Peter Schmuck: Mansolino deserves better, but Orioles have no margin for error

In a perfect baseball world, the Orioles would reward interim manager Tony Mansolino for doing a pretty good job of holding the club together after it unraveled during the first two months of a very disappointing season.

That obviously isn’t going to happen because there is too much at stake and that baseball world – especially for a team that is 42 years removed from its last World Series – can be a very cruel one. Just ask Brandon Hyde, who won two Manager of the Year awards and more regular-season games than any other American League manager the previous two seasons and got just seven weeks of slack when things went south this past spring.

Mansolino had a (slightly) winning record the rest of the way even though the team sold off a big chunk of the roster at the midseason trade deadline, but it was apparent to me that he was not going to be a serious candidate for the permanent job long before president of baseball operations Mike Elias held his postseason news conference on Monday.

It didn’t seem to be an accident that Mansolino’s interim status was announced during pregame introductions at every home game. Maybe that was just protocol, but it felt like he and the fans were constantly being reminded that he was just a temp.

In my own perfect world, Hyde wouldn’t have been fired in the first place, but I understood why it happened. Now, I would just like to see Mansolino retained on the coaching staff so that he isn’t punished for doing some pretty good fill-in work.

I realize that isn’t likely. The idea of putting the former manager on the new manager’s staff just isn’t done, because the team will want to have a completely fresh start and the new manager will want to hire his own staff. But this should be a pretty attractive job opening and Mansolino is a very good coach … and Elias arrived in town with a reputation for not necessarily doing whatever the traditional baseball management manual prescribed.

That said, there is a pretty good stable of available candidates to take over a team that is loaded with young talent that still needs to be fully developed. Whoever gets the job will have to put together a coaching staff that can maximize all that potential after a season in which injuries and underperformance clearly left some scars on cornerstone players Gunnar Henderson, Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg.

Elias made it clear during his Monday news conference that he wants to complete the managerial search “ASAP,” and with good reason. He needs to clear that off his desk before a winter talent search to strengthen the team’s starting rotation and rebuild the bullpen he largely dismantled at the trade deadline.

None of that will be easy and what happens in the free-agent market will be an early referendum on the economic commitment of the David Rubenstein ownership group, which cannot be happy with the team’s significant year-over-year drop in attendance.

I’d like to be optimistic that the Orioles will arrive at spring training in February considered a strong playoff contender, but that might be a bridge too far if they get to Sarasota without enough depth to insulate themselves against another plague of pitching injuries.