The 5 Most Annoying Things About The 2026 Orioles

The Orioles 2026 is complete.

It was exactly the debacle we expected. It really was that bad (as outlined in depth here ) and if you think the people running this thing have any real intent to make things better next year, you must be on their payroll. It can always get worse with these mooks and will always get worse with these mooks. The roster is in disrepair- both the active and the 40-man have massive holes - and it’s going to take a lot of work to make 2027 brighter.

In reality, the American League might prove to be much more daunting next season and all Mike Elias has been doing is falling well off the pace since early in the 2024 season. In a season that started coming unglued almost before it began, and that included all the hallmarks of The Elias Way. There was plenty to get upset about. And for the sake of this exercise, I’m going to leave the most obvious (almost no one on the team who can field his position) to the side.

There were plenty of other things that, upon reflection, probably infuriated me the most, and that haven’t always been the case around here:

Craig Albernaz’s Mouth

If you are going to suck at your job from start to finish and be woefully out of your depth, at least be able to string a coherent sentence together, and have a clue how to communicate to your fanbase. Know when to just shut up; if you are going to lie and gaslight daily, then get better at it and keep your story straight with the PR hack in your dugout with you.

It’s amazing how much this clown’s words were a part of the story. From defending idiotic baseball daily and playing favorites and trolling fans about imaginary bandwagons and sounding like a gym teacher trying to defend daily strategic failures to picking on a 21-year-old kid to scapegoating two AAAA guys who had no business being on the roster at the end of the season.

He’s a fake manager and a fake tough guy and he makes their despicable brand of baseball even more difficult to stomach. Of course, this is the fool Elias hired and is keeping around. Worst of all he'll be making excuses and engaging in loser talk this afternoon as he and Elias discuss their debacle with the media.

Elias In-Season Debacles

The only thing worse than his utter failure to put together a believable roster coming out of spring training is the way he enables their biggest weaknesses through the season and refuses to adjust and accept reality and actually do anything to help them out.

Go get a real glove? No way. Sell high on guys early when it’s clear it’s a lost season and you’ll be selling at the deadline anyway? No chance. Sound like a pathetic used car salesman in April and May and June and July when you meet the media, trying to convince people they don’t know what they’re watching? Oh yeah.

And then make decisions at the deadline that reveal this for being the never-ending grift that it’s always been, playing for prospect rankings and shedding salary for your billionaire overlords and selling off. He's a proven loser than stands for nothing is about nothing except for keeping his job.. Lucky for him he works for David Rubenstein, who really doesn't care about winning.

Deficiencies on Base Paths

Gunnar Henderson getting picked off twice in the same game has to be the most 2026 Orioles thing of them all. And then like three other guys getting picked off over the next 10 days. It so captures the vacant combination of Elias/Albernaz (Albi-ass), and the fact they can’t cull 10 steals out of Jackson Holliday and this team made outs at third base all season and … you know it was coming … the little league contact play that’s always on.

It shows you just how dumb the people who run your franchise are when they can’t even get this stuff right year after year.

Fake Comebacks

This pretend manager getting all giddy about this team’s pretend fight and grit night after night was so bush league. Put together six innings of AAA at bats playing selfish ball and trying to see how far you could hit the baseball while striking out a ton. Then thump your chest when something flies out of the park in the 8th inning.

Start to knock around some lesser bullpen arms and chip into the lead. Boot the ball around, play low effort, low IQ baseball and lose anyway. And lose more than most teams in the AL in a year when everybody is losing a lot. Quite a script right down through Friday night in the Bronx.

And still get gassed up by the puppet skipper and the MASN PR staff after the game like getting close matters. “These guys never quit,” the loser manager said all the time, while they sleepwalked through two thirds of the game all season and managed one meaningful winning streak all season and couldn’t compete with winning teams.

Such pandering BS. There are standings, losers. We know the score.

No Everyday OFs

Elias had the temerity to crow about his roster and his lineup and Taylor Ward literally just wanted to walk and did not swing the bat and got dealt in like July and he is third on this team in plate appearances (506) and somehow Leody Taveras, who should have been toggling between Norfolk and short stints here if this was a real roster, is fourth on the 2026 Orioles with 482 PAs, despite it being clear what he was before the season began and damn sure obvious once he started getting overexposed around 250 PAs.

That should be impossible, man. For any allegedly contending team, and especially one that has sold out for college OF bats at the top of the draft.

But that’s just The Elias Way.

Subscribe To "The Daily Flock" For No B.S. O's Convos And Content:

Add us as a preferred source on Google