Orioles manager Brandon Hyde's award-winning season came at a time in the team's turnaround when he would have been hard to replace

The Orioles' staff returning in 2023 was largely going to happen anyway, especially on the pitching and hitting side. So it's good for the Orioles and Brandon Hyde that they turned things around.

Two things happened this week regarding the Orioles’ dugout, one that seemed easy to surmise in the spring and the other very much a surprise.

Let’s start with the latter: Brandon Hyde was named Sporting News’ AL Manager of the Year Thursday for his efforts leading the team from 52 to 83 wins and an above-.500 record in 2022. His candidacy for such honors certainly grew as the season went along, but would have been hard to imagine considering the type of turnaround required to get into that conversation when spring training kicked off.

The less-surprising news came earlier in the week with the reporting by various outlets, including MASN, that the entire major league coaching staff would be back in 2023 with Cody Asche taking on a strategy role on the staff.

Hyde’s success (not to mention the news from Nathan Ruiz at the Sun in April that Hyde’s contract was extended through 2023) took the one real question mark out of the staff portion of the Orioles’ offseason.

Given the value of cohesion in their hitting and pitching departments from the majors down to the lowest rungs in the minors, those areas of the staff weren’t liable to change whether the team’s fortunes did or not. So in that sense, it’s fortunate that the team has transitioned to competitiveness under Hyde, to the point that there seems to be a future in mind with him leading the club when they are a playoff team again.

It’s fortunate because, to me, it seems like the way the Orioles have set up everything around the manager’s office would make it extremely challenging to replace him and keep what they’ve built intact elsewhere.