While analytics get slagged in public from time to time, the truth is that virtually all teams depend on various in-house numbers to grade their players. In the public space we have WAR, WARP, VORP, and POOP, and OK fine I made that last one up, but the point is there are lots and lots of ways we have to grade players with exceptional levels of accuracy. Lots and lots of very smart people have spent millions of hours working on this and the result is a very good level of accuracy.
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What we don’t have is a way to grade managers beyond team record. Just look at the Manager of the Year award. It always goes to the manager of the team that surprised. Always. If people thought the Brewers would be lousy this year but they won 91 games and a Wild Card spot, Craig Counsell gets the award. That’s mostly because grading managers has come about as far in the last 150 years as I have towards winning a Pulitzer. Yes I write things and they are sometimes published, but that’s about as close as I get.
This is all to say that Orioles manager Brandon Hyde could be a terrible manager. Or he could be the best manager in baseball. And we would have very little idea. There is no real way to tell. I bring all this up because, while it hasn’t been confirmed, it is believed that Hyde is in the last year of his contract. The Orioles aren’t going to move on from him now, but it’s an open question as to whether or not he’s the best man for the job as this organization looks to compete for a championship in the coming seasons.
Hyde’s fitness for his job in future seasons is difficult to discern from the outside for a number of reasons, but mainly because we have very little idea how he’s performed his job in past seasons. Hyde has managed one full season with the Orioles in 2019 and then whatever last season was. In total his teams have a record of 79-143. That’s a .356 winning percentage which is, charitably, hot garbage. But of course no manager could have posted a winning record with the 2019 or 2020 Orioles because they were bad. And you can make an argument that going 25-35 in 2020 was an example of fantastic managing.
That argument was based on how the team performed on the field, so the problem with that is that managers don’t have a huge effect in how teams perform on the field. Or, if they do, it’s very difficult to replicate once it’s happened. Just because you turned J.D. Martinez into an All Star from a quad-A player by teaching him to change his swing doesn’t mean you can do the same thing with Rio Ruiz or Richie Martin. Primarily the manager’s job is as a leader. Set a good atmosphere, a positive place that players like to go, and make sure everyone gets along and competes to the best of their ability blah blah blah. Something like that. But how do you grade that? And if you can possibly figure that how, how did Brandon Hyde do?
First, I should say that I don’t know. I imagine the Orioles have an idea, but as I said these things are nebulous and ill-defined, and that makes any concrete definitions extremely difficult. If someone were to ask me, and let’s be clear, nobody did, but if someone did, I’d say a manager is a lot like a doctor. The first rule they teach you in medical school (so I’ve been told) is first do no harm. Doctors are supposed to help people, but before you help someone, make sure what you’re about to do isn’t going to make things worse. No bleedings, for example. Managers are in that same boat. Changing a player’s swing is great in theory. Improve the launch angle, more homers, all good. Except messing with someone’s swing is fraught territory. It wouldn’t be all that shocking if you confused a player and ruined their swing while doing that. That’s the managerial equivalent of hearing your patient is sick and telling them what they need is to remove the bad humors in their blood.
There are some ways to analyze Hyde’s job though. I can think of four broad questions to answer which could give us a better chance of understanding Hyde as a manager.
- Improvement in Team Performance
How did the team perform over the course of the year? Did they get worse? Did they get better?
Hyde has only been the manager for two seasons and one of those was severely abbreviated so I’m not placing any stock in this question for now. He’ll be the manager for the 2021 season though and this would be a good question to ask when reviewing his performance this season. - Young Player Development
How about young players? Are they improving or stagnating once they reach the majors? That’s a particularly important measuring stick for Hyde, considering where expectations are for the Orioles. This is an important measuring stick, but in this case it’s an incomplete one. On one hand, a number of prospects did come up and perform well. Ryan Mountcastle hit the cover off the ball for 35 big league games. Keegan Akin pitched very well for 25 innings over six starts (eight games), and Dean Kremer started four games and had mixed success but definitely looked good at times. On the other hand, Austin Hays had a very successful 21 game cup of coffee in 2019 but faltered in 33 games in 2020.
What does that say about Hyde as a manager? Hard to say. Nothing all that bad at least, as he’s seen four young players come up and have success. This is another question to look back on after a presumably longer and more relevant 2021 season is completed. - In-Game Strategy
There are some in-game strategies we know are generally self-defeating and managers who insist on those strategies are often those who, broadly, aren’t the most open thinkers. Looking at are sacrifice bunts, intentional walks, and steals can give us some insight into a manager’s ability to assess and incorporate data into his strategies. We can look at how the Orioles did in those categories as a general reflection on their manager.
Hyde didn’t issue a lot of intentional walks (very frequently intentional walks lower your win expectancy) and he didn’t try to steal third often (again an often self-defeating strategy where the high risk isn’t worth the low reward). That said, he wasn’t in a lot of close games where late game strategy was important so that could be why he didn’t try those frequently. Further, looking at sacrifice bunts, Hyde called for the most sac bunts of any manager in baseball (15) and did so at the highest rate (2.8 percent) of any manager. That’s not great. Toss a bookmark in there. - Listening to Him Talk
A manager’s job involves a lot of communication. A good manager has to be able to communicate with all sorts of different players, coaches, and front office people. If a person can’t talk, can’t listen, can’t clearly articulate their thoughts, then they are probably not a great fit for the job.
If you listen to Hyde talk, he’s articulate, but you can hear that he talks a lot like a player talks. I watched a few interviews he did recently and he shows some humanity while talking. He clearly cares about his players, he explained what his young players did to improve the team, and he effectively dodged a question about Adley Rutschman’s timetable for joining the major league team. He wasn’t extremely impressive in the way Terry Francona might be, but he sounded fine, in command, and perfectly capable.
What does all this say? Nothing definitive, certainly. You might get something different out of it than I do. I hear and see a manager who is still somewhat inexperienced, but is capable if not outstanding. I see a manager who hasn’t been battle-tested in a pennant race, but who we have terribly incomplete information on and who hasn’t had a full chance to realize whatever potential he possesses. Most importantly at least for Hyde, I see a manager who, in a limited but not unimportant sample, has allowed important young players to have success at the major league level when they come up, and one who has a good working relationship with the front office. For the Orioles that’s vital, but it’s vital to right now, maybe less so in a few years.
Some writers have advocated extending Hyde’s contract. I don’t see anything here that argues strongly against that, but I don’t see a strong argument for it either. If the Orioles have better information internally, and I sure hope they do, I’d trust their judgement on this issue. If it were up to me, I’d wait as long as possible before extending his contract, and then extend him only if it’s at a reasonable price, to preserve the team’s ability to change horses midstream if necessary.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.