Mike Elias quietly received a promotion in the offseason, per reporting from Ken Rosenthal and Brittany Ghiroli of The Athletic. His previous title with the Orioles was general manager but he was promoted to president of baseball operations before the 2025 campaign began. No announcement was made and the development wasn’t publicly reported until today. Today’s report adds that the O’s plan to hire a GM to work under Elias.
The title change is largely ceremonial. Elias was already the leader in the Baltimore front office. Bumping his title presumably came with some kind of pay increase and contract extension but his job duties should be essentially the same.
He was originally hired by the O’s in November of 2018. The club had just seen their competitive window slam shut. They were a good team for most of the decade up until that point but many of their biggest investments had fallen flat as key players aged.
The early years of the Elias tenure saw the club clearly in rebuilding mode. They spent almost nothing in free agency for many years. Established major league players were traded for prospects. The club lost at least 108 games in each full season from 2018 to 2021.
The consequence of all that losing was the ability to build up a strong farm system. MLB had not yet implemented a draft lottery and the associated rules around teams getting strong draft picks in consecutive years. From 2019 to 2022, the O’s had one of the top five picks in the draft. They took Adley Rutschman first overall in 2019, followed by Heston Kjerstad second overall, Colton Cowser fifth and Jackson Holliday first in the following years. They were also able to grab Gunnar Henderson with a second-round pick in 2019 and Jordan Westburg with a competitive balance round pick in 2020.
The roots of that system eventually blossomed in the majors. The O’s went 83-79 in 2022. They didn’t make the playoffs but that was a huge step forward from their 110-loss campaign in the prior season. More progress followed, as they won 101 and 91 games in 2023 and 2024 respectively. The former campaign saw them win the American League East, while the latter led to a Wild Card spot.
The O’s were swept out of the postseason in both of those years but the trend lines appeared to be fairly good. The club was winning and a lot of the core players were still young, controllable and affordable.
During that span, there had been a change in ownership. The Angelos family sold the club to a group led by David Rubenstein. That sale became official in March of 2024. The 2024-2025 offseason was therefore the first of the Rubenstein era. It seems the new owner was pleased with the way the front office was being run, based on the news of this promotion.
There was plenty of optimism around the club as of last winter, though a lot of that has dissipated since. Many expected Rubenstein to take the O’s to a greater level of spending on the player payroll. The O’s did sign a few guys but didn’t do anything really bold. Their three-year, $49.5MM deal for Tyler O’Neill was a bit bigger than anything they had done in recent memory but not by too much. They also made a few one-year investments in older pitchers like Charlie Morton, Tomoyuki Sugano and Andrew Kittredge.
Those investments largely didn’t work out. Many of the club’s core players got injured and/or underperformed this year. Put together, that resulted in a dreary first half, which led to a deadline sell-off. The O’s traded away Morton, Kittredge and plenty of other players ahead of the deadline. They are now 68-77 and 9.5 games back of a playoff spot. They will certainly miss the postseason and will likely finish with a losing record as well.
Elias received his promotion prior to all of that happening but it will naturally lead to more pressure to turn things around. The O’s still have a lot of talent on the roster but they traded away a lot of their bullpen and might be without Félix Bautista for all of 2026. The rotation is also a big question mark with Morton gone, Sugano an impending free agent and Grayson Rodriguez having missed the entire 2025 season.
It’s possible the club can be better next year simply by getting healthier seasons from their controllable core but the front office might also want to increase the margin for error by more aggressively making offseason upgrades. Time will tell what kind of approach they take. As for the GM search, it’s unclear what sort of timeline they have in mind but they will likely want to make a hire by the early part of the offseason, if not sooner.
Photo courtesy of Tim Heitman, Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images