It’s so obvious. Almost obnoxiously so. I almost can’t believe it didn’t occur to me yet, and there have been plenty of occasions for this one to jump up and bite me.

It took Orioles manager Brandon Hyde being asked Tuesday when he knew it wasn’t going to be Kyle Gibson’s night to realize it.

“Well, he gave up four homers in the first inning,” Hyde said after an almost-incredulous pause. “That’s kind of a telling sign.”

This team is demonstrating all too often at this point that some deficits are too large and too early to dig out from. April, which mercifully comes to an end, might represent the same blow to their season. This team is 11-18.

If you can say it about a game as often as Hyde and these Orioles have — that they fall so far behind that it feels impossible to catch up — then perhaps it’s kind of a telling sign for the season as well.

Hyde noted that it’s been an issue “a lot” where the offense has struggled to muster anything on nights when the starters yield early runs in bunches. I once had a player tell me a five-run deficit was typically the level that a player felt would be insurmountable.

Well, entering Tuesday, only a handful of teams had taken more of their plate appearances with a deficit of four runs or more than the Orioles, who did so 15.3% of the time (155 of their 1,015 total plate appearances). They hit .155 with a .480 OPS in such situations. Their at-bats often match the moment.

For comparison’s sake, the 2023 Orioles trailed by four runs or more in 7.8% of their plate appearances. The dreadful 2018 and 2019 Orioles took 19% and 17.9% of their plate appearances trailing by four runs or more, by comparison. And when you consider all 33 of the Orioles’ trips to the plate Tuesday came after Gibson received four new baseballs after the Yankees put the previous ones over the fence and took a 5-0 lead, this year’s team has now trailed by four or more in 17.9% of their plate appearances as well.

“It’s happened quite a few times this year, and you want our guys to continue to fight,” Hyde said. “I don’t think we threw at-bats away, even though [Yankees starter Carlos] Rodón was really good. He was really carving us up. But you’ve got to try to stay in the game somehow.”

That’s where these Orioles find themselves now: just hoping it doesn’t get so bad that they fall out of touch with the season. There’s a lot of it left, and things can change quickly. By the team’s next homestand, Jordan Westburg and Tyler O’Neill can be back from their injuries and Zach Eflin could be in the rotation again. Then it’ll be time to anticipate the returns of outfielder Colton Cowser, reliever Andrew Kittredge and starting pitcher Grayson Rodriguez.

When you have this many injuries, and thus this many reasons to think this group that gets punked every other night isn’t who you truly are, the cadence of potential reinforcements is always going to mean better is on the horizon. But will it matter that Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells could be back in the second half if the season is lost by then? What about those targeting Memorial Day?

They have to win at close to a .580 clip to get to 88 wins, which would get them into the playoffs. That’s a 94-win pace for a team that didn’t start as poorly as the Orioles have, and forecasts for the team have understandably depreciated as this first month has played out. It doesn’t feel like an unreasonable ask, but it feels like an increasingly tall one.

We know what it looks like when this team gets too far behind. We saw it all too often this month. It’s resulted in a month where, just maybe, the incline required to climb back to where the Orioles want to be is too steep.

“Maybe we haven’t played our best baseball, but good teams have bad months all the time. And the hard part to do now is not sit here and think you’ve got to get it all back in 10 games, and by May 15, try to be five games over .500,” Gibson said. “That’s a tough mental battle to fight. I think the best thing you can do is look at tomorrow and see if you can finish the calendar by winning a series, and win a series in May. You can’t just do it 10 games at a time. You’ve got to do it one at a time. And two or three at a time, and start knocking off some series. And before you know it, by the end of May, you can be four or five games over .500 and you’re feeling really good. Just like good teams can have bad months, they can have really good ones, too.”