BALTIMORE _ New Orioles manager Brandon Hyde was the first name Mike Elias heard when the freshly minted executive vice president and general manager began making calls to research for his managerial search, and every subsequent call Elias made circled him back to the Cubs bench coach.
Then, all it took was getting in a room together for the pair to realize that the fit was real, culminating in Monday's unveiling at Camden Yards that introduced Hyde as the 20th manager in club history.
"What just stood out throughout the entire process for me, for us, were Brandon's unique qualifications and experiences for this job," Elias said. "He's had a varied career across all different aspects of baseball operations with a ton of experience in player development, but also major league coaching.
"The experiences that he's had as a member of a front office, a member of a minor coaching staff, a minor league manager, a major league coach _ a bench coach across two different organizations _ and as a player, as a catcher coming up, was just such a deep background, and (he) brought such a wide breath of perspective to the way he views the game, the way he views the manager's role, the way he views the relationship between the manager's office and the front office, and certainly the specific mentorships that he benefited from in the Marlins organization and most recently in the Cubs' organization, and being such a big part of building the Cubs organization into a world champion and a playoff-caliber team year after year was very attractive to us throughout this entire process."
Hyde, who has been on the Cubs' major league staff since 2014 after two years in front office player development roles there and nearly a decade coaching and managing in the Marlins' minor league system, was joined by his wife, Lisa, and children Aria, Addison and Colton. He went through a litany of gratitude for all those who helped him achieve his first managerial job, nearly tearing up at the mention of his wife and children in the front row.
"I want to say thank you to Mike, (assistant general manager Sig Mejdal), and the Angelos family. I'm so happy to be here, I'm proud to be an Oriole, and I cannot wait to get to work," Hyde said.
For Hyde, that work includes assembling a major league coaching staff and getting to know an almost entirely unfamiliar roster. He said he'll try to build a relationship with the players first before talking baseball, and that his message during the season would be positivity and patience.
But once he does get to the message of communicating with the players, something Elias said is his strong suit, the attraction for both Elias and Hyde is that the message he passes along will be a unified one from the front office.
"The sit-down with Mike and Sig, when we met a couple weeks ago, seeing their vision _ I've heard about Mike and Sig from the past, and was just really interested in hearing what they had to say about this organization going forward," Hyde said. "I thought we had a great day. We had a great day and evening at dinner _ great conversation. It was an easy conversation. And it was really intriguing to me at that point. I really felt like it was a good fit."
"We are going to be working towards the same goals, and doing so in a collaborative, open manner where we're communicating constantly," Elias said. "To me, the connection that I felt personally in dealing with Brandon was very important as well. I'm very excited to have him here today, to have him as part of this team, to have his help in what we're going to be doing here."
