It's An Absolute Joke That Terry Francona Beat Out Brandon Hyde For AL Manager Of The Year
Look, I'm fine with Adley Rutschman finishing 2nd to Julio Rodriguez in AL ROY, but the buck stops with Brandon Hyde losing AL Manager Of The Year to Terry Francona. Just another sham of an award given out by MLB.
Two of the three finalists in the AL made it to the playoffs, with Francona leading the Guardians and Scott Servais leading the Mariners. But only one of these guys had a team that was projected to lose 100 games and brought them to an 83 win season. That man is Brandon Hyde.
This Orioles team was picked to finish basically dead last by every publication and media person out there, but there they were STILL in Wild Card contention on October 1st. What Brandon Hyde did with this team was unbelievable and he 100% should have been Manager Of The Year. I mean the Orioles were the only team since 1900 to post a winning record a season after losing at least 110 games....is that not good enough? Literally historic things.
Last year they won 52 games! They had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, lost their ace 5 days into the season, traded away Trey Mancini and their lone All Star in Jorge Lopez, yet they were in contention nearly the entire season. A roster made up of some first rounders, waiver claims, Rule-5 guys, and savvy veterans had Hyde and the Orioles in the headlines all summer long. And I know that he didn't manage his bullpen the best, or that not every Orioles fan loved his "punt" lineups. But the guy did a lot with what he had.
No offense to Francona but let's be real, the AL Central stinks. It's a bad division. Servais had a super talented team that underperformed last year and finally rounded into form this year, but again that division is awful. Hyde and the Orioles were going up against MONSTERS all season and they held their own the entire time.
I get the arguments about Hyde not being an awesome manager too. A lot of the manager duties are now done on laptops by suits upstairs. The lineups, shifts, pitch calling, etc. all comes from analytics and suits now. These managers aren't doing it like the guys did in the '80s. But you also have to give him credit for somehow getting every ounce of talent out of these guys and bringing them to 83 wins when they were projected to win around 60. And yes, this is the same manager who had this team in 2021 when they only won 53 games. So why give him the credit and not Mike Elias for putting this team together? Because that is how this award works, the manager gets the credit. Just the amount of things this team had go against them and they still posted their first season above .500 since 2016.
The Orioles overachieved at an insane rate and no one even saw them coming, how do you not reward Hyde for a record setting season like this? This should have been Brandon Hyde's award, no doubt about it.
PS: Whoever voted for Aaron Boone should be forced to give up their vote.