If you’re like a lot of baseball fans in Birdland, throughout the past three-plus seasons you must find yourself scratching your head every fifth day. Or maybe it’s pulling your hair out. There’s also the yelling-at-the-dog scenario. All are signs of a fan base worn out by the likeable but seriously flawed starting pitcher known as Ubaldo Jimenez.

So just how did the Orioles, a team reticent to pay big long-term dollars for starting pitching, get stuck with the most expensive pitcher in their history to the tune of four years and $50 million?

Let’s go back to July 4, 2013. Jimenez, who was pitching for the Cleveland Indians in a game they would lose at Kansas City, 10-7, saw his record sit at 6-4 with a 4.67 ERA. On that day, Jimenez pitched five innings, allowing four runs (three earned) and three hits with five walks.

But something he was working on with Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway began to click. Callaway was a 38-year-old rookie pitching coach for manager Terry Francona. In his interview for the job, Callaway was specifically asked how he would fix Jimenez.

Jimenez had come to the Indians at the trade deadline in 2011 in a blockbuster deal that sent the Indians’ two top pitching prospects, Alex White and Drew Pomeranz, to the Colorado Rockies.

Whatever magic Callaway had been working on with Jimenez, it began to work from that moment forward. In Jimenez’s last 15 starts as an Indian, he pitched to a 2.01 ERA in 94 innings to finish the season 13-9 with a 3.30 ERA.

That was how the Orioles’ bid for him was formulated. Their scouts and analytics people painted a picture as to what Jimenez could be and how that could be worth $50 million over four seasons.

Jimenez has made 87 starts in an Orioles uniform. After each of them, win or lose, he has been a stand-up guy and faced the music from the local media. In that role, he’s been great, and it’s why he is wildly popular with his teammates. They see a quality human being.

What none of us has seen is a quality major league starting pitcher. If you divide that $50 million figure by 87 starts, that comes to a total of $547,712 per start. The results, you ask? Jimenez is 27-33 with a 4.93 ERA and 1.48 WHIP.

He’s 13-13 at home with a 5.22 ERA over 238 innings pitched, and 14-20 on the road with a 4.67 ERA in 256.1 innings.

I am not privy to executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette’s meetings with owner Peter Angelos, but I’ll bet when the topic of what to do with Jimenez comes up, it’s not a warm and fuzzy conversation. Watching manager Buck Showalter during his postgame news conferences, it’s apparent he just won’t go negative on a player in that setting — no matter how the question is asked.

Despite the fans and media smelling blood in the water, Showalter is dead-set on doing the right thing. It’s part and parcel of the culture he has carefully cultivated since late in the 2010 season when he took over.

But slice it and dice it any way you want, keeping Jimenez in the rotation in hopes of catching lightning in a bottle is sheer folly. It’s that type of thinking that got the Orioles into this $50-million-mess to begin with.