In a season in which his lack of strategic awareness and baseball acumen and ability to manage a game and understand when to pull pitchers and how not to get guys thrown out at home plate all the time was in question for all most of 161 games, Orioles manager Craig Albernaz sure had a knack for trying to blame other people.
The fake tough guy, who isn't fooling anyone around MLB who paid any attention to his work in the dugout this season and absolutely didn't fool any of the legion of former Orioles greats who watched this team defame The Oriole Way by succumbing to The Elias Way five nights a week, started to really run his mouth in the final week of the season. This after his puppet master, Orioles failed baseball boss Mike Elias, announced they're both be back for 2027 ( damning next season before it began ).
Albernaz managed to enflame a few controversies by picking on two AAAA players who should have never been on this roster going into nine years of a failed rebuild - Rece Hinds and Jeremiah Jackson - and embarrassing them and trying to make them be the holograms for 2 years of garbage baseball under Elias instead of his feckless boss owning it . He shamed Jackson for not taking a pitch in an obvious situation to do so late in the season and shamed Hinds for not having his sunglasses with him for an afternoon start misplaying a liner in a 1-0 loss in which Elias's self-proclaimed super-power lineup was ineffective again.
(Albernaz kowtowed and genuflected to Gunnar Henderson throughout his lost season in every aspect of play, even when picked off twice in the same game, and did verbal gymnastics to support failed first-overall pick Jackson Holliday when he dropped a pop up, but went all-in on then 21-year-old catcher Samuel Basallo this year at the same time running cover for Adley Rutschman's boo-boo after boo-boo that forced Basallo to catch 11 innings in a day game after a night game.)
And worst of all, everything he deflected on to Hinds and Jackson falls on Albernaz and his staff, as much as he went to great lengths in his post-game soliloquies to suggest otherwise. Former Orioles shortstop Mike Bordick, a stickler for fundamentals and a true student of the game who is in the team's Hall of Fame, put the burden squarely on the rookie manager for these failings when he discussed them with me on "The Daily Flock."
Sure, there is personal responsibility in everything. But the idea that playing a game at a weird start time wouldn't have the entire coaching staff reinforcing the need to wear sunglasses is laughable.
"It was always reminded, even in the big leagues," Bordick said, "make sure you've got your sunglasses on, by my infield coach. I don't know, was it not talked about? ... It's up to the player to take responsibility for that, but also the coaches to be there to remind guys. That's the only reason big league coaches are there, for one responsibility - remind guys how good they have to be. That's it."
Of course, after sitting him for a day Albernaz allowed Hinds to strike out five times against the Yankees in a game in which Baltimore, top three in K-rate , struck out 17 times to end the season despite former second-overall pick Heston Kjerstad on the bench. Make that make sense?
"This is the head scratcher for all of us fans of baseball," Bordick said. "If analytics are so incredible, then how can it lead us down this path of terrible baseball, and terrible baseball decisions?"
Preach, Bordy.
Albernaz went to lengths to distance himself from Jackson swinging after like nine straight balls with the bases loaded and grounding out, calling it "shocking" and "embarrassing" and pretending he had nothing to do with it . Bordy disagrees.
"That's definitely on the manager, there ain't no doubt about that," Bordick said, "and I know he threw Jeremiah under the bus saying you assume it's a baseball thought process. 'Oh my gosh he threw 10 balls in a row.' But that's the analytic mindset that says, 'The next pitch, if it's on the plate, I have to be ready to hit it.' So there you go ...
"Coaches are there to remind players every detail of the game. Now, if a guy steps in the box and everyone in the whole stadium said, 'Oh, he's taking the pitch,' ... It's still up to the manager to say he is taking a pitch. This has happened for 100-plus years in the game of baseball. When a third base coach points at you, I don't care if you are Jose Canseco or Adley Rutschman or Gunnar Henderson - you have to take. That means the manager has complete control.
"So this throwing it up in the air and assuming ... why Albernaz didn't take full responsibility of that, and even the glasses thing, that is on us as a coaching staff. It is not on us as a player. Period."
This article was originally published on www.si.com/mlb/orioles/onsi as Orioles HOFer Mike Bordick Says Coaching Staff To Blame For Late-Season Gaffes .
