Orioles front office obviously doesn't share Brandon Hyde's latest regret

When the Baltimore Orioles squared off with the Tampa Bay Rays for the second time this spring, fans beheld a familiar sight: Brandon Hyde surrounded by the beat reporters.

Though Hyde did a couple of MLB Network hits where he spent most of his time talking about how he still believed in the Orioles' talent, he has been mostly quiet since the Orioles fired him last May. Now with the Rays organization, Hyde addressed Orioles reporters and answered some questions about how he felt last season.  

He gave some thoughtful quotes reflecting on his time in Baltimore, but the one that stood out the most was a short one: “I wish I could have done more and would have done more."

Brandon Hyde might not have been able to do more to help the Orioles

This is an interesting emotion for a fired manager to harbor. Hyde wasn't a perfect manager, but the Orioles weren't 15-28 on the day he got fired because of his lineup decisions or bullpen management. The Orioles were bad because they were a wild-card team that lost important players in free agency and replaced them with even worse players. The O's were set up to fail by their front office.

Hyde saying that he wishes he could have done more is nice, but what more could he have done? In reality, not much. The problem for the Orioles is that there were people who could have done more and chose not to, and those people didn't get fired. One of them actually got promoted.

Injuries and underperformance played a role in the Orioles' downfall, but the real culprit for Baltimore's 2025 season was the front office.

Just look at the impact of their offseason acquisitions. The only two starters with MLB experience the Orioles signed last year were Charlie Morton and Kyle Gibson. The Orioles lost all 16 games that Morton and Gibson pitched in before Hyde was fired. All of them. Hyde was handed two MLB starting pitchers to patch together his rotation, and those guys did nothing but lose until he got fired.

The Orioles added $72 million in payroll to bring in eight free agents, and five of those eight contributed negative WAR to the Orioles in 2025. Excluding Ramon Laureano, the total contribution of those free agents was -1.9 WAR. Mike Elias basically used free agency to tie an expensive anchor to his team's legs, then threw them into the ocean.  

Free agency isn't the only way to bring in talent during the offseason; trades are another option. During the 2025 offseason, the Orioles didn't make a single impactful trade. All they did was exchange cash for players who had been DFA'd. The total net WAR from the players they got in those deals was zero.

There's not a manager on earth who could've taken the ingredients the Orioles gave him and made it into something edible. That team was set up to fail, and this year's team has been set up very similarly. If Kyle Bradish and Taylor Rogers go down with injuries the way Grayson Rodriguez and Zach Eflin did last season, and then Chris Bassitt is washed the way Morton was last season, is this rotation any different than the last one?

The Orioles front office clearly doesn't share Hyde's regrets about 2025. They had a chance to do better this offseason, and they ran back a very similar offseason to the last one, plus Pete Alonso. The Orioles might have better health luck in 2026 and should win more games, but the underlying process that got them into trouble last season remains.