Hyde: "I'm as frustrated as anybody"

Brandon Hyde walked into the auxiliary clubhouse again yesterday, also known as “the interview room,” where a table, chair and microphone are set up for him and the media waits for his arrival. Injury updates are a popular topic on this club, and the first questions focused on Tyler O’Neill’s removal from the lineup due to a sore left shoulder, Heston Kjerstad’s right elbow and the lack of a timeline on Gary Sánchez, who wears a brace on his injured right wrist and isn’t doing any baseball activities.

The Orioles had lost nine of their last 11 games and 16 of 22, with another defeat coming later, and it would be neglectful to only take the temperature of the clubhouse as players try to cope with the adversity and search for a way to fix it. The manager’s office also can be a dark place.

Hyde made it through the rebuild, won back-to-back Sporting News Manager of the Year awards and one from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, guided the Orioles to consecutive playoff appearances and hopped on the speculative hot seat this season.

It doesn’t take long to feel the heat.

Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias has offered his support of Hyde in numerous interviews in media scrums, on the radio and on podcasts. It felt like a tour except he wasn’t seeking out venues. The requests poured in and he accepted, as if knowing that the subject had to be addressed.

Hyde expressed his appreciation in Anaheim. And he explained yesterday how he copes with the losing, which is unlike the rebuild kind because of the raised expectations. This is supposed to be a World Series contender, not a last-place team that hasn’t hit, pitched or fielded to acceptable standards.

“I’m as frustrated as anybody, and I try not to show that to the team,” Hyde said before a sloppy 4-3 loss to the Nationals. “I think there’s appropriate time to show that to the team, but I also try to be as consistent as I can, as well. We’re super positive in the dugout. Now, there are times when things haven’t gone real well where we have addressed it, and firmly. But it’s still a long season, these guys need our support. I want to be there to support them in any way that I possibly can.”

But who’s there for Hyde?

The same group that reached out during the ugliness that unfolded while Elias was working to build a winner.

“My support comes from family, comes from friends,” Hyde said. “I do have people around the league that I talk to quite frequently that do watch our games and kind of see we’re going through a little bit. So yeah, I lean on a lot of people.”

Can they hit with runners in scoring position?

The Orioles went 4-for-15 last night and stranded 15, leaving Hyde, in his words, “in disbelief.” For more than a few reasons.  

* Adley Rutschman was halfway to the cycle through three innings and produced his first three-hit game since Opening Day. He bounced a single up the middle, lined a double to center at 102.3 mph for his second multi-hit game this month and reached on an infield hit.

An accurate throw from Nationals third baseman José Tena would have gotten Rutschman, but accept the generosity where you can find it.

“I think for me, I’ve got great people around me, great coaches, and we’re putting in the work every single day,” he said. “I think for me it’s just trying to do what I can for the team right now, and trying to win.”

Hyde spent most of yesterday’s media session talking about the All-Star catcher, with a Grayson Rodriguez update inquiry interrupting the flow for a brief moment.

“Adley, me, the hitting coaches, we have a lot of conversations,” Hyde said. “We’re very close. I thought last year, he wasn’t himself in that he was in a funk that he had a hard time getting out of. I think this year he’s mentally in a really good spot. He feels good, he’s seeing the ball well, he’s swinging at more strikes. I thought last year there was a lot of chase. He was chasing hits, and so he was taking un-Adley like at-bats. I’m seeing more Adley-like at-bats this year. And the hit (Thursday) shows me that he’s in a better place.

“He’s rapped a couple balls to the first baseman hard. That’s not really him, but he is getting the barrel to the baseball. I just talked to him the other day about, let’s see how many doubles we can hit the rest of the year. Let’s see how many line drives we can hit through the gaps the rest of the year, to try to keep it a little more flat, stay in the middle of the field, because that’s the hitter he is with the pull power.”

* The Orioles snapped a string of 33 games with 11 hits or fewer, tied for the second longest single streak in team history, trailing the 35-game stretch from April 21-May 30, 1988.

They have lost 28 of their first 43 games for the eighth time in team history and the first since 2019.