Orioles manager Brandon Hyde wakes up early every morning in Florida with the mindset that’s baked into a baseball man this time of year, when spring training would be wrapping up and the season fast approaching: “I have 47 things to do.”
The league-wide shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, now a week old, means he actually doesn’t. With that time spent mostly unpacking what it meant for his team, Hyde said he and the coaching staff are mostly trying to figure out ways to keep the players healthy and ready for whenever the season starts.
“It’s a strange period of time and we’re staying positive and we’re going to get through this thing,” Hyde said on a conference call Friday. “There’s just not a whole lot to do right now.”
Most pressing, he said, was how to keep the team’s pitchers ready. Presumed Opening Day start John Means threw a five-inning simulated game on March 11. If the season wasn’t delayed from its original March 26 start date, Means would have pitched six innings earlier this week, tried for seven this weekend, and been fully ready for Opening Day against the Yankees.
The major league starters were all on similar progressions. Hyde said a lot of energy was going toward figuring out how to best prepare a throwing program “that they’re going to be on here for a while with an unclear date of when that’s going to end.”
While Hyde seemed to speculate a second spring training could be as short as seven to 10 days, he acknowledged pitchers were the main challenge.
“We were getting guys built up, and now with this layoff we have no idea how long that’s going to be,” he said. “So, that is a challenge. We’re putting together throwing programs and plans for guys individually with the thought of [how] it’s an unclear timeline of when to be ready. I think we’ll hopefully have a better idea as we are going along. But as of right now, it’s an individualized plan for everybody that our medical team as well as our trainers, strength coaches, pitching coaches have all gotten together with on conference calls and how we’re going to really talk and put these plans together in place for our pitchers.“
In the offseason, pitching coach Doug Brocail, bullpen coach Darren Holmes and director of pitching Chris Holt were in frequent contact with pitchers on where they were in their offseason work, exchanging video and using that as a way to reinforce that players were addressing what the team wanted from them.
Hyde said those types of things will continue through the shutdown.
“I think that there’s going to be a lot of FaceTime calls, a lot of video sent back and forth, there’s going to be a lot of coaching we’re going to be doing through video or through FaceTime through video or through FaceTime,” he said. “Whether we’re going to evaluate to make a major league club because of that, I doubt that. That’s not going to happen. It’s more making sure that these guys are on track, following the plan; how they look with their mechanics; how they feel physically, and that they’re continuing to work on the same things they were working on a week ago, making sure they’re on track with that.”
Evaluations, both for pitchers and position players, in terms of who will make the team once the season starts could prove complicated as well. Hyde said he liked where the team was at last week when things shut down, with starting pitchers, relievers and bench players all creating tough decisions. He said they’ll weigh what they saw then and what they see once workouts resume in making roster decisions.
“We’re always going to do what’s right and what’s best for the Orioles and the players,” Hyde said. “Decision making on the final roster — we don’t even know what any of the new rules are going to come into place with roster size or anything. I think there’s a lot of questions still to be answered.”
Mancini update
Hyde said he’s been frequently texting with outfielder Trey Mancini, who had surgery last week to remove a malignant tumor in his colon. Executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said Thursday that Mancini was in good spirits and out of the hospital, and Hyde echoed that.
“His texts to me are extremely positive and uplifting,” Hyde said. “I try to uplift him and he uplifts me. He’s obviously a really special guy, as we all know, and I’m thinking about him and feel really good about where he is mentally.”
Around the horn
Hyde said outfield DJ Stewart, who had offseason ankle surgery and was nearing a return to games before things shut down, will be helped some by the shutdown. “We expect him to be ready to go whenever we start,” Hyde said. … Hyde said none of the teams injured players have elected surgery to take advantage of the downtime without games.