MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Baltimore Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias addressed the media on Tuesday for the first time since firing manager Brandon Hyde on Saturday.
Elias said the change was made in light of the Orioles’ poor performance for the better part of the past calendar year. A new voice, he said, was needed to be heard by the underperforming players.
“I think very endemic to sports, after a certain number of years, a certain group of players that go forward fit,” Elias said. “Sometimes organizations try something different and that’s what this was.”
Elias bent over backward to compliment Hyde and praise him for all he brought to the Orioles and for all he did for the Orioles, but said that after seven years a change was in order.
Elias was also asked what he thought about the job he was doing as the Orioles general manager.
“I have had a lot of success, I believe, in my career, and I think that we did a really strong job in building up the franchise to the position that it was in at least through the end of 2024,” Elias said.
“A big point of pride for me in my career has been to adapt in a sport where you’ve got to do that, and where it’s almost impossible to have consistent success. What we’re going through right now and the degree to which we’re going through it is well below anyone’s standards, including mine and this is deeply disappointing to me, and I’m doing everything in my power to correct it and improve it going forward.”
Dan O’Dowd grew up in baseball learning at the foot of former Orioles general manager Hank Peters, then moved to the Cleveland Indians with Peters as farm director before becoming assistant general manager to GM John Hart, who had also made the move to Cleveland from Baltimore.
O’Dowd was credited for having had a big hand in building the great Cleveland teams of the 1990s before he became general manager of the Colorado Rockies for 15 years and getting them to the World Series in 2007.
Currently O’Dowd is an analyst on the MLB Network, and the other day he voiced his opinion on what kind of a job he thought Elias and his Orioles front office were doing.
When asked if he believes the Orioles, who boasted the No. 1 farm system in baseball for the better part of three years, have drafted properly, O’Dowd said, “I was a big believer in focusing on position players in the draft. You play the odds. The risk of injury with pitchers is so phenomenally high, at least high up. I think that’s where you get your impact players is the first 100 picks of the draft, so I’m a huge proponent of taking position players.
“I don’t second-guess any of their drafting philosophy, though I would have taken Bobby Witt over Adley Rutchsman (with the No. 1 pick in the 2019 draft), only because of the athleticism of both players, even though catchers are hard to find.
“And would they have taken Gunnar (Henderson, who they chose in the second round)? You don’t know.
“I think for me, I don’t necessarily think the Orioles’ season is salvageable this year. I think the bigger concern for me is how do they keep their (championship) window open moving on from this year?”
Which is where O’Dowd has his biggest concerns …
“I think systemically, there’s a big problem there,” he said. “I think they really need to take a long hard look at how they transition players from the minors to the major leagues. They don’t want to trade players, but they don’t want to commit to them to play at the big-league level. I think they’ve done a horrendous job of identifying the prospects.
“Heston Kjerstad, they took him high overall (No. 2 in the 2020 draft) and they’re not committing to him. I don’t know, maybe he’s not a good player; I think he is, I got a chance to see him play in the Arizona Fall League. I think you needed the kid to get those 600 plate appearances to kind of try to figure out what he was all about, and I think (former Orioles prospect Kyle) Stowers is a perfect example of this to me, and some of his comments recently confirmed that for me: Players are human beings; they’re not robots, and their emotions and confidence go up and down so immensely in our game.
“Young players, in particular, they’ve gotta know that they’re loved and they’ve got to know that they’re going to get a long runway. I think the Orioles haven’t done that.
“They don’t trade them for a (starting pitcher Garrett) Crochet … they were matched up way better to go get Crochet than the Red Sox were. I do think as a GM, there is a difference between collecting prospects and then finishing your team off.”
Elias was the No. 2 man in the Houston Astros front office during their recent run of dominance, and he should be credited (which he did himself) for how far he brought the Orioles along through the rebuild. Yet when it’s been time to finish his team off the way the Astros did with trades and legitimate free-agent additions, Elias has fallen woefully short, and the perception as to why has been his infatuation with collecting prospects.
Mike Elias made it clear on Tuesday that he believes he is still the right man for this job. To prove it, he’s going to have to adapt and produce the results of the No. 1 man in the front office. Not the No. 2.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT