Three Baltimore Orioles Win Coveted Sporting News Awards

The 2023 season marked a rapid turnaround for the Baltimore Orioles franchise after they started rebuilding their organization.

They had gone under .500 for five straight years before 2022 when they won 83 games.

The Orioles hadn't finished above fourth place in the AL East during that time period and were last place four out of those five seasons.

That wasn't the case this year.

Baltimore was the American League's best team, winning 101 games.

Plenty of people within the organization have been responsible for this turnaround that has the Orioles seemingly on the cusp of becoming a perennial contender.

This was recognized by peers within Major League Baseball as three members of Baltimore have won coveted awards handed out by The Sporting News.

These awards date back to 1936 and are voted on by players, managers and executives. 376 players submitted their ballots this year to decide the winners.

Gunnar Henderson took home the AL Rookie of the Year Award, Brandon Hyde won AL Manager of the Year and general manager Mike Elias won MLB Executive of the Year.

Expectations were high for Henderson heading into the season, but he impressed enough to finish far ahead of the second place vote getter.

Hyde has been impressive since taking over the manager job in Baltimore.

His peers also recognize that.

"Safe to say Hyde has won the admiration of his managerial peers. This is the second year in a row he’s won the AL manager award. Last year, he helped guide the Orioles from 110 losses in 2021 to 83 wins in 2022. This year, almost incredibly, his young Orioles took another giant step up, all the way to 101 wins and the AL’s best record," Sporting News writes.

Impressing as an executive is much more difficult when considering budgets of different organizations across different sized markets.

But, it's clear that Elias has done a great job since taking over the Orioles.

"This is a 2023 award, but for executives, the award is always the result of years of good work. Elias was hired after Baltimore’s 115-loss season in 2018 and went to work building the organization from the ground up, with a lot of focus on hitting in the draft. That’s been a huge area of success for the Orioles in Elias’ tenure. Think about this: The first two players Elias drafted were Adley Rutschman, with the No. 1 overall pick, and Gunnar Henderson, with the first pick of the second round," Sporting News writes.

Those are two players that any team would love to have.

Not a bad foundation for Elias to build around moving forward.