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A lot is broken about the 2025 Orioles and it seems clear that firing the manager was not an immediate solution.
It’s been close to two weeks now since the Orioles fired Brandon Hyde as the manager, along with bullpen coach Tim Cossins. The firings were not a magic fix to all of the O’s problems, as evidenced by their giving up ten runs in each of the first two games under interim manager Tony Mansolino. They are 4-7 since the change in the dugout, better than their overall season winning percentage but still not good.
The 2025 Orioles remain a fascinating trainwreck. To fans of the team, there is horror on top of the fascination. This was supposed to be an improved follow-up act to last year’s 91-71 squad that drooped down to a .500 clip over the whole second half of the season. Instead, they’ve got a record that’s on pace to be about as bad as the early Mike Elias years, when there was no pretending that the team was trying to win anything. What the heck happened here?
Late last week,
The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka reported on the final few days before Hyde was fired, during which there was a flurry of meetings where first Hyde and later the players tried to sort out what was going wrong with the team and what was within their power to fix. It’s been in my head ever since because it’s so rare to get frank quotes (if still anonymous) from so many players about things happening past the dark curtain into the clubhouse. Fans barely ever get any real glimpse into that world.
Hyde had not lost the clubhouse
One only needed to see the outpouring of raw emotion from players on the day that Hyde was fired to understand that the now-former manager still had their respect and that they blamed themselves for getting him fired. The day of the firing, Cedric Mullins said
(again from Kostka) “I feel like I failed him in a way,” a sentiment reiterated by the anonymous players later:
Several players, both when speaking on the record and with anonymity, were adamant that Hyde never lost the clubhouse’s support. ... “He was liked in this clubhouse,” (one player said,) “Never lost the clubhouse. It was never like we were alienated against him.”
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’d be hearing about it instead of getting so many quotes of support.
Hyde was focused on trying to get the hitters to do better
Even with his entire team present, Hyde went after his hitters. He was frank, telling them to take responsibility. He acknowledged the pitching staff’s struggles, but the batters drew his ire. ... “We have a lot of first-round picks in here and a lot of top players in the league, and we’re not playing like it,” said one position player. ... “I think everybody probably agreed with it.”
There’s no mistaking that pitching is a huge problem for the team. They’ve now allowed 5.6 runs per game through 24 games in May. That’s 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:
- Heston Kjerstad: .190/.238/.307
- Ryan Mountcastle: .235/.271/.335
- Adley Rutschman: .211/.310/.349
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’t worked out to support that theory. He’s still bad and another part of the problem is the team still treating him as a top-of-the-lineup batter when he’s not.
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’s not good. Of course, it’s also possible that the message is reaching those players, and it’s a bad message as far as getting them to succeed. The team is going to need to figure this out for 2026.
Having to battle from behind has been an extra problem
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.
Some batting splits for the Orioles compared to the entire league in each of the possible scores the team faces: Tied, ahead, and behind.
- Tied - Orioles: .264/.323/.430 (.752 OPS)
- Tied - All MLB: .246/.317/.398 (.716 OPS - O’s ahead by 36 points)
- Ahead - Orioles: .238/.313/.404 (.716 OPS)
- Ahead - All MLB: .250/.320/.401 (.726 OPS - O’s trail by 10 points)
- Behind - Orioles: .220/.287/.353 (.640 OPS)
- Behind - All MLB: .237/.306/.384 (.690 OPS - O’s trail by 50 points)
The gap when trailing really stands out. I can’t help but think of the classic Yogi Berra-ism, “Ninety percent of the game is half-mental.” It’s 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.
That is a problem that somebody’s 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.
Here’s another startling split about the Orioles compared to the rest of the league:
- RISP - Orioles: .213/.281/.356 (.637 OPS)
- RISP - All MLB: .249/.328/.395 (.723 OPS - O’s trail by 86 points)
That sucks! Last night’s 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.
The players posing questions to themselves
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:
It included introspective questions for the entire roster to ponder. ... “How’re we approaching the game?” (a position player) said. “How’re we approaching our at-bats? How’re 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’re bringing out to the game?
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’s not just that they had to ask, but that the answer to “Is there a winning strategy within us as a team?” is rather obviously a no.
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.
It’s 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’s tough to even think, “Well, maybe next year.”
Clubhouse continuity
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’s no way to land on anything tangible about it because we can’t know. No one who would know talks about it to reporters who can then tell us about it. Which made this reference interesting:
“You 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,” (an anonymous player) said. “It 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’re trying to do going into the season, I don’t know if we fully reached it prior to day one.”
The Orioles really did have a sizable amount of turnover in the span of about a week ahead of last year’s trade deadline. They acquired two starting pitchers, Zach Eflin and Trevor Rogers. They brought in two relievers, Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto. There were also two new hitters, Eloy Jiménez and Austin Slater.
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’t help but wonder if perhaps paying a steeper price for three moves might have been better than doing six cheap ones.
You can wonder the same about this past offseason. Two new starting pitchers were signed, plus one reliever. Three hitters were added in. That’s 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’t pay off. I hope these things cause him some introspection.
I don’t think that Elias is completely blind to the importance of clubhouse dynamics, having veteran leadership, and all of that stuff. Of last deadline’s moves, Jiménez 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. Ramón Laureano gives off “keep the guys loose” vibes. Even the hiring of recent ex-Oriole Robinson Chirinos as bench coach was probably done with this in mind.
The Orioles just have so many other problems that the clubhouse stuff is a mess too. Maybe all of the Elias-induced turnover didn’t help, and certainly some of Elias’s specific decisions have turned out to actively hinder the team’s fortunes.
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’d 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.
