Fredi González can speak from experience about reliever Craig Kimbrel. About the new Orioles closer whose manager during his 2011 rookie season was the current team’s bench coach.

“I haven’t seen him since ’14,” González warns during an interview yesterday with MASNsports.com, “but those first four years I had him, for being so young, he was a squared-away guy.

“My impression is that he’s the same guy or even better.”

The Orioles would be thrilled if Kimbrel is the same.

They signed him to a $12 million deal during the Winter Meetings with a $1 million buyout on a $13 million club option, the largest free-agent contract under executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias. An aggressive response, which began with negotiations on the first day of the general managers meetings, to Félix Bautista’s reconstructive elbow surgery that will prevent the All-Star from pitching next season.

When asked about the attributes of Brandon Hyde as Orioles manager on MLB Network Tuesday morning and how he has had such an impact on the roster, O’s bench coach Fredi Gonzalez had an interesting answer.

“Well, he’s been given the opportunity to grow with the team,” he said. “That doesn’t happen in our sport.”

He noted how Hyde was that rare skipper to start with a team at the beginning of a rebuild and still be around when they were ready to win and when they did win. And in this case, be a big reason that they won.

After seeing his Orioles win 52 games in 2021, 83 in 2022 and 101 and an AL East title in 2023, Hyde was named last night as the American League Manager of the Year by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. 

Hyde and Earl Weaver are the only O’s skippers to manage 100-win teams in Baltimore. And Hyde joins Frank Robinson (1989), Davey Johnson (1997) and Buck Showalter (2014) as BBWAA Managers of the Year. The award was first handed out in 1983.

Brandon Hyde has fielded the same question multiple times in recent days about whether he’s reached out to other managers with playoff experience leading into Saturday’s Division Series. Whether he’s picked their brains about the differences between his dugout duties during the regular season and in October and what he can expect.

Former Rays manager Joe Maddon’s name has come up, since they’re good friends. Hyde said he intended to speak with him.

Hyde also can make it much easier on himself by sitting down with or standing next to his bench coach, Fredi González, who managed the Braves from 2011 until his firing in 2016. His club played in the 2012 wild card game and won its division the following year. He's been there.

A total of five games past the regular season, with the only win against the Dodgers in the Division Series.

“We have spoken a little bit,” González said. “Just the other day he asked me how many games I have managed in the postseason. Not as many as Joe Maddon and those guys. But the experience I gained from those five games, it’s fast, and you don’t necessarily need to give a long leash to a starter because you have the off-days built in. And I think that you have to be prepared to make moves and maybe be unconventional at times. But the biggest thing for me is it’s fast and everything’s under the microscope, and if something doesn’t work out, then you get dissected until the next game – good, bad or indifferent.”

Orioles infielder Ramón Urías is facing a new opponent.

The amount of time spent recovering from a left hamstring strain.

Urías said yesterday that his leg feels “much better.” He didn’t seem to be limping as he walked across the clubhouse to his locker.

The Orioles put Urías on the 10-day injured list Tuesday after he left the previous night’s game against the Rays in the ninth inning. He was running to first base on a single and felt the hamstring grab.

“It was just a little bit,” he said.

The conclusion of a baseball season often leads to major shakeups in coaching staffs, or at least some light jostling.

The Orioles didn’t find any reasons to make changes in 2023. They built a unit that worked for them. They weren’t going to authorize repairs if nothing broke.

Make a spirited run at the postseason and stand pat.

As I reported yesterday, Fredi González is back as bench coach, Chris Holt as pitching coach/director of pitching, Darren Holmes as assistant pitching coach, Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte as co-hitting coaches, Tim Cossins as major league field coordinator/catching instructor, Anthony Sanders as first base coach/outfield instructor, Tony Mansolino as third base coach/infield instructor, and José Hernández as major league coach.

Pitching coach Doug Brocail and third base coach José Flores were replaced by Holt and Mansolino, respectively, after the truncated 2020 season. Holt already was employed as director of pitching. Mansolino came over from Cleveland’s organization.

Adley Rutschman didn’t put down any fingers for Ryan McKenna in the ninth inning of Monday night’s game against the Tigers. The rookie was catching an outfielder with their team behind by nine runs. The usual routine already had been dismantled.

Just try to get the ball over the plate and get off the field. Don’t increase the embarrassment of a lopsided loss to a last-place club that dragged an anemic offense into Camden Yards.

McKenna didn’t think to jokingly shake off Rutschman and get inside the hitters’ heads a little bit. A funny idea that he hopes won’t present itself again this season.

Two trips to the mound are too many for a position player.

McKenna hadn’t pitched since his high school days at St. Thomas Aquinas in New Hampshire, describing his usage has “very minimal,” but bench coach Fredi González approached him in the dugout during a Sept. 10 game against the Red Sox at Camden Yards and asked whether he’d be willing to do it with the Orioles running out of pitching.