Hyde on roster, catching situation and more (O's lead 5-3)

FORT MYERS, Fla. - The Orioles have reached the midway point of spring training and manager Brandon Hyde can't fathom the task of compiling a 25-man roster and settling the competitions that have spread through camp.

Much too soon.

"I think we're still really in the heart of the evaluation process," Hyde said during batting practice. "A lot of these guys have teens at-bats, between 10-20 at-bats. It's hard to evaluate a guy on that. There are still guys coming in the mix. (Jesús) Sucre just got here.

"I think you're going to start seeing guys play more back-to-back games now. I've scheduled some back-to-backs with some guys to increase their at-bats. That's why you have to send guys out, because there just aren't enough innings or at-bats to go around. You start playing the guys you feel like have a better chance of making the club a little bit more here as we go along.

"I think these next two weeks, that will be the separator for me. There's probably multiple spots on the roster where still at this point you really have no idea, but I'm encouraged that a lot of those guys are playing well. So that's a great thing. It's not one of those situations where, 'What are we going to do at this spot because nobody is playing well?' A lot of guys are playing well, so they're making our decision hard, which is what you want."

Sucre will make his Orioles debut later this week after catching Jimmy Yacabonis earlier today in a simulated game at the Ed Smith Stadium complex.

"We'll talk to him tomorrow, how today went," Hyde said. "I think we can target sometime maybe Thursday or Friday, a few innings behind the plate, but I don't want to rush him back. I want to make sure he's fully ready to go before I get him back there."

Six catchers remain in camp, with Sucre replacing Cael Brockmeyer, and Hyde hasn't settled on a starter or backup. He isn't leaning toward a particular combination of veterans and less experienced players.

"Obviously you'd like to have some experience behind the plate, and also I want to do what's best for the player," Hyde said. "I don't want to rush a guy to the big leagues if I don't think he's ready and it's not going to benefit him to play in the big leagues. So I think we're going to do the best of both worlds.

"When we pick the two or three guys behind the plate we're going to open up with, there's going to be a lot of factors that go into that. But experience does really, really help, especially when you have ... You might have experience on the mound, but you also might have some inexperience on the mound that a veteran guy could possibly help through. So all those things will factor in."

Three catchers?

"I'm just throwing it out there," Hyde said. "We've carried three in Chicago before. I have no idea."

Hyde is open to splitting the catching duties rather than designate one starter and traditional backup.

"I don't think you have to have one guy who plays the bulk of the games," he said. "I think that whoever we break with, we will probably address how we're going to divide it up or what we see fit, whether it's left-right or if we have two rights or whatever it may be and we'll go from there. But we're still miles away from making that type of decision.

"When we do make that decision, then we'll figure out the playing time situation. And when the season comes, things change so quickly. You have a game-plan, but there's always changes that happen throughout the season."

As a former catcher, Hyde can be more critical and also sympathetic to what he's watching on a daily basis. He's been there. He gets it.

"I think naturally I'm always watching the catchers and I think I'm a little bit more maybe critical about detail stuff with them, the finer points, but I also understand what it's like to catch, so I understand how hard it is to hit and how hard it is to (handle) a pitching staff, and I understand the pitcher-catcher relationship and the difficulty of that," Hyde said.

"We have some young catchers and there's so much thrown on a young catcher's plate right now, from not only being able to go catch big league pitchers, being able to catch bullpen guys who have nasty stuff. You've got to be able to hit a little bit, you've got to be a leader on the field, now you have to really know game-planning inside and out. And the analytical information. There's so much that goes into being a young catcher that I have some patience with that. I understand that feeling of being overwhelmed as a young catcher."

The wave flipped Chance Sisco on his head last summer as a rookie, but he's caught Hyde's attention with his composure behind the plate, the renewed confidence and a bat that keeps cranking out hits, including four home runs.

"I had a meeting with the catchers yesterday and we went over a bunch of things and I told them I'm really impressed with our catching core and how we've gone about things," Hyde said. "I think we made huge strides behind the plate. Their communication, you haven't seen balls to the backstop, we haven't dropped balls, when we have an opportunity to throw somebody out, we throw them out. We're doing a really good job communicating. Our effort is really good and our attention to detail behind the plate is really good. And they're just getting better.

"Some of those guys are just scratching the surface of what they can be behind the plate and Chance is one of those. And Austin Wynns caught really, really well yesterday. Ton of really tough blocks in big spots with runners on base. Gives you good ABs. I'm really encouraged by a lot of things, especially the younger guys that are in camp."

Yacabonis was kept back in Sarasota while Dylan Bundy and David Hess are likely to cover the first six innings of today's game. Pitching coach Doug Brocail watched Yacabonis and reported back to Hyde.

"We had so many innings for the game today and that was the only reason why," Hyde said. "Kind of fell on Yac's day and so we just threw him on the back field."

Hyde has other pitchers he'd like to start in exhibition games, but it isn't that simple.

"There's just not enough innings. That's the main reason," he said. "And we're so unclear on our four, five long guys, who's in our bullpen, so we want to see so many guys throw and we're not sure who's a starter yet or who's not a starter. It's allowing guys to throw multiple innings.

"We just don't have the nine innings or possibly eight innings here. Someone has to do backfield stuff or B game-type stuff to get guys stretched out."

Nate Karns will pitch one inning Tuesday against the Pirates in Sarasota, coming out of the bullpen to back up starter Alex Cobb.

Hyde didn't have any real pinky updates on Trey Mancini and Jonathan Villar. They're both day-to-day and the club is being cautious with them.

"With both of those guys, especially with the hands, I don't want to rush anything," Hyde said.

Mancini thinks he can play in a couple of days.

Update: C.J. Cron hit a first-pitch opposite-field home run with two outs in the first inning to give the Twins a 1-0 lead.

Update II: Renato Núñez hit a grand slam off Addison Reed in the third inning to give the Orioles a 4-1 lead.

Update III: Rio Ruiz scored in the third on Hanser Alberto's sacrifice fly, but Cron hit a two-run homer in the bottom half to reduce the lead to 5-3.