Brandon Hyde was elected the American League Manager of the Year in a vote by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
The Orioles’ manager received 27 first-place votes and beat out Texas’ Bruce Bochy and Tampa Bay’s Kevin Cash. Bochy received the other three first-place votes. The announcement was made on Tuesday.
“Those two guys who were up there as finalists, I have so much respect for,” Hyde said in a video conference call. “Kevin Cash is a great manager and been really good for a long time, and he’s going to continue to be a great manager. Bruce Bochy is Hall of Fame, and somebody that I look up to, somebody that I would like to be like someday.”
Hyde’s 27 first-place votes were the most by an AL Manager of the Year since Joe Maddon, who presented him with the award, got 27 in 2008.
Hyde, who already was named Manager of the Year by The Sporting News, guided the Orioles to a 101-win season, their most wins since 1979, and their first American League East title since 2014. He finished second last year after the Orioles won 31 more games than it did the season before.
“It means that our team had a really good year,” Hyde said. “I’m just proud of what we accomplished up to this point. It’s definitely not an individual award. I don’t look at it as that at all. I look it as a team award, an entire coaching staff award, an organizational award of what we’ve done here in five years.
“I thought we had a really special season and to win 101 games in the big leagues is so hard to do.”
He’s the first Oriole manager to receive the award since Buck Showalter in 2014. Frank Robinson (1989) and Davey Johnson (1997) were the others.
Hyde inherited a team that lost a franchise-record 115 games in 2018. The Orioles lost 108 games in 2019, and after going 25-35 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the Orioles were 52-110 in 2021 before improving to 83-79 in 2022.
“During those years, I had confidence we were going to turn this thing around,” Hyde said. “You struggle to see when … Last year you came a point where you saw the light at the end of the tunnel.”
The voting took place at the end of the regular season before the Orioles lost to Bochy’s Rangers in three games in the Division Series.
“I think I’m our guys will embrace it,” Hyde said. “They’re going to come in with a chip on their shoulder on how things ended. I know I am. We’re really proud of the regular season we had. We want to take that next step. I think everybody getting that experience of what that felt like to end the season the way it did. It’s going to fuel a lot of our guys.”
It’s been just over a month since the Division Series loss and just under three months until spring training begins in Sarasota.
“I’m just really looking forward to next year already,” Hyde said.
Roster moves: Left-hander Tucker Davidson and infielder Terrin Vavra cleared outright waivers and were assigned to Triple-A Norfolk. The Orioles 40-man roster has 36 players.
The Orioles didn’t add any players from within their organization to the 40-man roster ahead of the 6 p.m. deadline. Outfielder Hudson Haskin, catcher Maverick Handley and right-handers Jean Pinto and Ryan Watson, who was the organizational pitcher of the year, are unprotected and eligible to be selected in the Rule 5 draft on December 6th.
Call for questions: I’ll be answering Orioles’ questions this week. Please email yours to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com