The Baltimore Orioles have reached the “general manager insists the manager’s job is safe” stage of a rough start to the 2025 season.
Speaking with reporters before Friday’s game against the Kansas City Royals, Orioles general manager Mike Elias told reporters he was confident in manager Brandon Hyde despite a 12-18 start that has the team in the basement of the AL East, in a year with playoff expectations.
From Jacob Calvin Meyer of the Baltimore Sun:
How do you think Brandon Hyde has done this season, and what’s your confidence level in him?
“Very confident in Brandon Hyde. I think that you look at the job of a major league manager, and it would take me 45 minutes to talk about everything that goes into the job of a major league manager, but when things are going great and they have at times here, we’ve had that, and then 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.”
The Orioles’ start is their worst since 2019, the year after Hyde and Elias were both hired. A month into the season, the Orioles are one of the most disappointing teams in MLB, two years after posting a 101-win season.
Elias was specifically asked if Hyde, who has a 418-482 record in seven seasons as Orioles manager and has reached the MLB playoffs twice, had lost the clubhouse. His response:
“That clubhouse, I’ll kind of throw out some of the rebuilding years earlier because a little different group of guys and a different mode, but since this team started coming together in 2022, it’s been a very consistent place and it still is that way to me and the people that are down there all the time — and [Hyde is] right in the middle of all that.”
Elias defending Hyde is a fine thing to see, but doing so also accepts the premise that Hyde is the one at fault for Baltimore’s current woes. In reality, the issues the Orioles are having go beyond Hyde.
Hyde wasn’t the executive who decided the team’s rotation didn’t need a major addition after losing Corbin Burnes. Hyde wasn’t the one who gave $15 million to Morton, who is 41 years old, then watched him begin the season with a 9.45 ERA. Hyde also wasn’t the one who gave $5 million to Kyle Gibson and watched him allow a legitimately historic number of homers in his season debut.
The Orioles entered last offseason with starting pitching as their most pronounced issue and left the offseason with that still true, despite some half measures to fill out the rotation. The result has been a 6.04 rotation ERA, third-worst in the majors behind the Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins.
To be fair, the Orioles are also dealing with a cavalcade of injuries, particularly with their starting pitching. That includes Kyle Bradish, who underwent Tommy John surgery, and Grayson Rodriguez, who went down with elbow inflammation and a lat strain in spring training.
The team is also without Colton Cowser, last year’s Rookie of the Year runner-up, and right-handed bats Tyler O’Neill and Jordan Westburg, which partially explains the team’s MLB-worst .492 OPS against left-handed pitching.
So in conclusion, the Orioles’ rotation is one of the worst in MLB, they can’t hit lefties and they’re more than halfway to a full roster on just the IL. Per MLB.com, Elias took responsibility for those struggles:
“It is difficult to contend with that level of injuries. But even that aside, they’ve had a poor start. And that’s my responsibility. I’m in charge of baseball operations, and when we have a bad record to start the year, that’s my responsibility,” Elias said. “Piece by piece, step by step, we’re going to get guys healthier, we’re going to get guys performing more to their norms. If there’s something we can fix with a player, we’re working on that.”
