Craig Albernaz calls out Orioles' longstanding culture amidst slow start to 2026

From the moment Craig Albernaz was announced as the Baltimore Orioles' new manager, he has put a focus on playing good defense. Throughout spring training, the word that cropped up in many interviews with players and coaches across the team was "fundamentals". With that being the case it must have been driving him up the wall to watch from the dugout as the Orioles threw the series against the Pirates away with sloppy defense and poor fundamentals.

After the Orioles' first game against the White Sox (where, to their credit, they showed up defensively), Albernaz let loose a very honest quote while talking with Andy Kostka of the Baltimore Banner:

"Defense hasn't been really been in the forefront here for a long time, and that's something we're instilling."

Craig Albernaz put his team on notice by calling out the way they've defended for years

It's a pretty open shot at the way the Orioles were doing things before Albernaz arrived. Obviously, every manager who takes over for a fired manager is going to feel like there are some things that need to be done differently, but they usually don't say those things out loud to the media. Albernaz went ahead and said it: the Orioles have not put the proper amount of focus on defense.

It's easy to see how this happened. The Orioles have a very analytical front office, and defense is one of the hardest things for analytics to quantify. Since the Orioles wanted to give themselves the best shot at hitting on their draft picks, they drafted and developed based on what they could quantify. So they have a lot of players who can hit the ball hard and make good swing decisions, who sometimes play sloppy defense.

That's not to say that the Orioles players are bad at defense. They have a lot of players who are talented defenders, but when Albernaz talks about putting defense at the forefront, he's not talking about individuals having the ability to make a diving catch and make a difficult throw across the diamond. He is talking about the whole team taking defense seriously.

Things like PFPs translating to the game, the outfielders hitting the cutoff man every time, the infielders communicating on every pop-up, and all the other small things that good teams do and bad teams don't

As the Orioles have gotten younger and younger each year, with more veterans leaving and being replaced by prospects, they have done these small things less and less. That is precisely what Albernaz is trying to change. Changing the Orioles' defensive culture is not something that happens overnight, or even over a single spring training. It's going to take time, but as long as Albernaz is willing to hold players accountable, the Orioles' team culture around defense will steadily improve.