Mike Elias on the Orioles: "We still see a playoff team"

O's exec discusses team at length with reporters Tuesday at Oriole Park

BALTIMORE - Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias spent 24 minutes answering reporter questions pregame Tuesday at Oriole Park.

He spent at least five minutes at the start just on injury updates alone.

They have impacted the team’s poor start, but are not an excuse, he said.

“Is it a factor in our slow record to start the year? Yes. Is is an excuse or a totality of the reason? No.”

Elias expressed confidence that his team, which led the American League in wins combined over the 2023 and 2024 seasons, will be in the hunt again this season.

“We still see an enormous level of talent in this team. We still see a playoff team,” said Elias.

But a few hours later, his team would take the field and look like anything but that. Right now the Orioles are a bad team.

Right now they have not been able to overcome eight pitchers on the injured list and two other staters with ERAs of 8.84 and 8.16.

The offense is just underperforming too many nights and the team seems to lack fire. I believe it’s there but teams that lose more than they win don’t often look very intense about their play.

But back to the Elias interview.

Elias was asked yet again about possible contract extensions for some of the club’s young talent.

In the past he has said it is not something he wants to talk about and that it doesn’t do the front office much good to do that. But recently he has changed that approach.

“This is something we’re working on,” he said Tuesday, surrounded by media in the O’s dugout. “There’s guys on this team that we would like to have on the team longer than they’re currently slated for. It’s a case-by-case. There’s different players, different skills levels, different representatives, different philosophies around how to handle players at different age levels. We’ve got some really good ones and on top of that, we’ve had a very recent ownership change after a kind of protracted thing during a rebuild. These guys are great, but they’re relatively new. There’s only so much I can say about it other than its something we want to do if it makes sense, that we are working on it and if it happens, we’ll be out here talking about it.”

Asked if signing players to extensions will show both current O’s players and potential free agents that the Orioles are serious about winning, Elias said: “I think winning sends a message you’re serious about winning.”

Elias noted there is very little trade activity in MLB in April or early in the year normally, but he also noted he has had some recent trade talks.

“I mean, as recently as today, talking to other GMs, trying to line up on trades,” he said. “It's just rare in April, the motivation and sort of the clarity is not usually there. Doesn't mean you don't try. Doesn't mean you don't have the conversations and certainly gathering the information helps. But we're working. We're always looking outside and inside to bolster the team.”

With those eight pitchers on the IL, to say the least, the O’s pitching depth has been tested. They began play Tuesday ranked 12th in the AL in team ERA at 4.57 and 14th in rotation ERA at 5.30.

“On the pitching staff side, I feel like we’ve already tapped into, basically, the depth. To say that on April 15 was not the plan,” Elias said. “But to have Grayson (Rodriguez) and (Zach) Eflin on the shelf simultaneously this quickly into the season, at no point were we forecasting that or expecting that. And that’s just the truth.”

As for some of those injured Orioles, Elias said Eflin would soon play catch and he was hopeful his time on the IL would be more weeks, than months. He said there is no set timetable for Rodriguez to return although he has thrown two bullpens and has another tomorrow.

On the farm, Double-A Chesapeake’s Enrique Bradfield Jr., out with a mild hamstring strain, could return by the middle of May, he said. Triple-A Norfolk’s Samuel Basallo, also out with a hamstring strain, could be back as a DH within weeks, said Elias and return to catching during May.

But the big club lost another game last night. They are now 1-4 the last five games and have been outscored 30-17 in that span with a 5.93 team ERA and a .583 team OPS.

Those numbers will not get it done and right now the Orioles are not.

The second podcast episode drops tomorrow!: As of last check, the Orioles now have 12 international players ranked on their top 30 prospects list via MLBPipeline.com. This week on the Steve on Baseball podcast second episode being released in the morning, I interviewed Koby Perez. Hired by the O’s in January of 2019, he is the club’s vice president, interntional scouting and operations. In this long-form podcast interview, he talks about how the club built their formidable international operation.