After what became Brandon Hyde’s final game as Orioles manager on Friday night at Camden Yards—a befuddling and disheartening 4-3 loss to the Washington Nationals—he didn’t have a clear answer for what happened.
“Kind of disbelief, honestly,” Hyde said in the O’s media room, beneath the seats behind home plate.
O’s closer Félix Bautista, a reliable fan-favorite, ultimately gave the game away with a mental error in the ninth inning. While covering first base on a ground ball, Bautista took a late throw from Ryan Mountcastle, then failed to remember another runner, the Nationals’ José Tena, who rounded third and scored the go-ahead run unimpeded.
The Orioles’ offense scored three runs on 14 hits and left 15 runners on base, the latest shining example of a common trait—failing in the clutch—that has plagued the team since mid-2024, and in two consecutive winless postseasons.
By Friday night, the O’s owned a 15-28 record due to mounting injuries, faltering starting pitching, and a mix of unreliable hitting and shaky defense. This was their worst record at this point since 2021, early in the organizational rebuild guided by Hyde and general manger Mike Elias.
The 2025 early-season performance recently turned from a struggle into a freefall. Losing 10 of their last 12 games diminished the O’s slim postseason chances less than two months into a year that was expected to result in a third straight playoff appearance.
“I think we have the best talent in baseball. I think you can go all the way,” O’s owner David Rubenstein told the team after winning the home opener at Camden Yards in April, 8-5 over Boston. The team’s record was 3-2 after splitting a series in Toronto, but Opening Day in Baltimore was the last time they’ve been above .500 this season.
After recent offensive performances (or more accurately, lack therof), Hyde said players were “pressing” and lamented production against left-handed pitching, similar to remarks he made toward the end of last season. At other times, Hyde attributed the poor performance to “inexperience,” though with former prospects like Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman more seasoned, that explanation seemed hard to accept. On other occasions, the O’s bullpen faltered despite effective starters and enough runs from its offense. The ugliness snowballed quickly.
After Friday’s loss, Hyde didn’t know what to say and didn’t seem motivated to say it even if he did—resigned to the club’s plight. “We’ve addressed a lot of things this year,” Hyde said when asked if he’d have a message for the team in the clubhouse. “If you continue to address, it’s going to fall silent at times. There’s been a lot of addressing. I’m sure we’re going to talk about some things. I don’t know if tonight or tomorrow is the right time—I think timing is important—because there are a lot of people that are upset in there right now.”
Hyde and the players never had that talk. On Saturday morning, GM Mike Elias fired him. And it was Elias, instead, who addressed the team at noon in the clubhouse and announced a “difficult decision” in a brief gathering.
A few hours later, the O’s lost again to Washington, 10-6, in interim manager and former third-base coach Tony Mansolino’s first game in charge, where starting pitcher Kyle Gibson allowed six runs in the first inning. (The O’s cut Gibson on Sunday.) On Sunday, the O’s lost again. The team’s best starter, Zach Eflin, gave up eight runs and 10 hits in 5 1/3 innings of a 10-4 defeat.
In one weekend of the post-Hyde era, not much has changed—aside from the team’s first six-game losing streak since 2022, before Rutschman, the former No. 1 pick, made his debut—which was the catalyst for altering the franchise’s direction. Until lately.
Why now?
When the O’s announcement relieving Hyde and assistant coach Tim Cossins—Hyde’s confidant—arrived in my inbox at 12:08 p.m. on Saturday, the timing surprised me. The pre-Preakness news had some significance, too. Three years ago, the O’s brought up Rutschman on the third Saturday in May for his MLB debut. And exactly three years later, they fired the manager who guided him and other Birds through a yearslong rebuilding project that resulted in 275 wins from 2022-24, including 101 in an A.L. division-title winning 2023.
Just weeks ago, Elias publicly supported his manager and took “responsibility” for the disastrous season start. Some took the message as Elias acknowledging he didn’t do enough to upgrade the roster in the offseason, particularly while trying to replace ace Corbin Burnes, who left for Arizona in free agency.
Elias signed Japanese veteran Tomoyuki Sugano (who has been very good) and 41-year-old Charlie Morton (not so good) to one-year contracts and brought back Gibson for depth in March, after front-end starter Grayson Rodriguez went down in spring training with an elbow injury. Eflin began the year as the O’s No. 1, but missed several weeks with a back muscle injury. He was one of 14 players to go on the injured list, something that’s hard for any team to overcome in less than two months.
Last week, before a game against the Los Angeles Angels, Hyde said he appreciated Elias’ public support and was focused on winning with this team. However, this last stretch of baseball became too much for Elias and the front office to ignore.
“As the head of baseball operations, the poor start to our season is ultimately my responsibility,” Elias said in a statement. “Part of that responsibility is pursuing difficult changes to set a different course for the future.”
Said Rubenstein: “As is sometimes the case in baseball, change becomes necessary, and we believe this is one of those moments.”
STATEMENT FROM THE ORIOLES pic.twitter.com/oDdvTO2b8W — Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) May 17, 2025
On Friday night, amid a relatively sparse crowd, Rubenstein and co-owner Mike Arougheti witnessed the defeat from the front row firsthand. A day earlier, Rubenstein was at an investment conference at Baltimore Center Stage after leaving a 4-0 home loss to the Minnesota Twins early. “I was at the game a little while ago. They lost,” Rubenstein said. “I thought if I left the game, maybe they’d do better. They didn’t do better. It’s great when you win and it’s not so great when you lose.”
For a team that prided itself on being data-driven and scrupulously process-oriented, all the losing was as surprising as it was upsetting. Elias acknowledged that. Players did, as well.
