Dear Mike Elias: This is what operational failure looks like

Dear Mike:

Back in May when it was clear this whole thing wasn’t working, I wrote that you should be fired. And five months later, I’m certainly not here to fire you all over again but to provide a state of the franchise at the end of another lost season in Birdland.

Once more, if I owned the Baltimore Orioles, you would’ve been fired the day after the Preakness last year, the day after you fired your manager and then hid like a spineless coward for four days and resurfaced in the dugout in Milwaukee for your “media” co-workers.

I’ve been covering sports for 42 years and – Dude, seriously – I’ve never seen a more craven act in leadership in professional sports. Demanding accountability while offering none earns zero of my respect in any walk of life.

I’ve met you twice. You lied both times.

I think you’re a smarmy, corporate turd in a toilet of a mostly-sleazy, billion-dollar business that is chock full of them these days from what I see as an “exited” local journalist who owns an FCC license and 20 years ago led Free The Birds because I believed the Baltimore Orioles to be an extreme local interest. (And this is written as the “local” football team is 35,000 feet over the Amazon jungle now en route home from just another day in Baltimore football international history…)

So, feel free to consider this my exit interview even though I have the sneaking suspicion that this labor fiasco is going to play to your strengths in keeping this gig whilst the two billionaires with clean fingernails stay away from the mud and muck of this MLBPA war while trying to raise the value of their very valuable asset.

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Hence that sham at The Warehouse on Monday afternoon, where you keep your job whilst tossing all your assistants off the fifth floor and down onto 395 with pink slips or the “restructuring” of departments of scouting and labor.

Hey, at least that Bronx rainout on Sunday means you get to brag about finishing in fourth place in the always-tough American League East. And I don’t get to call you a “last place” team for another offseason.

I guess in the world of David Rubenstein and Michael Arougheti, that constitutes “progress” even if the lack of revenue is a whole separate real-life tale of emptiness in appearance and soul that I’ll be addressing with Catie Griggs – here or on the radio, her choice.

After eight years of hearing about your pipelines and processes, the draft capital and development, MLB sustainability and competitive windows, the Baltimore Orioles franchise has finally reached the point where I’d fetch security and tell you to put your Ivy League plaques, analytics and buzzwords into one of those patented dark garbage bags located outside of Griggs’ large office in a corner lounge of The Warehouse.

This isn’t a bad season or just an injury problem in an industry shouldered with them. It isn’t the exit of Brandon Hyde or the entrance of the overmatched Craig Albernaz. It isn’t the wall in left field, the payroll, Peter Angelos, the baseball gods or the lack of pitching.

This has been an operational failure of your baseball operation, dating back to Fredo and the people of Angelos.

The Baltimore Orioles have lost whatever was left of the franchise’s credibility with the fan base and now we’re all gonna take a long nap until y’all decide to play baseball again and give us the opportunity to fund it even further at gouging prices when the dust settles – with or without a salary cap.

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Even as this miserable team that finally dragged itself back to .500 on August 30 for the first time since April — just in time to create the illusion of a September pennant race in a grossly watered-down American League – and then lost six straight before football season commenced speaks to another Charlie Brown moment for anyone who has suffered for 43 years waiting for the rebirth of real Orioles Magic. And then Adley Rutschman came home in a Red Sox jersey to rub it in whilst Boston fans cheered him on at Camden Yards.

Another September to forget in Baltimore baseball history. And we didn’t even get an Andino moment to curse this time around.

Instead, we’ll be watching Rutschman play baseball this month on television because you gave him that chance. He sure won that trade. We’ll also be watching the “small market” Tampa Rays bye themselves again this week and the “automatic for October” New York Yankees get another chance to embarrass themselves sometime in the next three weeks against a team with a smaller payroll.

Eh, but we did finish ahead of the whole country of Canada, eh? Well, except for those seven Fall Classic games the Blue Jays played last October for Geddy and Gretzky.

The elite trait of your legacy here is a lot of bad baseball, big draft picks, broken promises and well…more losing baseball.

To get better draft picks, of course…

You arrived here in November 2018 and correctly tore down an antiquated, dysfunctional baseball operation. The suffering was sold to Baltimore as the down payment on something smarter, better and sustainable. The fans ate and paid for the 108 losses. Then 110 losses.

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And for the record: Rio de Janeiro > Rio Ruiz.

We watched waiver claims, Rule 5ers and organizational Quad A filler wander through Camden Yards while you accumulated draft picks, international infrastructure, analysts, coders and prospects.

