Hyde meets with team to review fundamentals

The Orioles won't jog onto the field for the start of tonight's game until manager Brandon Hyde holds a meeting that's intended to review some basic fundamentals that were neglected earlier this week.

Breakdowns on defense and the bases made it much harder for Hyde to accept the Blue Jays' three-game sweep and his team's tumble to the .500 mark.

Play properly and move on to the next opponent.

Hyde didn't see it happening against the Jays.

One sequence lingered for him, when Renato Núñez's ground ball to third base yesterday was turned into an out at the plate in the bottom of the first inning. Chance Sisco broke on contact and Anthony Santander held at second.

It wasn't an exception, just one of the examples.

"We've made some mistakes so far this year. We made a lot last year," Hyde said this afternoon in his Zoom conference call.

"I wasn't real pleased with how we played this last series, to be 100 percent honest. I thought we played well the series prior to that, but just made a lot of mental mistakes and did some things defensively that we really need to get better at. We do have inexperience. We don't have a ton of veteran position player leadership on our club, so it's really a lot of conversations from the coaching staff to the player about certain things.

"Today we're meeting about some things that happened this past series. We continue to address daily things that we need to get better at and going over different situations that happen in the game. We have a lot of guys that didn't come through this system and we've only been here for two years. It's our second year here.

"Even though it's the major leagues, a lot of things haven't been taught up until this point with some of these guys and we're still in a development mode a lot of times. That's why you've seen some mistakes that you see. Also, with the lack of experience really comes it a lack of confidence, a lack of awareness on the field just because they're still not quite 100 percent comfortable yet being major league players. So sometimes you see the game moves a little too quick and so we're just trying to slow it down for them. Talk through it the next day. Sometimes at the moment but usually the next day."

Dwight Smith Jr. has been moved from left field to the designated hitter role tonight. He's batting .233/.319/.383 with two home runs in 69 plate appearances and was 2-for-19 over his last six games before going 2-for-4 yesterday.

Smith also got caught in a rundown between third base and the plate in the 10th inning of Tuesday's game and wasn't able to reach a fly ball yesterday in left. He's posted a minus-0.3 dWAR per Baseball-Reference.com and owns a career minus-2.3 mark.

The Orioles were able to include Smith on their opening day roster after he reported late to summer training camp due to a positive test for COVID-19.

"I think Smitty got off to a decent start," Hyde said. "I think he was slowed by getting there late for summer camp and I think that kind of affected his start a little bit, not only offensively but defensively, too, in that he just wasn't able to get the live reps necessary prior to the season. He really didn't play any games and only had a couple days of live at-bats before our opening series in Boston, so it's just kind of tough to catch up. But he took a couple good ABs last night, hit the ball hard a couple times, got some big hits for us.

"Going to continue working with him. And I think that the swing is pretty similar to last year. I'd like to see him use the whole field a little bit more, but I think he's just grinding a little bit. I think the lack of summer camp did hurt his start a little bit."

For the Red Sox
Alex Verdugo LF
Rafael Devers 3B
J.D. Martinez DH
Xander Bogaerts SS
Mitch Moreland 1B
Christian Vázquez C
Kevin Pillar RF
Jackie Bradley Jr. CF
Jose Peraza 2B

Nathan Eovaldi RHP