Hyde caps 101-win season as AL Manager of the Year
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BALTIMORE -- Brandon Hyde etched his name in the Orioles’ history books with a 101-win 2023 campaign. It led to national recognition for the 50-year-old manager on Tuesday night, as he became a member of an illustrious club that previously featured only three Baltimore managers.
Hyde was named the winner of the 2023 American League Manager of the Year Award, becoming the fourth Orioles skipper to receive the honor after Frank Robinson (1989), Davey Johnson (‘97) and Buck Showalter (2014). Hyde received 27 of the 30 first-place votes cast by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and finished with 144 points.
As expected, Hyde was quick to credit those around him in Baltimore’s organization -- his coaching staff, general manager Mike Elias and, of course, his players.
“It means that our team had a really good year, honestly,” Hyde said. “I’m just proud of what we’ve accomplished up until this point. And this is definitely not an individual award; I don’t look at it as that at all. I look at it as a team award, an entire coaching staff award, really an organizational award of what we’ve done here. ...
“I thought we had a really special season, and to win 101 games in the big leagues is so hard to do.”
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In fact, no other AL manager guided his team to 100 or more wins in the regular season. Not even Texas’ Bruce Bochy or Tampa Bay’s Kevin Cash, the other two finalists for the honor. Both were previous MOY winners -- Bochy with the Padres in 1996, and Cash with the Rays in both 2020 and ‘21.
Bochy was the runner-up with 61 points and three first-place votes, while Cash placed third with 52 points. Balloting took place at the conclusion of the regular season -- before Bochy’s Rangers swept Hyde’s Orioles in the AL Division Series and went on to win the first World Series championship in Texas’ franchise history.
“Those two guys that were up there as finalists, I have so much respect for,” said Hyde, a first-time winner. “I’m just proud to be in that conversation, honestly. I’m proud to be on the same panel as guys that have done a lot of really cool things in this job.”
Hyde’s 27 first-place votes were the most received in AL Manager of the Year voting since 2008, when then-Tampa Bay skipper Joe Maddon also nabbed 27. Maddon joined Tuesday’s MLB Network broadcast to announce the victory for Hyde, a former Cubs assistant who worked under Maddon from 2015-18.
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The past two years have been a stark turnaround for Baltimore, which was amid a rebuild when it hired Hyde as manager in December 2018. Over his first three seasons at the helm from 2019-21, the O’s went 131-253 and lost 108 or more games twice -- the lone exception being their 25-35 pandemic-shortened ‘20 campaign.
In 2022, the Orioles showed improvement by going 83-79, and Hyde finished second in AL Manager of the Year voting to the Guardians’ Terry Francona. In ‘23, Baltimore took another big step forward, emerging as a legitimate contender in the AL.
One of only three teams in MLB to win 100-plus games this year, the Orioles went 101-61 and won their first AL East title since 2014. They seized the No. 1 seed in the AL and appeared in the postseason for the first time since ‘16.
It was the fifth-best regular season in Baltimore history, as the team won 100 or more games for the first time since 1980 (100-62) and 101 games for the first time since ‘79 (102-57). Hyde became only the second manager to lead the O’s to a 100-win season, joining Hall of Famer Earl Weaver, who accomplished the feat five times.
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The Orioles had an MLB-high-tying 48 comeback victories and never lost more than four consecutive games this season. They also haven’t been swept in any of their past 91 multigame regular-season series, a streak that ranks third in AL/NL history and dates back to May 2022.
Baltimore is the only team in AL/NL history to go from losing 110-plus games (52-110 in 2021) to winning 100-plus games in a three-season span.
“During those years, I had confidence that we were going to turn this thing around, but you struggle to see when. You struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel, honestly,” Hyde said. “To come as far as we have -- when you look at the roster in ‘19 and ‘20, it’s a lot of different players. It’s been a lot of homegrown guys and a lot of guys that we’ve developed at the big league level, and so you feel good about that.”