Brandon Hyde remains popular with Orioles fans after his first ejection

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Orioles fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

When it comes to Orioles managers, there’s only one legend: Earl Weaver. Second after him, especially in the minds of younger O’s fans who never saw any of the World Series titles, is Buck Showalter - if only for being the guy who was in charge when the O’s finally stopped losing in 2012.

Those are some big shoes for Brandon Hyde to fill. They cannot be filled. There will never be another Earl and there will be another Buck. Maybe there can be someone who’s good in his own way - and at least through the first few weeks of the season, fans remain approving of how Hyde has fared with the roster he’s been given:

Hyde was popular when the season began and here he remains plenty popular, even ticking up somewhat this week, from 94% to 97%.

What was it that swayed those extra few people from last week to this week? Maybe they were impressed by Hyde’s first ejection in Boston. There was no dirt-kicking and no hat-turning-backwards and no telling an umpire that the umpire reads Braille, but I think the spirit of Earl would probably have been pleased with Hyde’s repeated demands, “What’s the point of the f—ing rule?” as he was ejected for arguing that a hard slide at second base should have been a double play.

Fans similarly remain confident in the direction of the Orioles even as they’ve run into some tough times. This week’s voters were 89% confident, a slight improvement from last week’s 85%. Taking two out of four in Boston must have won over a few people.

O’s fans are even feeling a lot better about the direction of the team than either the Yankees or the Red Sox. Both of those teams fans had 64% confidence in this week’s survey, among the least confident of anybody so far.

All teams fans were polled on one question in this week’s survey:

There’s little doubt that teams in general are getting the better end of the deal in these contract extensions, though players getting a nice chunk of guaranteed money surely feels good right now for them and their families.

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