Once more, it’s time for the Baltimore Orioles to start all over again.
The time has come to end this era of the great Birdland tanking experiment of the late Angelos error of terror.
Fire Mike Elias!
There, I said it in three words so nobody has to scroll past the Camden Yards fog machine or The Warehouse jargon and brush backs. The process and the “run prevention plan.” The “we believe in our group” statements and injury excuses and algorithmic analytics nonsense all tell me that my latest civic hallucination about this outfit winning 92 games this season should be a permanent scar on my baseball passport.
I know, I know. The MLB Draft is coming. It’s midseason. There are big deadline deals that will need to be made in July. Blah, blah, blah. Plenty of reasons to just let him stay warm in the rented seat and not rock the franchise boat on Memorial Day.
But, I’ve seen enough to know he’s not going to survive and shouldn’t so I would make the move now and adjust.
But I’m not the one over at WBAL or on MASN every night telling Baltimore baseball fans and their Birdland Insider credit cards to be “more patient” while the Orioles circle the drain all over again like it’s 2019 with a fancier scoreboard that we paid for and a more expensive happy hour that they think we’ll line up for right after the next bobblehead line and All Star Game beg that happens before the (inevitable) labor war and work stoppage that will arrive for the holidays.
8It’s time to #FireMikeElias because this is no longer about one bad road trip, a bad week or a bad manager selection or contract for a musclebound outfielder. It’s not one bad bullpen performance, or the absurdly lengthy injury report, or even a month of bad broom vibes from Pittsburgh to the Bronx to St. Petersburg. This is now about an arrogant, secretive, exclusive baseball operation (lifted on the success of serial cheaters in Houston, no less, and hired by the previous regime of grifters) that was built to be the smartest Ivy League kid in the room and now looks like it can’t find the sportscar daddy bought them in the parking lot after the game.
And when I say “Fire Mike Elias,” I am not saying it because I need a pound of his flesh. I’ve met him twice. He lied both times, so count me as thoroughly unimpressed. But I’ve always given him the benefit of the doubt as a baseball savant even though he didn’t know that Luis Aparicio ever played for the Baltimore Orioles.
I have been far from “hard” on Mike Elias over the years but his time has come to end here if I’m running the Orioles or doing what is the in best interest of the franchise or the business.
It’s time to fire Mike Elias because baseball accountability at Camden Yards has to mean something more than sacrificing Brandon Hyde, issuing a statement three days later in Milwaukee, hiring another first-time manager in an attempt to sell another premium club seat, and then asking Baltimore fans to clap louder while the team sits at 21-29, last in the American League East, 13 games behind Tampa Bay before Memorial Day.
This is the part where the adults in ownership are supposed to enter the room.
David Rubenstein. Michael Arougheti. Cal Ripken Jr. – I guess, if his name is on the brochure?
Where is that “civic-duty” crowd and all the backslappers from the press conference I was banned from two years ago? The ones who are there on Opening Day in a suit in a suite with The Oriole Bird and an ‘B’ ballcap and then disappear when the team turns up in last place again after the Preakness?
8All of the “new era” Rubenstein “ownership” people, led by The Whistler who begs to whistle an NFL anthem for patriotic glory?
This is a civic memo to all of the very wealthy men who bought the orange laundry and inherited the Camden Yards afterglow and the Maryland taxpayer subsidy and the one thing the Angelos family never understood: this baseball team is not a private toy in a public cathedral.
It’s powered by real citizens – you call them fans or customers – with real questions and real credit cards you’re asking for them to debit for the privilege of giving their time and energy to your billion-dollar fantasy baseball brand.
Where is the real leadership?
Not the press release.
Not the suite walk down in the sweet Truist suit.
Not the photo with the mascot or the autographed baseballs and selfies.
8Not the answer through some PR handler who thinks independent questions are a nuisance because the team has a flimsy, homers-serving fanboys website and a camera and with sponsored bet-on-tonight’s-game segment. Oh, and a television network that nobody ever watches and won’t be watching in a few weeks once irrelevancy, summer and Ocean City settles in.
You do know that folks can cancel their MASN subscriptions now, right?
What’s the message and what am I supposed to be saying on the radio and at Baltimore Positive?
A voice. A plan. A standard.
