MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
In John W. Miller’s extraordinary book about the extraordinary Earl Weaver, “The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball,” MIller wrote, “During the era of the baseball manager, fans and front offices believed you needed one of these larger-than-life leaders to build a great baseball team around. Managers inspired fans to dream of commanding their own team, a desire that fueled fantasy baseball, videogames and a new literature of analysis.
“After Earl Weaver’s era, managers still had a tough job, and a good manager was better than a bad manager, but they were never as popular or as powerful. The centrality and certainty of data analysis, along with free agency shifted control to general managers and to the players themselves. And unlike football’s and basketball’s head coaches, baseball managers can’t design proprietary playbooks that transform teams into winners. In the twenty-first century, managers were no longer dominant forces; there were no more Earl Weavers.”
MIller goes on to write of a conversation he had with Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who has managed the Dodgers to four World Series and two championships and who said, “Each manager, his ball club (in the days of managers such as Weaver, Sparky Anderson, Dick Williams, Billy Martin, Tommy Lasorda, and we could go on and on), it was his team, and now the mindset is it’s our team.
“With that comes a lot more questions being asked, a lot more collaboration. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, it’s just different.”
It’s not a good thing. Ask Brandon Hyde.
It’s kind of sad that we’re not even to Memorial Day and it’s already football season in Baltimore, not unlike in the not so old days before Brandon Hyde became manager of the Baltimore Orioles.
Hyde, who was fired on Saturday morning, was the manager of the Orioles for six-plus years and guided a complete rebuild that was activated by general manager Mike Elias following the final years of the Buck Showalter-Dan Duquette (Akroyd) tenure.
In Hyde’s first three seasons, the O’s went 131-253 (.341). But they started to turn a corner in 2022, when they finished strong en route to an 83-79 record. Then, Hyde helped lead Baltimore to an American League-best 101-61 in 2023, winning their first AL East title since 2014, with Hyde being named AL Manager of the Year. Last year, they went 91-71 and again reached the postseason, earning an AL Wild Card berth.
Baltimore, though, went a combined 0-5 across those postseason appearances, yet still entered the 2025 season with expectations of returning to the playoffs and having better results in October.
The Orioles have been in a funk since the All-Star break of last season, culminating in this hideous start to this hideous season, despite the catastrophic wave of injuries that began to strike the ballclub last June.
We’ve discussed here the remarkably inept offseason work of general manager Elias, who went tightwad, even after the ownership group of David Rubenstein encouraged him to go Daddy Warbucks. We’ve discussed the obscene number of injuries to so many key players, but there is also cause to wonder about the revolving door that is the Orioles coaching staff. It has changed every year despite the club winning more games than any team in the American League for the previous two years.
And we’re not saying pitching coach, hitting coach, bullpen coach and the base coaches, we’re talking about three pitching coaches, three hitting coaches (such as both groups are said to be), as well as a bench coach, an upper level hitting coordinator, a Major League coach (I just assumed they all were), a Major League development coach, a Major League field coordinator/catching instructor, a pitching strategy coach, and goodness know what else.
That’s 13 coaches, including the manager, on the coaching staff, which is what amounts to is a small corporation aside from the players (oh, them) and the essentials. And they change every season at the fancy and the direction of the general manager. Hyde, the manager, did not pick “his own” staff.
Yet because the Orioles players cannot hit, pitch, field or run the bases, and despite the board room of coaches Mike Elias apprentices in and out each year, Brandon Hyde is fired as manager, because he didn’t have a popsicle’s chance in hell from the very first day of spring training.
Hyde’s tenure as the manager of the Baltimore Orioles was a result of analytics, and so, too, in the end, was his demise.
Yet general manager MIke Elias remains safe and sound, in place with his analytics, his treasured prospects, his “process,” the next two drafts, and his mid-level payroll, despite working for an ownership group, led by two multi-billionaires, that has implored him to make that payroll higher for the people of Baltimore and for the fans of the Baltimore Orioles.
And, oh, yes, for Brandon Hyde. That is, while he was still in town.
Just ask Tyler O’Neill. That is his name, right? He’s so rarely in the lineup most of us aren’t really sure.
And then there’s Charlie Morton …
Brandon Hyde deserved better. So much better.
So do Orioles fans.
Yet the Yalie and his precious process are just fine, thank you.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT