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NEW YORK – Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino is celebrating his 43rd birthday, joking with media earlier today about being old but mostly somber over the finality of the season.
“It’s always a weird feeling,” he said. “There’s certainly a strange feeling of unfinished business in a lot of ways because our fate is to go home and we’re not gonna have a workout day tomorrow and then kind of prep ourselves for a hopeful playoff run that we’ve had the last couple years. That feeling we’ve had. It’s very different, it’s a little sad is probably the right word that we’re at this point.
“Just sad in some ways.”
Joy was missing again in the Bronx today. The Orioles were swept.
Game 162 concluded with the Orioles losing 3-2 to the Yankees before an announced crowd of 45,004. They went 60-59 under Mansolino after he replaced Brandon Hyde, who was 15-28 prior to his dismissal.
"I don’t know if I’ve processed it yet," said infielder Jordan Westburg. "It’s hard to end the season this way after the last couple years, the teams that I’ve been able to be a part of and making the postseason and having some really special celebratory moments. So that part is hard. There’s a lot of feelings going on inside of me. I’ll take a moment to process them. I don’t know if I can put them into words right now, but for right now, just a little bit of disappointment."
Asked whether he's going home angry, Dean Kremer said, "I don't think it's going to be much different. Making it to playoffs, not making the playoffs, either way, you're going home angry, which is the fate we've been dealt this year. But I mean, a lot of guys learned a lot of things baseball-related, not baseball-related, on the field, off the field about themselves and kind of taking it to the next level next year."
Ben Rice hit his second homer of the game, a leadoff shot against Rico Garcia in the eighth, to break a 2-2 tie.
Kyle Bradish allowed two runs and struck out eight over 69 pitches in his sixth start after returning from ligament-reconstructive surgery. Rice homered with one out in the bottom of the first inning, a 421-foot shot to center field. Three straight singles to open the fourth, the last by Giancarlo Stanton, tied the game 2-2.
Bradish struck out next three batters. He allowed five hits, walked none and finished with a 2.53 ERA.
"I think coming off the surgery and coming back after the long rehab, I think he probably exceeded a lot of expectations," Mansolino said. "I think that last start against New York last week was the kind of final nail in the coffin for me in terms of feeling really positive where he’s at and where he’s headed. I thought he threw the ball great today in a lot of ways. We were gonna shorten him up regardless. Initially we went out there thinking maybe three innings, threw the ball so good, felt so good, that we extended it an inning. Glad we did. Glad to see him pitch another inning. But yeah, feel great about him.”
"I think the biggest thing is being healthy," Bradish said. "I haven’t had a normal offseason for two years, so it’ll be nice to do a lot of things and work on a lot of stuff.”
Luis Gil kept the Orioles hitless until Westburg and Gunnar Henderson delivered back-to-back home runs with one out in the fourth to tie Jackson Holliday for the team lead with 17.
The score stayed level in the sixth after Westburg’s leadoff single and Henderson’s walk. Westburg was out at the plate on Adley Rutschman’s roller to pitcher Fernando Cruz, and Ryan Mountcastle was retired on a 395-foot fly ball near the left-center field fence.
Kremer entered in relief in the bottom of the sixth and tossed 1 1/3 hitless innings. He finished with 171 2/3 innings this season, one short of matching his career high. Garcia replaced him and struck out two in the seventh before Rice came through to give the Orioles their 87th loss.
"We really wanted for the Yankees not to be able to clinch on their field today," Kremer said. "That was our ultimate goal. I told them I'd be available, and that was the game plan going in. To get used or not, I was there and available."
It wasn't a save situation. Nothing could save the Orioles in 2025.
"A lot of guys learned a lot of different things over the course of this year, on the field, off the field, learning how to prepare, learning how to have a consistent routine, and kind of getting to know themselves," Kremer said. "Because a lot of those guys, the position players we have or even the bullpen guys, are fairly young and still kind of trying to adapt to the big leagues, which is the hardest league there is and the best competition you're going to face. Learning themselves, I think that's probably the biggest thing going forward for every guy to kind of understand their archetype and move on from there."
The interim tag will be torn from Mansolino, perhaps as early as Monday, but the two reasons are full-time promotion or stepping away while the organization searches for a replacement.
“I’ve grown up in this business, I’ve watched my dad (Doug) go through it,” he said. “Hopeful I’ll wear an Orioles uniform in the future one way or another, but also understand that it’s very likely I have to go find a job here in the next couple of days and go look around.
“It is part of the business. It’s not a sympathetic thing, by any means. It’s just when you sign up to be a coach and you coach in the big leagues, things change and things change quick. And that’s just how this thing goes. I do believe strongly that if you do things right and you do a good job and you treat people the right way, there’s always going to be an opportunity somewhere.”
Mansolino is proud that the Orioles played above .500 after May 16, that the effort didn’t lag and the clubhouse didn’t fracture.
“I would say I’m happy with that, knowing that we still haven’t been whole, we still have a lot of injuries, we traded away half the team two months ago, played such a difficult schedule,” Mansolino said. “I don’t think satisfied is the right word in a lot of ways. It’s hard to be satisfied. It still feels like a failure deep down inside, knowing that the Yankees are going on here to play in the postseason and we’re not. Knowing that Boston’s going on to play and we’re not. Toronto, a team we beat up last year, they’re going to play and we’re not. So you do feel like a failure in a lot of ways, but also just trying to compartmentalize the different parts of the year.
“Sure, there’s some happiness with having a winning record considering the circumstances, but that’s more of a consolation prize than anything. I don’t think we signed up for that.”
The more pleasant moments come when Mansolino looks beyond final scores and standings and concentrates more on the environment.
“Just kind of what we did in the building, just kind of building that thing up and getting that culture and getting that room in the right place and seeing the happiness of the players, the happiness of the staff, people buying into what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do,” he said. “I think that’s where I feel like the biggest success in the last 4 ½ months is.”
Today brought a merciful end to a season that felt twice as long as 162 games.
"I think there needs to be a reflection from everybody in this clubhouse, on a big scale and on a small scale," Westburg said. "What did every individual do or did not do to add to this or to make us where we are? And then, kind of what can we do to change things? It’s going to be different for everybody. Everybody’s going to have a different scenario or come into camp maybe with a different opportunity. I think everybody’s a professional, though, and they’ll reflect and correct."
“Losing is really miserable and really hard to go through," Mansolino said. "I don’t think when you feel miserable and you’re unhappy with how you’re playing, things go by quickly. I think it’s quite the opposite. I do think it slows to a crawl in a lot of ways.
"You know, strangely though, with how this team did play for four months, 4 ½ months, and you take away that April and May, and if you strip those two months out right there, we would have been playing very important games here in September, and likely with a different roster in a lot of ways. Proud of the guys, regardless of how those first two months went. But yeah, it was a long year.”
Mansolino knows the cliché. Divisions aren't won in April but they can be lost. The Orioles went 9-16, followed by a 9-18 May.
Dreams were done.
"I felt like we showed a lot of fight these last few weeks," Bradish said. "We started playing good ball. Unfortunately, we dug ourselves in a bigger hole to start the year, but I think the focus of this offseason and next year is just coming out, working on everything we need to do to not have that happen next year.”
“I do think that’s the intent for every team every year," Mansolino said of a fast start. "How an organization and a team manifests that intent is another story.”
