One Response From Orioles New “GM” Revealed Just What A Phony Hire This Was

The Orioles shambolic press conference to announce their new “GM” - beginning with the bizarre announcement that business-side failure Catie Griggs was a distinguished guest in the room (but no billionaire owners bothered to attend) - could surprise no one who pays any attention to this classless, bush-league franchise.

It included remarkably stupefying degrees of sucking up to Griggs by the pretend general manager himself, Jared Banner, as well as to the proven baseball failure who picked Banner to be new newest and most prominent sycophant, Mike Elias. All was entirely on brand. Of course suckers in the Baltimore media will do no real work and bring no viable insight or critiques, completely missing nuance and context of the allegedly big hires and taking fools like Elias at their word. Because the teams in this town have the corporate media entirely and completely under their thumbs.

But don’t let that cloud the truth.

This was a disgraceful display all around – from what was said by those who were there to whitewash and gaslight about the very predicament that forced Elias to finally fill a position he likely never would have admitted was vacant in the first place. It was a waste of everyone's time, and Banner is actually their fourth assistant GM, and you know how little it matters based on who didn’t show (David Rubenstein). This is a guy who never met a microphone in Manhattan or DC he could resist – which will ensure Baltimore’s All-Star Game wait goes on forever – but hides from real questioning, and mostly embarrasses himself when he speaks.

After watching this mockery a third time – I am nothing but a glutton – you can truly distill all that matters down to one exchange.

It reveals everything about Elias’s culture of absolute fielty – his super computer is always right, truth and reality don’t matter, it’s the damn standings and failed careers of his prospects that are wrong – and captured just what a fake hire this was. The question was the ultimate softball – a meatball right down middle the plate – and Banner is such an obvious suck-up, such an eager lapdog, so quick to genuflect about what has become a baseball laughingstock – that he whiffed like it was a prime Felix Bautista splitter.

All You Need To Know

Banner was asked to name one strength and one weakness about the franchise. Simple enough.

Now, this is a franchise that everyone in that room knows is 20th in MLB in winning percentage since June 21, 2024, and finished a collective 39 games out of first place in the AL East. A franchise that was anointed by Elias back in 2022 as an organization that was the envy of baseball with his “liftoff,” where he opened up a “a decade-long window where we will compete for first place in the AL East,” with “a young core” that was second to none. And he peddled his first-ever pick, Adley Rutschman, for teenagers with two playoffs of control after breaking him for two years, and is now in the process of doing the same to Gunnar Henderson, while Colton Cowser, Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad are lost causes.

And this is how Banner responded:

“Well, I know I have a lot of strengths. Just the relationship that I see Mike and Catie have, and the vision that they have for this organization. Talking to ownership - David, Mike Aruougheti, Mitch Goldstein, Michael Smith - these are all rally impressive people I had a chance to talk to and spend some time with. The culture they are trying to build. But most importantly, they want to win. Everyone wants to win. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

Can’t make this garbage up. There is no reason to take this guy even a little bit seriously, no matter how badly Baltimore media want to help these losers sell tickets. He is every bit the product of the Ivy League (or Ivy League wannabe) culture as Elias is, and just as much a disturbing biproduct of the McKinsey consulting/private equity nexus that is killing baseball as Elias is.

Elias ad Griggs are total failures at their jobs, by any standard (standings, attendance, Truist Club, basic human skills, firing The Bird and Mr. Splash). These owners are in it for profits and Rubenstein literally can’t stop saying it out loud.

No one was expecting a hard critique from the new guy, but this response if incredibly revealing, and a total disqualifier. He cannot be taken seriously.

Banner was hired to be a shield and a pawn; he has immediately taken to it like it’s his birth right. He will forever be the “GM” around here. He’ll fit in amazingly well in The Warehouse. And this team will win nothing until Elias is fired and this baseball operations staff is gutted.

Subscribe To "The Daily Flock" On YouTube For No BS O's Conversations And Content:

Add us as a preferred source on Google