And eventually it worked and we praised you for the meteoric rise. The Orioles won 101 games in 2023. Then won 91 more in 2024.

And now that the MLB playoffs are starting, here’s the reminder that this franchise hasn’t won a playoff game since you took over eight years ago.

Zero playoff wins.

This “non-media” Dundalk dunce that you have treated like a chump didn’t have to go to Yale to add up that a doughnut speaks for itself.

For years, Baltimore was told that the crown jewel of this enterprise was an “elite talent pipeline.” Not merely prospects. Not merely good drafting. A machine that would continuously feed quality major league players into Camden Yards.

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Your prospects are suspects. The outfield is a disaster. The organization reached September using players who looked much more like Triple-A depth than pieces of a championship roster. The catcher situation remains unsettled. Very few players even know what position they play and certainly don’t play it well enough.

The defense has been organizationally and philosophically horrific, the worst I’ve ever seen on a nightly basis.

The baserunning has been subpar. The situational baseball has been bad because the baseball IQ of the whole operation feels flawed. The young position-player core that was supposed to terrorize the American League for the rest of the decade now presents far more questions than answers after this summer implosion.

Gunnar Henderson was supposed to be the centerpiece. Jackson Holliday was supposed to be the next phenom. So was the late, great catching savior Adley Rutschman.

But the new billionaire boys in over their heads opened that mighty checkbook and MoneyBags told the MLB player agents you fight with: “We’re open for business…”

Meanwhile, Samuel Basallo, who is barely a catcher, was guaranteed $67 million before becoming established as a major leaguer and his maturity will be hard to coach, not to mention his eventual position on the field.

Pete Alonso got $155 million and has made you look smart, even though Arougheti is going to take all of the credit inside the velvet ropes. Kyle Bradish got $90 million. Shane Baz got $68 million.

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The ghost of Peter G. Angelos thinks you’ve lost your mind with this franchise!!!

Coby Mayo has finally begun showing why everyone loved the bat but he – like almost everyone in the organization – is truly position-less because all of his gloves appear suspect.

You changed the manager. You changed coaches. You changed players. You changed players positions.

And you certainly changed the payroll…

And the Orioles kept making the Bad News Bears mistakes that got blamed on Brandon Hyde almost 18 months ago when you hid like sewer rat after firing him on a Saturday morning in May with the players you assembled floundering and failing. I’ve seen a lot of managers here since Earl Weaver and count me as thoroughly unimpressed with every aspect of Craig Albernaz, who looks the part of a backup catcher running your analytics strategies, so judgment of him is unfair other than the part where you can let him know that I’ve “jumped the ship” on him (and you), but not my city or the future of this franchise.

(This is where I’ll gently remind the captain of the ship that he’s only here for a limited time; the fans built the franchise, Alby. We own the water…)

And now your own operation is quietly acknowledging that something is wrong because you’re rearranging chairs on the sunken ship to keep your perch.

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Matt Blood, one of the most important player-development executives of your tenure, is gone. Sig Mejdal, your longtime lieutenant and analytics chief dating back to Houston, has been moved away from running the analytics department. And you have publicly said you want to bring in “outside perspectives” and more high-level voices.

Yeah, I’d be bringing in an outside perspective, alright…

John Angelos hired you.

You have failed miserably.

This shouldn’t be hard.

Which brings me to the people who somehow still manage to drift above all of this accountability like parade balloons.

David Rubenstein and Michael Arougheti.

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Where did everybody go?

Remember the grand reopening of Birdland? The hats. The free beer on the bar. The selfies.

The autographs!!!

They even got to make commercials with Cal Ripken!

Then came the bobblehead of that handsome billionaire owner…

The smiling promises that a new day had arrived despite the emptying stadium in October and the franchise looking for a hit or an RBI in October, let alone a victory.

And that was two years ago…

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All of this failure and the emptying of Camden Yards and Rubenstein still told everyone in July that he “couldn’t be more pleased” with you.

I’m not pleased.

I don’t know anyone who is pleased other than the checked out, Mister Magoo owner who used to show his face behind home plate when he feigned true involvement.

You know who isn’t pleased?

Your fan base, also known as the customers. Even if the most naive of them still manage a flicker of belief that they matter to the Major League Baseball gods of collecting money, even the most diehard Orioles fans and true believers will soon be getting steamrolled by the billionaires and millionaires surrounding them in this impending war of this century for a salary cap in Major League Baseball. All, of course, so they can cash in further at the expense of the few old white people left who love baseball and anyone in Annapolis willing to sell Rubenstein and Arougheti city block parts and more stadium upgrades that no one will care about if the team continues to suck for another decade.

