NEW YORK — Baltimore Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, holding a can of Budweiser in his left hand and a bottle of champagne in his right, was fittingly over the top and jubilant as he addressed his team last September.
“Nobody gave us a chance at the start of this year,” Hyde declared to a clubhouse of players donning bright orange division championship T-shirts. “Nobody. How’s 100 wins?”
Those words were delivered after the 2023 Orioles, characterized by an underdog mentality, clinched the American League East with their 100th win of the season. After losing 100-plus games in three consecutive full seasons in 2018, 2019 and 2021, Baltimore’s rebuilding youth movement surprised baseball pundits by remaining in playoff contention until the last week of the 2022 season. Still, the O’s entered 2023 with stymied expectations from the industry at large. FanGraphs gave the AL’s eventual…
