(again from Kostka)<\/a> \u201cI feel like I failed him in a way,\u201d a sentiment reiterated by the anonymous players later:<\/p>\nSeveral players, both when speaking on the record and with anonymity, were adamant that Hyde never lost the clubhouse\u2019s support. … \u201cHe was liked in this clubhouse,\u201d (one player said,) \u201cNever lost the clubhouse. It was never like we were alienated against him.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are times where this is the problem for a baseball team and removing the manager really does fix it. A number of people on the outside speculated that it might be the case here. The way the Orioles have played since the firing does not point to that. If players were ready to stick the figurative knives in Hyde, we\u2019d be hearing about it instead of getting so many quotes of support.<\/p>\n
Hyde was focused on trying to get the hitters to do better<\/p>\n
Even with his entire team present, Hyde went after his hitters. He was frank, telling them to take responsibility. He acknowledged the pitching staff\u2019s struggles, but the batters drew his ire. … \u201cWe have a lot of first-round picks in here and a lot of top players in the league, and we\u2019re not playing like it,\u201d said one position player. … \u201cI think everybody probably agreed with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no mistaking that pitching is a huge problem for the team. They\u2019ve now allowed 5.6 runs per game through 24 games in May. That\u2019s tough to overcome, but the batters, even with so many injuries causing personnel changes, should be doing better than they are. If the message was about former first round picks in particular, some of the strugglers:<\/p>\n
Heston Kjerstad: .190\/.238\/.307
\nRyan Mountcastle: .235\/.271\/.335
\nAdley Rutschman: .211\/.310\/.349<\/p>\n
We saw what happened with the offense as Rutschman sunk into a funk in the second half of last season. There was hope in some quarters, including from me, that he was actually battling a secret injury that was sapping his performance, and that this would heal over the offseason. It just hasn\u2019t worked out to support that theory. He\u2019s still bad and another part of the problem is the team still treating him as a top-of-the-lineup batter when he\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
Not that Elias would ever tell us, but it would be interesting to know whether there was consideration about whether some or all of the hitting coaches are part of the problem here. If their message is not reaching these guys, that\u2019s not good. Of course, it\u2019s also possible that the message is reaching those players, and it\u2019s a bad message as far as getting them to succeed. The team is going to need to figure this out for 2026.<\/p>\n
Having to battle from behind has been an extra problem<\/p>\n
Six sources who spoke on the team meeting in Anaheim said Hyde paid special attention in his attempt to revive a slumping lineup. He called for more energy, especially when trailing in games.<\/p>\n
Some batting splits for the Orioles compared to the entire league in each of the possible scores the team faces: Tied, ahead, and behind.<\/p>\n
Tied – Orioles: .264\/.323\/.430 (.752 OPS)
\nTied – All MLB: .246\/.317\/.398 (.716 OPS – O\u2019s ahead by 36 points)
\nAhead – Orioles: .238\/.313\/.404 (.716 OPS)
\nAhead – All MLB: .250\/.320\/.401 (.726 OPS – O\u2019s trail by 10 points)
\nBehind – Orioles: .220\/.287\/.353 (.640 OPS)
\nBehind – All MLB: .237\/.306\/.384 (.690 OPS – O\u2019s trail by 50 points)<\/p>\n
The gap when trailing really stands out. I can\u2019t help but think of the classic Yogi Berra-ism, \u201cNinety percent of the game is half-mental.\u201d It\u2019s not hard to sketch out an idea that the Orioles, after falling behind, essentially fold up the tents. One player whose thoughts were described by Kostka said that Hyde implied that the league knows this about the Orioles.<\/p>\n
That is a problem that somebody\u2019s got to fix. If Hyde was not capable of fixing it, then he had outlived his usefulness as the manager. One might fairly wonder if the same is true of other members of the coaching staff who remained.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another startling split about the Orioles compared to the rest of the league:<\/p>\n
RISP – Orioles: .213\/.281\/.356 (.637 OPS)
\nRISP – All MLB: .249\/.328\/.395 (.723 OPS – O\u2019s trail by 86 points)<\/p>\n
That sucks! Last night\u2019s 1-14 hitting with runners in scoring position was worse than even their season-long number, but not exactly unrepresentative. These guys are struggling when it matters, in a way that is not being replicated league-wide. Perhaps they are trying too hard and responding poorly to the overthinking. Perhaps their overall strategy in these situations needs to be adjusted. It is something I also hope the front office is aware of and dedicated to fixing.<\/p>\n
The players posing questions to themselves<\/p>\n
Kostka reported on a players-only meeting that was held the night before Hyde was fired, in which the players took their own stab at trying to find a path forward amongst themselves:<\/p>\n
It included introspective questions for the entire roster to ponder. … \u201cHow\u2019re we approaching the game?\u201d (a position player) said. \u201cHow\u2019re we approaching our at-bats? How\u2019re we approaching just going about winning? Is there a winning strategy within us, as players, excluding coaches? Is there a winning strategy within us as a team that we\u2019re bringing out to the game?<\/p>\n
