TAMPA, Fla. — Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino spent his All-Star break home in Nashville, Tennessee, chasing after his two boys.

By the time he made it to Tampa on Thursday night to prepare for the start of a crucial stretch for the Orioles, he joked that it was the most relaxed he had been all week.

Well, that feeling probably didn’t last long.

On Friday, the Orioles opened the second half looking to make a run to get back into contention and save a sell-off before the July 31 MLB trade deadline. Instead, they came out with an uninspired thud, the Rays’ cruising to an 11-1 win. They are 10 games under .500 and eight games out of the third wild-card spot.

“Yeah, we didn’t play good tonight really in all three phases,” Mansolino said. “So you know, it’s just one game, we’ve had games like this here before over the last couple months. We’ve bounced back pretty good when we’ve had them, so the expectation is that we bounce back tomorrow and play a little bit better.”

Except now, they are running out of time to bounce back, especially if they continue to have games like this.

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There was not much the Orioles did well, but starter Charlie Morton set the tone for the downfall. Baltimore lost the first 11 games Morton appeared in, but, in his last eight starts, he had pitched to a 2.76 ERA, the team winning all but one of those starts. His turnaround was so promising that Mansolino remarked after his last start that Morton was pitching like one of the best starters in baseball.

Well, he didn’t look like that this time. The Rays hit him hard and often, starting with leadoff hitter Chandler Simpson, who doubled to open the bottom of the first. Morton then allowed a walk, and Junior Caminero followed with a three-run home run.

An inning later, after a solo home run from Danny Jansen, it was 4-0, the Orioles slumped over the dugout as they watched Jansen round the bases.

“I think early it was mis-locations,” Morton said. “Just some pitch selection, but mostly I feel like some of that damage early was just not quite good enough execution. Three-run homer, solo shot, four runs we’re down. And then just kind of grinding from there to get through it. Looking back, I think the game right there was just the first inning, first and second inning, those home runs.”

Yet things would only continue to spiral from there. In the bottom of the sixth, with the Rays up 5-0, Jake Mangum hit a soft single and stole second. Ha-Seong Kim then flied out to Ramón Laureano, whose throw to Gunnar Henderson went through the shortstop’s legs, giving Laureano an error and allowing Mangum to score from second on a play that should have only advanced the runner to third.

Morton’s day ended shortly after that, and he was replaced by Grant Wolfram, who had impressed in his last two appearances, pitching 3 2/3 scoreless innings. Well, as it did for Morton, Friday would reverse that trend.

Yandy Díaz hit a grand slam off Wolfram to give the Rays a 10-0 lead. If the door to an Orioles’ win wasn’t already closed at that point, it was slammed later in the sixth when Caminero hit his second home run of the game.

Perhaps the pitching performance wouldn’t have looked quite as bad if the offense had done anything, but that wasn’t the case. The Orioles had fared well against Taj Bradley this season, scoring six and five runs in their two meetings last month. But this time Bradley held them to three hits in six shutout innings.

The Orioles have scored two runs in their last three games.

“I think, in terms of playing a better game tomorrow, I think that’s probably where it starts is just putting more balls on the barrel,” Mansolino said. “I think our guys are so incredibly capable of so much more. I think every team goes through 27-inning stretches or three-, four-, five-game stretches where they don’t score runs, and unfortunately, we’ve gone through it the last few days, and we just need to get ourselves out of it as soon as we can.”