Yeah, you made the television bigger and the sound system better and there’s no one there to see it or hear it. And you’re about to shut down your industry!

Idiots, all of you…

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And, idiots, any of us who are accepting this and begging for more…

I could quote all of the flailing attendance numbers but they all begin with bloated lies at the top and have been since the early days of the century when Angelos and his flunkies padded the numbers to keep sponsors.

The empty seats that hide on television show up in selfies and social media.

Camden Yards is regularly empty and somnambulant.

And even your “current math” says that more than half a million customers disappeared in two years.

Twenty years ago this week, on September 21, 2006, I stood outside Camden Yards and helped lead a thousand Orioles fans into the ballpark and then back out of it because they were furious with Peter Angelos.

Free The Birds. (You can look it up…)

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I have spent much of this month revisiting the pictures, the newspaper clippings, the television appearances, the threats, the letters and the absurdity of what it took to get Baltimore baseball fans heard back then.

And twenty years later, here is the part that ought to terrify Rubenstein and Arougheti far more than any angry washed-up, sports-radio host:

I wouldn’t ever bother to organize another walkout or “protest” again at this point in my life because I truly don’t care enough – and neither does anyone I know.

The empty seats are the trauma, just as I told David Rubenstein when he treated me like a schmuck in the middle of a synagogue reaching out to shake his wealthy hand in friendship and citizenship.

Anger buys tickets; apathy stays home.

They’re not my team; they’re yours and the men you work for who fund all of this absurdity.

Peter Angelos angered Orioles fans and destroyed the franchise and the local love of the team and its players. These goofs you work for are making the new generation completely and delightfully indifferent because there’s no recent history of success to sell anyone, especially if they don’t even want to show up to see Adam Jones get an honor after being “cut out” by the Angelos boys, just as I told him he’d be.

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By the time April rolls around and your industry gets in a billionaire catfight that the fans will be expected to finance, we’ll see who around here really wants to reach in their pockets to fund it.

If Rubenstein and Arougheti believed the baseball operation needed new leadership, I wouldn’t be writing to you but after seeing you command the house on Monday with you and Albernaz with your tails between your legs, I remain fully convinced that we haven’t graduated from the inept work of Peter G. Angelos except only to add a few rounding zeros for money that you can continue to gift to the likes of Tyler O’Neill, Chris Bassitt and Craig Kimbrel.

A work stoppage might prevent you from calling Gunnar Henderson in January.

It does not prevent an owner from figuring out who should be running his baseball team in October.

For anyone whose eyes are open on a nightly basis the evidence is on the field, in the standings, in the empty seats, in the September transactions, in the front-office reshuffling and all over a postseason bracket that once again has no Baltimore involvement.

The Orioles will be playing golf for my birthday next week.

Again.

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So here is the question David Rubenstein and Michael Arougheti should be answering before Major League Baseball turns out the lights in December:

Why should you get to architect the next Baltimore Orioles?

Why should the man who built this operation be rewarded for its failure by being given another rebuild?

Why should the same leadership that built the young core, developed the young core, supplemented the young core, hired the managers, hired the coaches, selected the analysts, selected the scouts, traded the players and spent the money now be allowed to explain why somebody else inside the organization needs to fix it?

This isn’t whether you are intelligent or whether you modernized the Orioles.

You deserve credit for helping drag one of baseball’s most backward organizations into this century.

But, I’ve been giving you far more credit than you deserve for years.

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After eight years, we have enough evidence.

The job was never to win Baseball America.

It was never to win the trade deadline or accumulate surplus value or to have the top-rated farm system after finishing in last place every year.

“Tomorrow” is an Annie song; and in this case it was a broken record and a broken promise.

The job was to build a Baltimore Orioles team capable of playing championship baseball for a long time.

Instead, the future finally arrived and produced two magnificent regular seasons, zero playoff victories, two consecutive losing seasons, another selloff, a disillusioned fan base, an emptying stadium and now another pile of prospects for the next version of tomorrow.

That, apparently, you will live to lead.

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You’re always a day away, Mike…

And you can bet your bottom dollar that this is what operational and organizational failure look like.

But as long as your bosses will be the last ones to know, it feels like you’re gonna be just fine in fourth place.

After all, he just wrote about your brilliance in his new book about great sports ownership. So, terminating you now would make him look very foolish.

Or, would it?