Do the Baltimore Orioles even have a mission statement? Ya know, beyond asking us for more money over and over again whilst demanding blind loyalty and promising untold civic victory?
I know there is no human being with a title and a spine standing in front of Baltimore and saying: “This is unacceptable. Here is what we’re doing. Here is who answers. Here is why you should believe us – and believe in us.”
Because right now, there’s no reason to believe in any of this.
8I’m so incredibly unimpressed – personally, professionally and from a civic standpoint – by what I’ve seen from these new Rubenstein and Arougheti people.
For me, they’ve been complete turds in every measurable way that my eyes can see thus far – and I’m watching everything, including from inside Oriole Park at Camden Yards twice so far this season.
I can honestly say this with a straight face: after 33 years of un-Godly poor ownership, I really believe we Baltimore Orioles fans might’ve done worse with these two guys in the end. It certainly isn’t better thus far.
I’ve seen enough to know that they don’t know what they’re doing and don’t care at all about getting to know this community with any authenticity. Every day I wonder if they’re here for a joy ride, cash out – or both. It doesn’t feel like either of these cats will be renting a condo in my old building just to look the part, especially now that last place has settled in once again for another summer of apparent irrelevance.
Baltimore Orioles baseball: It’s like a shitty reality series that flopped and would be cancelled if it weren’t an ongoing, two-billion dollar civic concern and investment by our community.
I’ve experienced this. And I’ve witnessed it beyond being a lifelong Baltimore media member that has continued to be un-justly blackballed by them in their mostly-empty stadium that we continue to pay for daily.
If you’ve had your eyes open over the past 43 years like I have – and now working on 35 professionally every day of my life discussing this perennial doormat and underachieving entity with a civic trust that is unparalleled given the orange juice and the green squeeze – it’s inevitable to be constantly measuring and filtering the message through all of the ineptitude.
8I really had high hopes for the new ownership group and their “investment” but this new coat of Steve Martin paint and a bobblehead of an owner that remain inexplicable even a year later concerns me more every day. I’ve found them underwhelming and highly disingenuous as people – let alone any fiction about these being the folks who are here to treat the Baltimore Orioles as a “community trust” and fix the franchise for the city because I don’t trust them to do the right thing or find the right people.
I’ve met Catie Griggs and Don Rovak and Mark Fine. I’ve also seen the Angelos People who are still in key positions – Elias being one the primary one, along with Greg Bader and Jennifer Grondahl, who approve every morsel of information that is dispensed via your MASN experience. And despite their complete ignorance and total disbelief, everyone in their building and in this city talks to me about the way they run their business and what they see and know or experience – on and off the field.
It’s not good. As a matter of fact, it stinks…
And despite a myriad of on-the-field current concerns – the depleted roster, the under-performing stars, the rotation struggles, and the larger question of organizational philosophy and player development after all of this spending plus the work stoppage that feels as inevitable as another pitcher going down with an arm injury in Birdland – I’m far more concerned about the ownership’s mettle, belly, expertise and ability to execute the unstated operation as neophytes than I am about Pete Alonso hitting 30 home runs every year through 2030.
And if you are a fool who believes ownership and the “suits” in The Warehouse don’t matter at all and people will only care if the Baltimore Orioles win, then that’s all on Mike Elias.
Rubenstein and Arougheti are sanctioning it and inviting you to buy tickets and subscriptions.
Hideous sweeps. The worst defense I’ve ever seen from an Orioles team. Poor starting pitching. Under-performing stars. Lots of strikeouts and one- or two-tool players who’ve left the bats at home.
8Plenty of personal accountability there for finger pointing, but Mike Elias was the architect of it all through two ownership groups, philosophies and all the new money.
And I know the excuse list. It reads like the injury list, which is convenient but unacceptable.
Jordan Westburg had Tommy John surgery. He’s a real player, the one this team desperately needed to my eyes. But injuries are not an alibi for sloppy defense, dead bats, veteran misfires, a pitching plan held together with duct tape, and a franchise that went from “sustained success” to “sustained explanations” faster than you can say “Hyde got fired but the roster didn’t fix itself.”
When Brandon Hyde was fired last year, Mike Elias said the poor start was “ultimately my responsibility.” Good. That was the right sentence. Then came the second sentence, the one about “pursuing difficult changes.” Tony Mansolino came in to guide a 15-29 squad that had far deeper problems, which we now see with much more clarity.
