There's always next year!

And another baseball season ends in Baltimore. The Orioles, just as I feared/predicted, snuck into the postseason playoffs and lost a two-out-of-three matchup with the Kansas City Royals, two games to none. They scored a grand total of 1 (one) run in the two games: a solo home run by Cedric Mullins in the second game. After his homer, the O's managed to load the bases with no outs, and did a faceplant. They scored no more that day, and now await next season.

The inevitable occurred on social media, sports talk radio, and around water coolers in offices around town. All the experts who last swung a bat in elementary school had to weigh in and call for the manager to be fired. 

Sure. It was Brandon Hyde who left all those men on base. And instead of giving him and his coaching staff credit for two games well-pitched (the Royals scored 1 run in game one, and 2 in the second game) they howl about the hitting.  Had the Orioles lost in two slugfests by scores like 9-7 and 13-10, the hue and cry would have been about how horrible the pitching was.

Baseball, as those who have followed it for more than the last six weeks know, is a long slog through 162 games in a season. There will be times your team scores a lot and gives up fewer runs. There will be times that the opposite occurs. With rare exceptions, it's not the genius of the manager that results in wins. 

As proof, I offer this: Brandon Hyde, the Orioles manager, is the same man who won the Manager of the Year award in 2023. He did not fall off a turnip truck in the offseason and suffer cranial trauma, forgetting everything he knew about the game. He used the same brain and experience and savvy this year, and this year, it just wasn't in the cards.

There's only one winner, but we can all count ourselves winners if we enjoy the game for the spirit of it all every summer.