No Real Winner Here
By: Connor Guercio
Tags: Baltimore, Orioles, Brandon Hyde, MLB, Mike Elias

Brandon Hyde, contemplating life

When a baseball team is as bad at the current iteration of the Baltimore Orioles are, fans will usually look for reasons as to why things are the way they are.

For the O’s, you could look at the lack of quality talent throughout the roster from the starting rotation, to the bullpen, and all the way down to the position players; mainly the infielders. I would argue there are nine quality Major League players that have donned an Orioles’ uniform this season: Paul Fry, Freddy Galvis, Austin Hays, Trey Mancini, John Means, Ryan Mountcastle, Cedric Mullins, Anthony Santander, and DJ Stewart. The rest are either stuck in baseball purgatory of whether or not they will develop into a quality talent or are just flat out not good.

That means well over 50% of the players that have appeared in a game for the Orioles this season are not good baseball players. In my opinion, that is the fault of nobody more than Orioles executive Vice President and general manager Mike Elias. To steal a line from Jason Concepcion of NBA Desktop fame, if your job is baseball operations and the baseball is operating poorly, something is wrong.

I am not here to argue the validity or lack-there-of regarding Elias’ plans to rebuild the Orioles’ franchise but instead argue against his plans to not field a functioning Major League Baseball team while not receiving any blame for the bad product he is responsible for putting on the field.

Elias recently held a press conference and did not comment on whether or not Orioles’ manager Brandon Hyde will be a part of the club following this season, dismissing it by saying, “I’m looking forward to getting back to the playoffs, and hopefully, all of us are still here together for that.” It sounds to me that he wants somebody wants to take the blame for the bad on-field product in Camden Yards and it’s not himself.

Whether you think Brandon Hyde is a good manager or not (I think he is a solid game manager who truly likes his players) it comes down to the team he is given to compete with every single day throughout the season. Right now, he is given one of the worst 26 man rosters in all of baseball and faces easily more backlash than Elias for that fact.

I have routinely argued that if Hyde could turn one of these recent O’s teams into a 75–80 game winner, he should get the Manager of the Year award. Obviously, this was always going to be a stretch hope but he certainly cannot receive copious amounts of blame for what goes on with day-to-day operations of the team.

The one thing I will fault Hyde for, and this is honestly not a bad thing, is that he trusts his guys *too* much. He has to work with what he’s given and that means putting guys into situations that they are not equipped to handle but he still gives them that opportunity to sink or swim.

Do I think the trajectory of Brandon Hyde’s managerial career will look more like Joe Maddon, the guy he won a World Series with, or Bo Porter, the guy who was the manager of Mike Elias’ former club before the eventual WS winning manager AJ Hinch?

It’s truly hard to say. Regardless, he should get an opportunity to manage the club’s young talent that Elias has so much faith in. If he fails with those guys, then you reconsider if you want him for the future. Until then, you roll the dice with him and hope for the best until Elias wants to improve the quality of players on his roster.