“Losing sucks. Nobody here is having a good time,” Ryan O’Hearn, the leading veteran voice in the clubhouse, said after Thursday’s game. “I’m as frustrated as anybody,” Hyde said before the first pitch Friday. And nobody seemed to have solutions nor answers to relevant questions, like why so many players have failed with runners in scoring position, and what to do about poor pitching digging the O’s into a hole early in many games.
Angst spilled out in strange, unproductive ways. “Come on, Charlie Morton. Need you,” Hyde said, almost pleadingly, of the next day’s starter ahead of a mid-April game against Cincinnati with the O’s bullpen taxed. Next came the most embarrassing defeat of the year. On Easter, the O’s lost 24-2 to the Reds. Morton, pegged as a reliable starter at season’s start, allowed seven runs in 2 1/3 innings and has since been demoted to the bullpen.
But firing Hyde was more than a reaction to the bad moments this season. It stretches back to the postseason exits. Vocal critics on social media wanted the manager fired after a second-straight postseason without a win in five games. Second-guessing lineup and bullpen decisions is warranted, but Elias stuck with Hyde this offseason.
However, in the interest of change and a sign of things to come, Hyde’s longtime assistant Fredi González was let go as part of an assistant-coach shakeup. Notably, Buck Britton, the Triple-A manager for many O’s prospects-turned-major-leaguers, was added to the staff. The hitting coaches changed, too. Robinson Chirinos, the former O’s catcher who played for Hyde and helped groom Rutschman as a rookie, replaced González as bench coach.
In an interview Saturday with MLB Network Radio, González said Hyde “got set up, somehow, and he’s got to pay the price for it. It’s a shame…They go through a bad start, and he’s got to take the blame for it.”
González spoke to Hyde. “He was fine. He was professional. I told him, ‘Welcome to the club. You’re a manager who’s been fired,’” said González, who has been let go twice. But “I thought he was going to be safe when Mike came out and said, ‘This is not his fault. This is my fault. I put together a roster that wasn’t right.’”
So, what’s the message behind this move? “The only thing I could think about is, the players see it, the locker room… Every time you lose a game, you’re waiting for the shoe to drop,” González said. “You’re waiting for somebody to come in and say, ‘We’re getting rid of two coaches. We’re getting rid of the manager.’ So maybe… let the guys breathe a little bit. And go, ‘OK, it happened… We got the manager fired and now let’s just go play baseball’ and see what happens. Because everybody’s expecting it. Everybody’s on Twitter, everybody’s on Facebook, everybody’s on the news, and that’s all you hear, [that you’re] playing bad.”
What comes next?
The change might impact the short-term mood. Hyde was never as charismatic as other managers—even when things were going great—nor as verbose with the media as, say, Buck Showalter. But lately, as the losses piled up, Hyde looked and sounded increasingly sour. Hearing another voice may benefit the players.
On his first day on the job, Mansolino—an assistant since 2021 who players describe as a great communicator with high energy—delivered a refreshing message with the goal to get back to .500 quickly.
But who knows how this will go. There are big uncertainties about the O’s path forward. Hyde’s firing should make the rest of 2025 a judgment on everything, including Elias and the Orioles’ approach for the past six years.
In pro sports, a general manager’s fate is often tied to the head coach or manager they’ve hired. When the Orioles fired Showalter in 2018 as Peter Angelos’ sons got involved in daily operations, GM Dan Duquette was let go the same day.
Elias hired Hyde in 2019. It’s uncommon for a GM to last long enough to hire and fire more than one head coach or manager—unless it’s a long-term GM like the Yankees’ Brian Cashman—because team owners typically see responsibility for decisions going from the top down.
So far, Rubenstein, who took over the Orioles from the Angelos family in 2024, has expressed public confidence in Elias—two years removed from MLB’s Executive of the Year nod—and has marveled at the data-driven approach to building the team.
“I’m still guided by Mike and his judgment,” Rubenstein told us during an interview for our April profile of him. But Rubenstein sounded like he was willing to at least be skeptical of front-office moves, too. “I guess I mostly agree with what they’re doing,” he said, “but I’m trying to learn a lot.”
Rubenstein may not be a baseball expert with decades of front-office experience (he jokes that he peaked as a Little Leaguer), but he’s a billionaire who has managed various business matters. He co-founded The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm with over $450 billion of assets under management. He also values history, avoiding the mistakes of the past, and relentlessly asks questions. He likely knows that chasing MLB’s upper echelon differs from remaining there. (Under Rubenstein, the team has replaced the heads of every major department except baseball operations, and now has fired Hyde, who was only two years removed from being named American League manager of the year.)
Players respected Hyde for any faults he had, and, according to O’Hearn, he “didn’t lose the clubhouse.” So, the focus for accountability now shifts to the players and the roster composition, via the front office.
Unfortunately, given the O’s depth in the standings, 15 games below breakeven, this is already a “lost season.” They might become sellers at the trading deadline (pending free agents like Cedric Mullins could be on the move). Personnel decisions in the rest of 2025 could now indicate the franchise’s future direction.
The Orioles aren’t ever going to spend quite like the Yankees (and nobody is like the Dodgers), but they can do better with their resources. Sign better free agents, make better trades, and they could give long-term contracts to young stars, indicating a commitment to a World Series run and attracting fans to the best ballpark in baseball.
In the meantime, though, a promising rebuild plan with a clear goal and a low bar—to get competitive again—is now in a messy state.
“It starts with one win,” Henderson said on Sunday. “Get one win and see what happens.”
It’s a worst-case scenario start to the season, and the finish is up in the air. Hyde’s firing could reboot the next 117 games, keep the O’s young core together, and be a defining experience for many of them. Or it could plunder this year’s team further into a substantial organizational revamp with more questions to follow.
Boy, how the trajectory of these Orioles has changed—and fast.