So, here’s the question one year later:
If it was ultimately Mike Elias’s responsibility then, whose is it now?
The 2025 Orioles fired the manager. The 2026 Orioles hired Craig Albernaz, another first-time major league manager, after a last-place finish. Elias said Albernaz was the “right person at the right time” to guide the team back to the playoffs and a World Series championship.
8That’s a hell of a sentence when you’re 21-29 and in last place all over again and the team kicks the ball around like the Bad News Bears six nights a week.
And I am not here to bury Craig Albernaz. I’m here to ask why the same voice keeps picking the managers, picking the roster, picking the philosophy, picking the pitchers, picking the veterans, picking the risk, picking the price points, picking the public explanations – and never becoming the person who gets picked up by the scruff of the neck by ownership and told: enough.
Either Elias whiffed on the hire, or the manager and coaching staff aren’t the real problem, or the players picked by Elias and the broader organizational philosophy simply aren’t working.
That is the indictment. The record and the sweeps this month should be the Warehouse fire alarm even if hiding like a corporate coward a year ago for 72 hours and turning up in a dugout in Milwaukee to address the media and the fans didn’t show the lack of leadership and perspective that Mike Elias should have exhibited almost a decade into running a Major League Baseball on-field operation.
His ass would’ve been fired before the plane took off for Milwaukee a year ago last week if I owned the Baltimore Orioles. His accountability was below bush league by any standard.
We talk plenty about the responsibility of Albernaz as a leader – and even more about Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson being superstars for this whole thing to work. And Pete Alonso doesn’t need to bankrupt the Home Run Riches promotion but when you sign the largest contract in franchise history, you’re not here for the Fine marketing vibes and Polar Bear postcards.
Certainly, Rubenstein and Arougheti can say this epic failure thus far wasn’t about spending money on payroll that the other unmentionable previous ownership group refused to invest. Pete Alonso at $31 million, Chris Bassitt at $18.5 million, Tyler O’Neill at $16.5 million, Ryan Helsley at $14 million, Taylor Ward at $12.175 million – and the active roster cash total listed at $173 million, or exactly what Peter Angelos paid for the Baltimore Orioles at auction 33 summers ago.
8So, let’s retire the cheapskate or “small market” narrative for now. This is not the old Angelos Orioles shopping for starting pitchers at the baseball equivalent of Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. These new guys spent money and are seeking ROI.
So are the fans…
The problem is that spending money badly is not progress. It’s just expensive losing.
And Orioles fans know bad deals. This franchise is still paying Chris Davis, Alex Cobb and Bobby Bonilla every day for their services.
(No, you can’t make this stuff up.)
This is the franchise that endured 108 and 110 losses under Hyde during the teardown, then won 101 games in 2023, then got swept out of the playoffs, then got swept out of the playoffs again, then slid into last place, fired the manager, hired another first-time manager, spent real money, and now sits here again in May as a doormat franchise hoping nobody notices the doormat has a new owner’s monogram on it. And his bobblehead sits squarely in The Warehouse window.
But what about the real David Rubenstein? And I’d relish more than hot dog visits from Michael Arougheti, who is the Truist man of influence in the room – without the fanfare or the autograph seekers.
8My Warehouse whisperers tell me that nothing happens in Birdland with Arougheti checking off on it so be forewarned that his forward silence and background status is an illusion.
And that’s why ownership can’t hide – at least not from me – while they seek the shelter of MASN or whomever they deem to be “friendly” local media, even though no one in the building has a real relationship outside of the usual sycophants and people who pay them to be friends.
No one sane trusted or wanted to be around the Angelos tribe – well, there was that time Governor Wes Moore presented fiction from the club level of Oriole Park at Camden Yards – so every person looking to get back into Birdland was looking for a “first time” experience with the new ownership group. Something that resembled authenticity and real relationships that had been burned or lost for a generation of local baseball fans, media, business and potential customers.
Rubenstein didn’t just buy a baseball team. MLB’s own story on the sale quoted him saying owning the Orioles is “a great civic duty,” and he promised professionalism, integrity, excellence, and a fierce desire to win games.
Wonderful.
