Brandon Hyde was canned Saturday after the Baltimore Orioles' miserable start finally boiled over. The Orioles have just 15 wins in 43 games and couldn’t look further from a playoff team, a major letdown on the heels of three straight winning seasons and two consecutive playoff appearances. Hyde probably deserved to get fired, but he’s far from solely responsible for the dumpster fire that’s ablaze at Camden Yards. GM Mike Elias is just as responsible.
In one offseason, Hyde went from Corbin Burnes as his ace and Anthony Santander swinging a hot bat to Charlie Morton and Tyler O’Neill. That wasn’t his decision, that was above his pay grade. He was doing what he could with what he was given. Elias didn’t give him much.
A team that was supposed to leave the rebuilding phase in the past has quickly returned to their roots, and that’s not all on Hyde. There’s someone else responsible for that; but he’ll end up getting off scot-free while Hyde will take the blame for a miserable decline.
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Orioles manger Brandon Hyde is scapegoated for a problem GM Mike Elias caused
If you broke it down in percentages, Mike Elias deserves at least 51 percent of the blame for why this season has gone awry for the O's. No matter how much the team tries to pin it on Hyde, Elias deserves to be in the crosshairs.
The Orioles lost Burnes this offseason. If Burnes would have signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers or one of the New York teams on a lucrative deal, that’s one thing. But they lost Burnes to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Sure, Burnes prioritized more than money in his decision, but Baltimore barely tried — and could have done much better to replace him.
Relying on a 41-year-old Charlie Morton was an egregious mistake on Elias’ behalf. Turning to the farm system instead of adding a reputable veteran to the rotation should be considered malpractice. The iron was way too hot for the Orioles to regress this season. They needed to capitalize. Not that they were championship contenders with an 0-5 playoff record the last two seasons, but they had a foundation to build from.
Now the youth of Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson and Jackson Holliday are left clueless as to what to make of this roster construction. That falls on Elias. He came to the Orioles in 2018 and reportedly tried to mimic what the Houston Astros did while he was there, per CBS Sports.
He's failed at that miserably. The Astros became a powerhouse – cheating or not – and won championships. Hell, they won playoff games. Whatever Elias was trying to accomplish with Baltimore, it’s far from getting there.
And now Elias will have a third manager in his tenure and, if he's not careful, another five-plus-year rebuild on the horizon. He deserves to be fired, because instead of keeping this roster in position to contend, he’s put them in position to fail.
There’s something to be learned from this, and Orioles fans deserve better than to watch this team lose 100-plus games again. The way Elias is constructing this roster, that’s exactly where this team is headed.