The Baltimore Orioles fired manager Brandon Hyde on Saturday after an awful start to the season, one that is widely considered to be the most disappointing start to 2025 by any team in MLB.
While no manager gets fired over the result of one game, Hyde’s final contest at the helm — a 4-3 loss on Friday at home against the Nationals — certainly fits the genre of defeat that serves as the final straw for a skipper on the hot seat. After Nationals starter MacKenzie Gore departed in the fourth, Baltimore mustered just one unearned run against a Washington bullpen that entered the evening with a 6.75 ERA, 29th in MLB. Facing another struggling team that had lost eight of its previous nine games, the Orioles stranded 15 runners and failed to preserve a 3-2 lead through seven innings.
Advertisement
With two outs and a base open in the top of the eighth, Orioles lefty reliever Keegan Akin went at Nationals slugger James Wood and paid the price, as Wood torched a center-cut fastball over the left-center-field wall for a game-tying home run. With two outs in the top of the ninth, Washington took the lead when Baltimore closer Felix Bautista failed to cover first base in time on a Nasim Nunez chopper to the right side, allowing Jose Tena to come around from second. In the bottom of the ninth, a Jackson Holliday leadoff single was immediately squandered when Holliday got caught stealing, and Cedric Mullins watched strike three down the middle, a rally-killing double-whammy that spelled certain doom for Baltimore.
With the loss, Baltimore fell to 15-28, the fourth-worst record in baseball. Its minus-75 run differential ranks 29th in the sport, ahead of only the historically horrific Rockies.
Hyde’s dismissal comes less than a week after the Rockies let go of Bud Black and two weeks removed from Pittsburgh parting ways with Derek Shelton, making the first time since 2002 that three managers were fired before the start of June. But Hyde represents a sharp contrast to the circumstances that resulted in Black’s and Shelton’s firings. Colorado and Pittsburgh got off to predictably poor starts, based on both organizations’ troubling track records of woeful performance and rosters that were objectively undermanned. For those two teams, the outcome was hardly a shock, given the reality that when bad teams are bad for long enough, the manager usually gets fired.
Advertisement
In the case of Hyde and Baltimore, we’ve arrived at the breakup via a decidedly different route, albeit one that still raises questions about Hyde being the one to take the fall. The Orioles did not enter this season coming off consecutive 100-loss campaigns like the Rockies or saddled with a decade-long playoff drought like the Pirates. Rather, this organization had reached a crossroads of sorts in 2025, having successfully launched out of the depths of its extreme rebuild but still having yet to accomplish anything in October.
Hyde, remarkably, had been at the helm for all of it, becoming the rare manager to survive a lengthy rebuilding process and then lead a playoff team, overseeing a 110-loss squad in 2021 and a 101-win team just two years later. Hyde was named AL Manager of the Year in 2023 for guiding Baltimore to the AL East title not long after dwelling in the divisional basement, seemingly a sign that he was the man for the job as the Orioles opened their contention window. With new ownership led by David Rubenstein taking over in 2024 and a tremendously deep position-player core coalescing at the major-league level, it wasn’t long ago that the Orioles appeared to have one of the brighter futures in the league.
Instead, Baltimore went winless in consecutive postseason trips and then got off to a miserable start this year that has completely reframed the trajectory of the organization. What looked to be mildly concerning stagnation is suddenly something much worse, a massive step in the wrong direction that has forced the franchise to make some difficult decisions. Firing Hyde is the first such move, though it’s reasonable to question whether Hyde’s clubhouse leadership or managerial button-pushing have been the primary sources of Baltimore’s shortcomings this season.
Advertisement
“As the head of baseball operations, the poor start to our season is ultimately my responsibility,” executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said as part of Baltimore’s statement announcing the move. “Part of that responsibility is pursuing difficult changes in order to set a different course for the future. I want to thank Brandon for his hard work, dedication, and passion all these years, and for returning the team to the playoffs and winning an AL East Championship. His many positive contributions to this organization and to Baltimore will remain, and we wish he and his family the best.”
Earlier this month, Elias expressed support for Hyde despite a rough April. “Very confident in Brandon Hyde,” Elias said. “When we’re experiencing failure, it’s really important in that job — and in my job, too — to be consistent with your approach. And he’s doing that.”
In backing Hyde, Elias was staying true to how he has operated all along, with the mantra that over a long enough period of time, a good, analytically inclined process will deliver results. But as the losses piled up, Elias could no longer wave away the outcomes. Something wasn’t working, and something had to change. But Elias, in his own words, holds the ultimate responsibility. So with Hyde out the door, the spotlight burns brighter on the GM’s questionable roster-building as the most concerning trend in Birdland.
The Orioles have plummeted to the bottom of the American League due in large part to a brutally bad pitching staff that ranks at or near the bottom of the league in nearly every major category: 28th in ERA, 26th in WHIP and 30th in fWAR, to name a few. It is a weakness that was entirely foreseeable based on the uninspiring moves (or lack thereof) made to address the ace-size hole left by Corbin Burnes. Yet the Baltimore rotation has somehow been even worse than anyone could’ve anticipated. Injuries to Grayson Rodriguez and Zach Eflin certainly haven’t helped matters, but acquiring and developing depth to backfill innings lost to injury is a basic reality of MLB team-building, and Elias has flatly failed at that task.
Advertisement
It’s not just the pitching, either. Baltimore ranks 19th in wRC+ and 25th in runs per game through Friday. Tyler O’Neill, Baltimore’s biggest offensive addition over the offseason, has a .605 OPS with two home runs. Catcher Adley Rutschman has regressed for a third consecutive season. While there is still significant talent on the offensive side of the ball to feel good about moving forward in Baltimore, it’s also clear that this much-hyped position-player group has disappointed to this point. This collective underperformance is the failure of all levels of this organization, from the players to the coaches to Elias’ front office, and it will require substantial reassessment by all involved to get back on the right track.
As for Baltimore’s immediate next steps, third-base coach Tony Mansolino will take over as interim manager. Mansolino, 42, joined Baltimore’s coaching staff in 2021 after coaching and managing at multiple levels of the Cleveland Guardians organization since 2011. With relatively little experience elsewhere on the current staff — bench coach Robinson Chirinos is in his first year on a major-league coaching staff, and he will remain in that role — Mansolino is a sensible choice to take charge for now, though it’s far too early to know whether he’s a viable candidate to be the Orioles’ long-term manager.
If not, Baltimore could be a rather coveted landing spot for a skipper next winter. Competing in the AL East is a daunting challenge, but this is still a franchise with a lot of encouraging infrastructure in place, one that could attract some high-level candidates.
For now, though, it’s on the players to try to salvage what has begun as a nightmare season for the O’s. There is still considerable talent in place to do so, but it’s quite the hill to climb.
Read the full article here