His concern for Brandon Hyde showed Tony Mansolino might be the right guy at the right time for the Orioles

Mansolino has first managing gig since Triple-A in 2019

Any judgement of how Tony Mansolino is doing after a few days on the job as O’s interim manager, is of course, way, way, way premature.

The dust is still settling on an emotional weekend for the Orioles and the entire team and organization is still processing what happened.

The players, yes the same group that got Brandon Hyde fired with their poor play, were knocked backed by the news.

Two terrible pitching performances later and it was clear that rock bottom would have a new meaning for the 2025 Orioles.

I won’t use the cliché that he had me at hello, but Mansolino’s first comments as interim skipper, in his postgame interview Saturday, struck the absolute right tone.

“Not excited,” Mansolino said of his emotions of Saturday. “This isn’t a good thing for us. We’re going to miss Brandon in a lot of ways. To me, he did a great job here. So, to get to this point where a change is made is not something any of us wanted by any means.”

Mansolino joined the O’s and was hired by Hyde in 2021

I saw fans on social media say that first presser did not lead them to have any confidence in Mansolino.

To me, seeing him be truly who he is and express disapointment for the man that brought him to the big leagues, was an honest moment. He spoke from the heart. Nothing to celebrate on Saturday.

That is plenty good enough for me.

This is not time for a Knute Rockne speech or Mansolino to try to be someone he is not. That would just make a bad situation worse.

The O’s have a young clubhouse and young coaching staff. Time for these two factions to help each other the best they can and take this disaster of a season and make it better someway, somehow.

For what it is worth, Mansolino had four winning seasons at four different levels, winning two championships, as a minor league manager in the Cleveland organization.

In 2016 he was skipper at Low-A Lake County and they went 72-68. A year later he led High-A Lynchburg to an 87-52 record and they were named co Carolina League champs, when the championship series was cancelled by a hurricane. He managed Double-A Akron to a record of 78-62 in 2018 and led Triple-A Columbus to the International League title with a record of 81-59 in 2019.

Hard to win each year on the farm, especially for different teams at different levels, but his overall mark for those seasons is 318-241 (.569).

Mansolino was with Cleveland for 10 years before joining the Orioles as third base coach in 2021. This is his fifth year in Baltimore.

Like Hyde, he is liked and well-respected by the players and maybe this group will band together during this road trip and better baseball will be ahead.

He inherited a mess and digging out of this huge hole is absolutely daunting for him and the team.

At some point, the O’s may begin searching for another manager. Or maybe Mansolino will really show his stuff over the next few months and be in the mix to lose the interim tag.

For now, I am interested to see where the team goes from here.

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