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
This a weird situation where being promoted might actually indicate the team is losing faith in you.
Idk about that. He’s far from the worst GM in MLB.
Not really. It is frequently a defensive move as another team can hire away another team’s GM by giving him a promotion into the position of President of Baseball Operations, even if the GM is under contract. However, lateral moves aren’t allowed – a team cannot hire away a GM under contract with another team to become its GM.
Could be why he was too “busy” to address any of the team’s needs last winter…
You can’t force health to cooperate. They went into the season with 8 potential rotation members on the IL, including the injuries to Eflin, GRod and Suarez that occurred after the start of spring training. There was very little left in free agency by that point.
I doubt anyone working under him will have any authority.
GM is a title which doesn’t mean so much anymore, as it is the POBO who actually runs things in today’s baseball world.
Congratulations on the promotion. Always nice to get recognized for your efforts.
I secretly farted in June.
Hiring a GM under Elias isn’t going to help. Only spending large mounds of cash on starting pitching will help.
Mike Ellias is the Oli Marmol of GMs. Gets promoted for failing and failing time and time again
Failing time and time again? Care to elaborate on your viewpoint or provide examples of GMs who have perfected the profession and get nothing wrong?
Then who is David Stearns lol? The O’s have been terrible this year but still a very strong foundation. Hopefully a little more investment this offseason than last
I’m not sure that paying another executive is something I want to see as a fan. I want to see all the financial resources utilized to acquire the talent necessary to push this team over the edge for a deep postseason run and to extend existing talent, before I see it used for a position in the front office with a good amount of redundancy built into it.
I don’t think the six figures that executive is going to get is going to be difference between you guys signing and not signing a difference making free agent.
When you hear comments about razor thin margins and similar sentiments, it’s still not something I’d expect them to invest their financial capacity in.
The whole promotion thing is usually to prevent other teams from poaching your personell. Mlb has a rule that you have to let a front office person under contract go when another team offers him a promotion and you do not match that.
That is why Assistant GMs get promoted to GM and GMs to POBO.
Maybe someone was trying to poach elias. Or someone wanted to poach an important AGM so he was promoted to GM and Elias to POBO. Basically title inflation to keep personell around.
The Orioles need to spend, a GM is not going to help .They should give Schwaber $250 and 10 years. Tucker $500 and 13 years, Mad Max $50 for one and a half, and $200 for Naylor. Then, they can trade the flop Holiday for Vientos or someone.
They shold also extend Henderson and Rushman for $400 each, minimum.
$250 seems low. Will be more like $140 million.
I must be the only one who thinks this, but no other GM believes their in-house press more than Mike Elias. People must have amnesia, but just last year, 2024 – the O’s were the best team in baseball, and could have been ALL IN. The Tigers were shopping Tarik Skubal to them at the trade deadline (it’s hard to believe that now, since the Tigers have been the absolute best team in MLB since then) – and Mike Elias passed. All it would have cost is Jackson Holliday and another top prospect (let’s pretend for a minute it was Adley Rutschman). Mike Elias believes those 2 are future hall of famers, and didn’t make the deal, and the rest is history. Skubal is about to win his 2nd CY Young in a row, the Tigers are amazing because of him, and the O’s have been absolute garbage, and these can’t miss future hall of famers all look totally ordinary and pedestrian. Mike Elias is scared of making the big deals to get his team over the hump.
I’m just hoping for some better preparation this off season. You made minimal moves to bolster the rotation, believing it would be enough to keep you in the playoff race until you get your best pitchers (Bradish/Wells) back from injury while hoping they haven’t skipped a beat. And while Wells and Bradish have looked exactly like they did before their injuries, the moves made were not nearly enough for their current contributions to matter. Couple that with a very questionable (imo) signing of Tyler O’ Neill and the last offseason was just bad.
Hopefully he doesn’t rest on his laurels now that he does have a healthy Bradish and Wells in addition to a currently otherworldly Trevor Rogers. Get a top of rotation starter and a mid rotation guy, to push Kremer and Povich to long relief or competing for that last rotation spot.
The offense has to be better but you do have young guys still knocking on the door as far as position players go. Holliday has made big strides especially compared to last year. Recently hes been taking way more walks which you love to see for a leadoff hitter. I think hes better suited for the 2 slot but it is what it is. He looks the part of a 25+ homer and 20+ steals guy, though he needs to work on said baserunning, maybe talk to Henderson about that. Speaking of Gunnar, dudes been a demon on the base path but hes had a big power outage this year. Love Cowser and Westburg but they NEED to be healthy for the long haul otherwise you can’t rely on them.
TL;DR, Elias has plenty of work to do this off season. Particularly on the pitching staff. You can’t just hope that pitchers are going to stay healthy or return to form. You have to better prepare for worst case scenarios. I imagine the offense looks fairly similar personnel wise next year even if it does need some tweaks in my opinion. The real question is whether Elias is willing to take a chance on impact players even via trade or free agency even if they’re pricey.