Now, do it…
Because civic duty is not walking around Camden Yards when the weather is nice and everybody wants a picture. Civic duty is answering when the baseball operation collapses and the “first place” franchise you thought you bought two years ago to feed your ego (and eventually your wallet) has now spent exclusive time in the cellar for most of your ownership tenure. Civic duty is explaining why Maryland taxpayers are helping fund the ballpark experience while the baseball product looks like it needs a public defender. Civic duty is not asking Baltimore to be grateful for a 30-year lease and then telling us the important part is a new videoboard that doesn’t even show the highlights whenever the home team makes an error.
8The Orioles and the State of Maryland finalized a 30-year Camden Yards lease in December 2023, and the deal unlocked $600 million to fund ballpark upgrades through legislation passed by the General Assembly. The Maryland Stadium Authority says HB 896 raised the Camden Yards Sports Complex debt cap to $1.2 billion, with $600 million each for Oriole Park and M&T Bank Stadium, and describes the upgrades as tied to fan experience, facility life, and economic development.
That’s public money. That’s our money being invested to further enrich billionaires and millionaires.
That’s “I don’t go to the game but I still pay for the stadium” money.
So yes, ownership owes the public more than “we’re disappointed.” They owe a standard.
And here it is:
Mike Elias should be fired because the Orioles need a new president of baseball operations with authority, vision, urgency, and the freedom to audit the entire machine without protecting the reputations of the people who built it.
Not a cosmetic reshuffle. Not another assistant promoted into the fog. Not another “we’re evaluating everything” line that means “we hope Gunnar hits .310 for six weeks and the mob calms down.”
8A real audit.
The pitching development pipeline. The medical and performance group. The strength-and-conditioning operation. The major league coaching staff. The scouting assumptions. The pro personnel misses. The way the franchise evaluates risk. The way it handles young hitters. The way it drafts, teaches and values defense. The way it builds a bullpen. The way it keeps asking a clubhouse full of young players to become leaders while the adults upstairs communicate like they’re guarding nuclear launch codes.
For crissakes, they had Jackson Holliday playing third base two weeks ago!
The whole franchise needs a baseball grown-up, if not another complete brand enema because the “grand reopening” of the new David Rubenstein Baltimore Orioles doesn’t feel an iota better than the old Angelos diner that had faded all elements of joy within the community for the baseball team.
I love that damned cartoon bird but it feels like these arrogant, wealthy people do everything possible to cheapen it every day, which is really quite a large statement in the aftermath of three decades of Angelos anarchy, malice and ineptitude.
These cats aren’t surly and miserable on a daily basis. They’re too wealthy! Instead, they’re just absentee – or “checked out” like the formerly-local billionaire football owner readily admitted three months ago when he fired his head coach.
This operation needs someone who can look at Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jackson Holliday, Colton Cowser, Samuel Basallo, Kyle Bradish – the names that sold the hope – and decide who is core, who is currency, who is fragile, who is blocked, who is real, and who is just another prospect poster in a franchise that got addicted to being praised for tomorrow.
8Prospects are not trophies. They are either major leaguers or trade chips.
The Orioles hoarded tomorrow so long that today showed up and asked for first-place rent for last-place results.
That should get the architect of the mess exited and replaced.
Fixing this franchise begins with ending the fantasy that the rebuild itself was the achievement. The achievement was supposed to be winning playoff games. The achievement was supposed to be turning Camden Yards back into a feared place in October. The achievement was supposed to be the city believing that the baseball team had finally rejoined civilization after the Angelos wilderness.
Instead, the franchise has become very good at selling hope in units of “not yet.”
Not yet on the ace.
Not yet on the bullpen.
8Not yet on the real veteran bat.
Not yet on the accountability.
Not yet on media access.
Not yet on the owner’s plan.
Not yet on leadership.
Not yet on the real stadium plan and future of downtown.
Not yet on the All Star Game.
8Not yet on almost everything except the next bobblehead promotion and the markup that goes along with it to pay for it. (Of course, the Tupac gem cost two dollars to make and $200 to buy, or sell, after you buy a $35 ticket to sit in the same seat that was $13 two days earlier.)
