depressed or anything. We're here to win every single game that we have."

Eflin added: "We're just bought into winning every single day, and nothing's really changed from us from the start of the year. We're just winning now and we're having fun and you can start to kind of feel it. It's an addiction, and people are starting to feel it."

The Orioles have swept two consecutive series and are beginning to show signs of life after a rocky start led to the dismissal of Brandon Hyde. Hyde was replaced by Tony Mansolino on May 17, and Baltimore responded by posting a winning record under its new skipper.

While Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson are beginning to play like stars again, Mansolino credits the recent results to the club as a whole.

"This group's won a lot of games in the last two years. You don't win that many games if you're a quitter," Mansolino said. "So these guys haven't quit. They didn't quit earlier in the year. They kept competing, it just didn't go our way. They're continuing to do what they've done all year, and today, it was nice. Get the sweep and battle back the way that they did against good pitching.

"I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I'm not, because we've seen it for a couple years."

The Orioles start a three-game set with the Athletics on Friday before a tough test against the Detroit Tigers next week.