Orioles Ownership Pretends Injuries Are Why They Fail. The Data And Facts Expose This Flimsy Excuse

The Orioles owner and head of baseball operations want you to believe they built a mega-team, and if not for totally unpreventable injuries they would be taking the baseball world by storm.

They take their fans for fools, and, well, they have a of the “media” already on their payroll - or trying get on their payroll - or under their thumb, so they know when they lie and yammer and twist facts and skew the truth and gaslight their consumers, there will be virtually no pushback from corporate media in Baltimore. They can rely on mostly just the same kind of fealty they demand from the novice, over-matched skippers (keep running Rico Garcia out there in the 8th inning)

It wouldn’t take much digging to determine if they Orioles were one of the five or even 10 most impacted teams in MLB by salary dollars lost to injury and it wouldn’t take much to determine if some of the players injured the most have a profile and history that makes it obvious they get hurt all the time. So in essence, that was always going to be a part of the 2026 Orioles sorry story.

It wouldn’t be that difficult to see if some of those out the longest actually carried severe medical issues at the time they were signed – making them a risk but also making them cheap - and this organization doesn’t want to spend to the league average most years let alone go far above it.

No one wants to talk about how or why Elias threw out a beloved trainer who had been here for a generation to bring in his own people sufficiently under his thumb who have overseen a rash of muscle injuries and blown out elbows and players repeating the same injury paths year after year after year (you can hear former Orioles skipper Buck Showalter and former top baseball exec Jim Duquette and former Orioles All Star shortstop Mike Bordick talk all about the massive impact of firing Brian Ebel On “The Daily Flock Show”).

So when David Rubenstein yammered and bloviated and sounded like someone just pulled off a bus and told to impersonate a corporate titan on Friday meeting with the media and not a self-made billionaire with an international media profile and a career as an interviewer/journalist, perhaps it was because he knew this was bad performance art based on faux realities and gaslighting and not facts.

“We’ve had some injuries,” said the owner who went from throwing hats and bobbleheads at you to spewing distortions and half-truths. “But that’s not Mike’s fault. In the end, we’re very pleased and we’re really, really happy to have such a talented executive leading our baseball team.”

No actually quite a bit of it is Mike’s fault, much of it was baked into your cheap 2026 roster cake, just like your 2025 version, with lack of depth and continued high-risk signings (like $19M on broken Tyler O’Neill the offseason before this, with his proven track record of breaking down).

Where Do The Orioles Actually Rank?

The website Spotrac.com does a fine job tracking anything related to salary and spending in pro sports and their MLB page keeps running totals of IL stints. The Orioles would have you believe that having 11 players on the Injured List right now is wrecking their season; they wouldn’t tell you they are one of 13 with that many or MORE on the IL right now. That’s not an outlier.

They also wouldn’t tell you that many of those taking up the most days on the list are a closer was never in their 2026 plans (Felix Bautista) and an older-high risk signing (to allegedly replace him) who started breaking down in 2025 when the league destroyed his fastball (Ryan Helsley) who people like me told you was an idiotic signing in real-time. So of course Helsley managed only 15 innings pitched. Zach Eflin is accounting for four-months of these these days, signed off back surgery ... and then somehow “ready” for Opening Day after spending most of 2025 on Baltimore’s injured List; he takes up the bulk of the days having his season end after one outing.

Many called out how moronic signing that was in realtime; now a grotesquely rich guy is using it against his fanbase to prop up one of the biggest frauds and failure of a sports executive in pro sprots and using it as cover for you having to watch a product that can’t catch, throw, run or hit an offspeed pitch.

Jordan Westburg and Adley Rutschman are brittle and injury-prone first-round picks; neither has manned even close to half the man games played at his position since June 21, 2024. Anyone surprised they have spent most of this season collectively on the sidelines wasn’t paying attention in the first place.

So the idea it’s no one’s fault is novel, because part of the reason the Orioles are 12th in salary dollars lost to injury – yeah, just 12th – is that they have a dubious pitching plan with dubious pitching coaches and they have 10 elbow injuries. As Duquette pointed out on our show, the industry thinks Elias hasn’t conducted the kind of deep studies others do, and hasn’t audited the people involved in his training and recovery programs thoroughly and hasn’t taken extreme preventative measures in these instances … But he did fire Ebel, then the injury numbers started to soar.

2026 Injury Data (per Spotrac.com)

IL Stints Current Total Days Payroll Lost

1 Dodgers 11 29 1560 $65,579,246

2 Yankees 4 15 652 $59,661,926

3 Angels 9 27 1108 $55,699,333

4 Astros 6 37 1374 $51,881,372

5 Mets 8 25 1176 $51,266,744

6 Blue Jays 12 32 1342 $50,387,595

7 Braves 9 29 1226 $45,365,263

8 Tigers 12 35 1440 $45,037,244

9 Red Sox 11 28 1237 $42,433,929

10 D-Backs 13 27 1308 $38,222,196

11 Padres 10 30 1136 $35,740,899

12 Orioles 11 34 1316 $28,594,732

What’s Really Going On?

More to the core of the 2026 Orioles failure to launch, the industry thinks they are a cocky, sophomoric, cheap, petty, egomaniacal and flimsy front office (Klye Glaser lays it all out on “The Daily Flock Show”) … so maybe that’s the problem, and the injuries are a symptom of them trying to look smart on the margins.

But to get embarrassed by the Red Sox when that team was without three of the best starters in the AL – Garrett Crochet, Ranger Suarez and Connelly Early - and a big money shortstop (Trevor Story) and the recent top prospect in MLB (Roman Anthony) and had to play a catcher at second-base because the entire starting infield is wiped out, and come out with this pathetic loser talk and whining pablum? Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton have basically not played for the Yankees and Max Fried and Gerrit Cole had seasons heavily compromised by returning from injury and the Rays spent a season playing in a minor league stadium due to a natural disaster and are back to kicking the Orioles ass again in the standings, and this is the drivel they serve up?

It should be beneath the stewards of the most underachieving pro sports franchise in this country since June 21, 2024, but it does capture what frauds all of them are. Elias is the one who told you he was opening up “a decade-long window” to annually win the AL East. Not me. I told you he was a total charlatan and needed to be fired way back at the 2023 trade deadline.

So here’s the reality of Baltimore’s long-term injury situation:

Yes, the Orioles are third in MLB with nine players on the 60-day IL, but outside of Westburg (again, sadly always hurt with a surgery they decided to push back), it’s fringe guys. Former closer Felix Bautista needed multiple surgeries and was never in the 2026 plans and Bassitt and Eflin of course were going to break down at this stage of their career, Keegan Akin was having a terrible season and Colin Selby is a maybe bullpen arm and Ryan Mountcastle had no position here when Pete Alonso was signed and wasn’t going to play and Helsley, like every old closer Elias has signed, was cooked.

That’s not why they are nearly 10-games below .500 against winning teams and lead MLB in strikeout rate on the road and are one of the worst teams in MLB hitting starting pitching and are bottom five in MLB in overall fielding and stolen base percentage.

It’s bad enough what they expect you to pay to watch this product while taxpayers subsidize the “improvements” to Camden Yards that raise the value of their investment. It’s worse when they try to deceive you about what the root problems are, and why they can only win more than three straight games once as August looms and why the rebuild they overhyped and used as cover for the constant failed transactions at the MLB level is a laughingstock around the league.

It’s what conmen do. These two aren’t equipped to fix the problem, nor do they appear particularly interested in even trying to.

So they’ll try to make you think, by merely expecting competent baseball in this town, that you are actually the problem. That’s what Friday was all about. Don’t fall for their grift.

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