And the worst part is this: the fans were ready. Baltimore was ready. The ballpark was ready. The city wanted to fall in love again. This wasn’t some impossible sell. This wasn’t trying to convince Baltimore to care about jai alai or crypto pickleball. This is the Orioles. This is Camden Yards. This is summer. This is the team that still lives in the civic memory of Brooks and Frank and Earl and Palmer and Cal and Eddie and the Why Not year and the orange glow of a downtown that once knew exactly what baseball was supposed to feel like.
But the franchise and the people in The Warehouse keeps mistaking nostalgia for trust.
Trust is earned when things go bad.
And things are very bad.
The Rays just showed Baltimore what organizational clarity looks like. Down two runs in the eighth, they stormed back with four runs, finished a sweep, improved to 33-15, and won for the 21st time in 25 games. The Orioles, meanwhile, had just lost a 4-1 game in which the offense disappeared after the second pitch, wasted Kyle Bradish, and turned a close game into another defensive mess.
That’s not “small sample size.” That’s a mirror.
8The fix is not complicated to state, even if it is hard to execute.
Fire Mike Elias.
Hire a president of baseball operations from outside the current groupthink.
Tell the new baseball leader to build a rotation that does not require candles, duct tape, and six “if healthy” clauses.
Stop pretending bullpen depth is optional in the American League East.
Stop treating defense like a hobby.
Stop asking young players to save the franchise before the franchise teaches them how to win.
8Stop selling premium club seats while the baseball club looks discount.
Stop hiding ownership.
Stop hiding the plan.
Stop hiding behind injuries when the pattern is now old enough to buy a beer at Pickles.
And for the love of Boog Powell’s pit beef, stop confusing Yale intelligence with MLB leadership.
Mike Elias is smart. Great. Lots of people are smart. The question is whether he is the right leader for this next era of Baltimore baseball. The answer is no.
The teardown guy is not always the title-contender guy. The farm-system architect is not always the big-league finisher. The person who thinks he’s won a press conferences with word salad process is not always the person who can build a 95-win roster with pitching, defense, depth, urgency, and teeth.
8This is where ownership has to prove it is different from the last regime to get a buy in from the wayward lost baseball fans in the community like me.
Because if Rubenstein and Arougheti bought this team to be applauded for not being Angelos, the applause has expired.
The honeymoon is officially over.
Baltimore doesn’t need “better than Angelos.” That is not a standard. That is a speed bump.
Baltimore needs competent, visible, accountable ownership that understands the public bought into this, emotionally and literally. The city gave patience. The fans gave money. The state gave infrastructure.
And the franchise gave the Baltimore Orioles fans back another May autopsy.
And this flood of silence amidst the losing , hoping that Memorial Day weekend and some cold rain will wash it all away.
8And in lieu of the local media giving any scrutiny, I am here to say that none of this is good enough.
So I’ll ask it again:
Where is the leadership?
Who stands at the microphone?
Who makes the decisions?
Who explains why the “sustained success” machine looks like a last-place rerun?
Who tells the fans why the man who said it was ultimately his responsibility last year is still operating the machine this year?
8Who tells Maryland taxpayers what they are getting besides a brighter scoreboard for a darker product?
Who tells the average fan this isn’t just going to become another playground for premium customers, corporate lounges, and ownership smiles while the baseball team bleeds credibility in last place again in an empty morgue of a stadium cathedral?
Fire Mike Elias.
Then David Rubenstein should sit down in front of Baltimore – not just the friendly cameras, not just the team-controlled channels, not just the folks who won’t ask the second question or don’t even know what to ask – and come have a crab cake and explain what the Orioles are really going to be once we want to buy into it.
A civic trust or an asset class?
A baseball franchise or a real estate strategy?
A contender or a content farm?
8A serious organization or a doormat with a better lease and plenty of good seats available that no one wants to sit in at any price to watch (more) shitty baseball?
Even though it’s been a long time, I’ve seen this franchise when it mattered. I’ve seen this city believe. I’ve seen Camden Yards when it felt like the center of the baseball universe and not a taxpayer-backed escape room where the clue is always “wait until next year.”
I bought the “hope” two years ago.
I predicted this team would win 92 games three months ago.
But then I opened my eyes and watched the movie.
Turns out, I should’ve bought the MASN thing on the month-to-month plan. To be honest, I’d feel better about giving them more “premium” money in August and September if the games were worth watching but they won’t be.
Does anyone really believe that these people know what they’re doing at this point?
