If the money owed on the contract weren’t so substantial, Davis wouldn’t be with this team in a rebuild. The 33-year-old first baseman is in the fourth season of a seven-year, $161 million deal, which has been a disaster since he signed it in January 2016. How long will the Chris Davis leash be?Īfter struggling through the worst offensive season of any big-league qualifier in baseball history in 2018, the Orioles’ two-time home run champ is looking to regain at least some of his past successes. It’s going to be fascinating to see what happens to it in the next few years.
You can’t get more of a clean slate in baseball than the Orioles’ analytics department. Mejdal loves the challenge of building from the ground up it’s why he left Houston at the end of last season without having another position set. The former NASA engineer is tasked with finding new ways to give his current employer an extra edge. The programs that Mejdal created with the Astros are commonplace in baseball now. The second is staying ahead of the curve. That’s Elias, Mejdal and Co.’s first challenge. But it means little if it’s not applied in ways that produce on-field results. Having access to more information is fantastic. Statistical analysis and adaptive technology have been primary focuses of this new regime, and the players already have seen a huge difference, whether it’s major-league pitchers having bullpen sessions recorded by high-motion cameras or minor-leaguers learning analytics in classroom-type settings from their new pitching coordinator, Chris Holt, also formerly with Houston. When John and Louis Angelos hired a new top executive to lead the club, they settled on Elias, a former assistant general manager of the Houston Astros, the sport’s groundbreaking organization when it comes to producing advanced information.Įlias’ first hire was Sig Mejdal, who basically created the Astros’ analytics department, as assistant GM. The Orioles arguably were the worst team in baseball when it came to using analytics to get an edge on the playing field, whether that was the small analytics team’s fault or an unwillingness by the previous staff to embrace the information presented (or a little bit of both). How will advanced information affect this team going forward? He needs to make sure he’s not 65 in three years. I’ve seen some good baseball men be worn out by continual losing. How he handles the losing will probably decide how long he stays in this job. He has an easygoing demeanor with an intensity that seemingly boils near the surface. But how he stresses those common ideals is more intriguing to me. We know he wants his team to be aggressive on the basepaths, play tight defense and continually give max effort. Regardless, we won’t get a grasp of Hyde’s managerial style until the games count for real. The modern manager is often viewed as a glorified button-pusher for new-millennium front offices that basically give the dugout leader a script and say, “Follow this.” New general manager Mike Elias says that’s not his style, and I don’t think Hyde would have come on board if he thought that were the case, and he wouldn’t be able to make his mark. He took the Orioles job because he thinks the plans are in place to be able to turn things around fairly quickly. As Joe Maddon’s bench coach in Chicago, Hyde likely would have remained a hot commodity and would have landed something in the future. And although he wasn’t hired by any of those clubs, just being in the conversation - and that many conversations - means something in baseball circles. He had four other managerial interviews in 2018. I’ll say this about Hyde: He didn’t take this Orioles’ job simply because he wanted to be a big-league skipper. That’s why skippers of rebuilding clubs are often placeholders, managers hired to be fired when the losses mount.
Because it’s often difficult to get a read on a manager’s style and in-game acumen when the ship he is trying to captain is always taking on water. This will be a developing storyline stretching beyond this year.
How will Brandon Hyde be as a manager, and how will he handle losing? You certainly can add yours in the comments section. I thought I’d share five things I’ll be watching this season to get a sense of these Orioles. Regardless, we’ll learn plenty about this club as 2019 pushes on. They may lose 100, 110, 115 or, possibly, stunningly, even more. The Orioles begin their regular season today at Yankee Stadium, and they’ll play 161 other games, too.
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