Orioles fans won't like Tony Mansolino's comments on Baltimore now that he left town

Tony Mansolino took over as interim manager after the Baltimore Orioles fired Brandon Hyde in mid-May and tried to make the best of a difficult situation. He was inexperienced, and it showed, so it wasn't surprising when the Orioles chose to hire one of the best managerial candidates on the market, Craig Albernaz, rather than promote Mansolino from the interim role. Surprising or not, it appears Mansolino harbors a bit of ill will, and he let his feelings be known in a recent interview with local Atlanta media.

While extolling the virtues of his new manager Walt Weiss, Mansolino said the following:

"Being here, coming out of the situation that I just came from, and I don't say this lightly, I feel like he kind of rescued me in a lot of ways and got me over into this place and working under him and I couldn't be any happier."

Tony Mansolino

Tony Mansolino took an unnecessary shot at the Orioles

It's an odd thing to say. Every year, a handful of managers are fired, leading to interim managers being named, and the majority of those interim managers do not get promoted to full-time managers at the end of the season. It's hard to remember an interim manager leaving a team at the end of a season and then, upon arriving with his new team, speaking negatively about his previous team.

Mansolino saying he was "rescued" was a direct shot at the Orioles. It's also quite dramatic. "Rescued"??? Like a cat out of a tree? Like a shipwrecked sailor on a deserted island? Like Lois Lane being held captive by Lex Luther? The 2025 Orioles season was certainly disappointing, but it wasn't a tire fire; there weren't fights in the dugout, and the only person taking shots at others through the media was Mansolino.

It could be suggested that Mansolino didn't mean much by the comment, but the "I don't say this lightly" part of his quote betrays that. "I don't say this lightly" means that Mansolino did think about what his comment meant, weighed what making his comment would mean, and decided to say it. According to Mansolino, the situation in Baltimore was that he did great, and it was so bad that Walt Weiss had to rescue him. Again, the question remains: if, as a manager, you are "passing with flying colors," then who do you need to be "rescued" from? The players? Mike Elias? The Carlyle Group?

Mansolino's quote can be summarized as him saying that being in Atlanta under Walt Weiss is much better than being in Baltimore. What's frustrating about that comment is that Mansolino had the same job in Baltimore as Weiss has in Atlanta. If Atlanta's manager is what makes working in Atlanta great, and working in Baltimore while YOU were the manager was a situation that you needed to be "rescued from", whose fault is that?

The comment is clearly meant as a dig at the Orioles, but if anything, it's Mansolino admitting he was in over his head as manager. At his end of season press conference, Mansolino said that he had shown that he was ready to be an MLB manager. His quote was: "I do feel strongly that I passed with flying colors in a lot of ways."

The truth is that Tony Mansolino did not "pass with flying colors"; he was a poor manager. He consistently said strange things about his own players in his press conferences, which made it so the players had to answer awkward questions from the media. He overused Felix Bautista during his return from injury, leading to a season-ending shoulder injury. He communicated poorly with his players regarding role changes during the season. Perhaps worst of all, he referred to runs as points.