Several days after reading this article, I remain flabbergasted by this paragraph. Why did they have to ask themselves these questions on May 16, 45 games into the season? Worse still, it\u2019s not just that they had to ask, but that the answer to \u201cIs there a winning strategy within us as a team?\u201d is rather obviously a no. <\/p>\n
Something was broken pretty much from the get-go. People beyond just those who have already been fired – or for players, designated for assignment – should be feeling some heat about it. Elias assembled a roster that is underperforming even when considering the injury problems it has faced. There is more than just bad luck involved in this. They are, collectively, poorly adjusting to the way that the league is approaching them. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s disheartening stuff as a fan, because this failure is so thorough and so wrapped up with players who are important for next year too that it\u2019s tough to even think, \u201cWell, maybe next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clubhouse continuity<\/p>\n
For the most part, I believe that winning makes for a good clubhouse and losing does not, and that trying to read more into it than that is an inherently futile exercise. There\u2019s no way to land on anything tangible about it because we can\u2019t know. No one who would know talks about it to reporters who can then tell us about it. Which made this reference interesting:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou reflect back to last year and how a bunch of newer guys were coming in via trades. You try to build that camaraderie during that time frame, especially leading to the playoffs,\u201d (an anonymous player) said. \u201cIt felt like you were almost repeating that cycle [this winter], which we knew was going to happen anyway. Just in a sense of trying to really bring a cohesiveness and an understanding of really what we\u2019re trying to do going into the season, I don\u2019t know if we fully reached it prior to day one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Orioles really did have a sizable amount of turnover in the span of about a week ahead of last year\u2019s trade deadline. They acquired two starting pitchers, Zach Eflin and Trevor Rogers. They brought in two relievers, Seranthony Dom\u00ednguez and Gregory Soto. There were also two new hitters, Eloy Jim\u00e9nez and Austin Slater.<\/p>\n
Six players turning over on a 26-man roster, four months into a season, is a large percentage to change up on the fly. The 2024 Orioles needed to do some things to improve on what they were doing. I can\u2019t help but wonder if perhaps paying a steeper price for three moves might have been better than doing six cheap ones.<\/p>\n
You can wonder the same about this past offseason. Two new starting pitchers were signed, plus one reliever. Three hitters were added in. That\u2019s another six out of 26 changed. Some of these were the same roster spots. Half of these signings were, up to this point, outright busts. Elias splashed around a lot and tried to do it all without committing much money beyond this season and it didn\u2019t pay off. I hope these things cause him some introspection.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that Elias is completely blind to the importance of clubhouse dynamics, having veteran leadership, and all of that stuff. Of last deadline\u2019s moves, Jim\u00e9nez seemed like a solid clubhouse presence and teammate. The signing of Charlie Morton this winter was clearly aimed at having a longtime veteran pitcher around, one who could speak to struggling because he has done so a lot over his long career. Ram\u00f3n Laureano gives off \u201ckeep the guys loose\u201d vibes. Even the hiring of recent ex-Oriole Robinson Chirinos as bench coach was probably done with this in mind.<\/p>\n
The Orioles just have so many other problems that the clubhouse stuff is a mess too. Maybe all of the Elias-induced turnover didn\u2019t help, and certainly some of Elias\u2019s specific decisions have turned out to actively hinder the team\u2019s fortunes. <\/p>\n
Going back to the last item, the players are going to need to find some way to bring the winning strategy out of themselves. There will have to be some more roster turnover to return to success, so they\u2019d better find a way to deal with that. A handful of individual Orioles are getting it done. Most are not. Until it gets better, there will be plenty of blame to go around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been close to two weeks now since the Orioles fired Brandon Hyde as the manager, along with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[4934,901,143,47,3357,2538,5,7415,968,969,16857,6939,181,7333,10333,4,125,13044,898,9072,2190,4371,417],"class_list":{"0":"post-61514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-orioles","8":"tag-after","9":"tag-are","10":"tag-baltimore","11":"tag-baltimore-orioles","12":"tag-baltimore-orioles-analysis","13":"tag-baltimoreorioles","14":"tag-baseball","15":"tag-blame","16":"tag-camden","17":"tag-chat","18":"tag-continuing","19":"tag-firing","20":"tag-front-page","21":"tag-hyde","22":"tag-many","23":"tag-mlb","24":"tag-orioles","25":"tag-others","26":"tag-s","27":"tag-show","28":"tag-struggles","29":"tag-there","30":"tag-to"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114586150815019369","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}