The Baltimore Orioles reportedly have their next manager.

The Orioles are finalizing a deal to hire Craig Albernaz as their manager, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He will replace Brandon Hyde, who was fired in May in the midst of his seventh season leading the franchise.

Albernaz, 42, was one of the bigger names available for a manager job in this cycle. He most recently worked as an associate manager with the Cleveland Guardians and helped guide the organization to back-to-back postseason appearances. Cleveland went 88-74 this past season before falling in the wild-card round of the playoffs. Albernaz has also spent time in the San Francisco Giants organization as a bullpen coach and hitting instructor. This will mark his first managerial job in MLB.

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Albernaz played in the minor leagues, reaching the Tampa Bay Rays’ Triple-A affiliate at his peak.

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The Orioles parted with Hyde earlier this season after they started 15-28, a significant regression from the team that racked up 101 wins during the 2023 campaign and 91 wins last year. Hyde was AL Manager of the Year in 2023. The Orioles finished the 2025 season 75-87, their worst record since the 2021 campaign, under interim manager Tony Mansolino. He was in the running for the open job — team president Mike Elias said Mansolino was “a real candidate” in September — but the team is going in a different direction.

With the Orioles making a move, there remain five teams in the league — the San Diego Padres, Minnesota Twins, Atlanta Braves, Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals — without a manager.

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The Orioles have significant questions entering next season. The team posted one of the worst ERAs in the American League last summer, several big names struggled offensively, and they will likely lose some rotation players, such as Zach Eflin and Tomoyuki Sugano, in free agency. They also struggled to find consistency and ended up finishing just one game above .500 under Mansolino’s watch. It was by all accounts a disappointing season.

“When you have a season that misses the mark by this much, there’s a lot on the list of what went wrong,” Elias said last month, via The Associated Press.

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But the Orioles have their next manager in place. That’s the first step in solving everything else and making what would be their first deep postseason run in more than a decade.