The Orioles 2026 Season Is Already Lost. If Ownership Takes These 4 Steps Maybe 2027 Won't Be

This is another lost season for the Baltimore Orioles.

If you’ve followed the arc of this franchise the last three years under Mike Elias’s guidance, you always knew it was going to be another lost season. The roster was constructed with 80 wins as a best-case scenario if this was a top five lineup (always quite a stretch) and a total disaster if not, and if the rotation turned out to be as flimsy as it looked to smart baseball people.

The cosmetic alterations to the pitching staff were based on hope and misguided evaluations (an Elias specialty) and prayers about age and health. But this medical staff has shown no ability to handle any such challenges, so why would 2026 be different? The team’s years of rot regarding fundamental baseball and understanding of rote base running and defensive skills required a critical rethink and a veteran hand at manager. Elias’s inability to develop plus defenders at any position throughout every level of the organization wasn’t going to be fixed by a novice skipper bound by subservience and fealty to his boss on all things baseball that was clear from the opening press conference.

This roster was born to lose, in the words of the immortal Johnny Thunders, in the same way Elias’s 2024 and 2025 teams were. And even with the American League weak and suspect, lose they do (18-24; 0-9 vs LHP; 2-12 vs winning teams), in stupefying fashion despite facing mostly bad opposition. A quarter of the season in, they are an absolute joke.

They can’t stop losing in ridiculous ways, marred by multiple wild pitches to allow runs to score and their best player being picked off twice in the same game. They lose with no one on second base to field a cut-off throw or because they can’t handle routine grounders or an alleged ace pitcher couldn’t be bothered to catch a throw back to the mound from a catcher.

Only a power-hungry demagogue like Elias would pretend rookie manager Criag Albernaz and a staff filled mostly with men who already failed repeatedly in their roles with recent Orioles teams had the elixir to fix a core that can’t do basic things correctly. This team has been utterly emasculated by better teams (Yankees, A’s). And, well, the easiest portion of the schedule is already behind them.

So where do they go from here? What should ownership do to try to prepare for the future with the present an untenable mess? We’ve got a plan.

Fire Elias Immediately

People might say what could it help to whack your chief baseball exec in-season a year after he whacked a manager? Well, plenty.

Bringing in an outside special assistant to the owner to oversee the next few months before the trade deadline is utterly imperative. Now. New eyes, new accountability, new boss, new philosophies about instilling a winning baseball culture right now. That person wouldn’t be blinded by hubris about the alleged talent in Baltimore currently and would have no emotional attachment to the alleged pillars who were supposed to key this alleged rebuild.

Elias’s primary goal has been to save his job through mythologizing his prospects and his rebuild (laundered through willing participants in national media) that has actually been an absolute failure on a collective and individual basis (Sam Basallo signed to a long-term deal is about it in terms of personnel wins, this after eight years of work).

Tossing Elias (and right-hand yes man Sig Mejdal and VP Matt Blood) will open the organization up to change the daily routines of every prospect in the system and get them to focus on a singular position in most cases and not move around to three spots a week. Starting pitchers could finally get stretched out so maybe they stop collapsing when they get to MLB. Young pitchers like Trey Gibson, the supposed top pitching prospect in the org, maybe won’t get called up, making their MLB debut as a starter and then get thrust right into leverage relief roles despite having never seen that in his minor career.

You know, the silly yo-yo stuff that maybe took years off Tyler Wells’s career. A real GM might make Adley Rutschman catch more than just half of the team’s games this year. A real GM would buyout Tyler O’Neill and admit that was a horrendous mistake, instead of running him out to right field to fail this suspect pitching rotation down because he cannot move. A real GM would send Colton Cowser and Coby Mayo to AAA in advance of a trade for some semblance of pitching.

Getting a real exec atop the department would nix Elias’s purported flirtation about trying to move Jackson Holliday to third base because no one else can play it right now. You know, a real GM would make a trade and find a glove via trade to play that position at a MLB-level for what’s already a lost season so we can find out if Holliday can even play second base (that, in itself, is in doubt). Of course he doesn’t have the arm for third. Anyone whose watched him play knows that. We don’t need to mess the kid’s head up more finding out what else he can’t do for a team hasn’t looked close to a contender since June 2024.

And firing Elias now would give whatever outsiders are brough in (Buck Showalter, Alex Cora, Jim Duquette, I'm open to many ideas here) a chance to actually asses the talent here so that there are no sacred cows when it comes to the trade deadline …

Get Ready To Trade Adley

Elias missed his window to extend Rutschman or Gunnar Henderson, and this team is years away from competing, and you can add Jordan Westburg to this list next year if he does need Tommy John surgery (and if there is a next year with a lockout looming).

Adley has one more year of control, he spent two seasons in the abyss as one of MLB’s premier energy vampires and prime at-bat wasters and Basallo is the future at catcher. And since the sad excuse for a baseball exec blocked first base by signing Pete Alonso instead of an athletic, everyday outfielder they badly needed), first base is blocked.

With Rutschman, another injury always seems to be looming. He should go while he is on this tear. That needs to be an immediate actionable item. If he is on anything like this pace by the All-Star break, and there is no contract (there won’t be a contract), he must go. And we know Elias would never do this.

(Did you see what the Giants got for Patrick Bailey? Wow).

Which is why he needs to be fired yesterday.

And Henderson, if/when he gets out of the nasty funk he’s been in, is someone who has just one more year of control than Adley. I’m not saying you have to trade him in the next six weeks, but if the Orioles have a real front office in place, they will be marketing him and finding out what he might fetch. Teams like Houston look cooked and if they are floating bats like Yordan Alvarez, the O’s better damn well know what Gunnar could bring in return).

This team’s farm system is being woefully overhyped again and the best crop is in Hi-A and Elias’s systemic failure to draft and develop pitching is a blight. Moving Adley, and eventually Ryan Helsley if he gets healthy and any other piece in the bullpen any real team might want are the only cards they really have to play.

Blow Out The Pitching Coaches

Elias has been here since 2018 and never developed a homegrown starting pitcher and the one who made major strides after being acquired in trade as a minor leaguer– Kyle Bradish – had parts of three season marred by one Tommy John surgery, which might be a record. Players leave here like Tomo Sugano, and immediately get better. They let alleged ace Grayson Rodriguez pitch in a spring training game after having discomfort and low velo in a bullpen before the outing and then let him stay in that exhibition despite throwing an 89mph fastball.

They’ve had a hard time developing hitters, don’t get me wrong, but the pitching side of this is a joke. Elias gave up a ransom for Shane Baz and he’s throwing meatballs. Chris Bassitt looks done. Everyone is always hurt. There is too much risk and too much variance in this art of finding pitching and keeping it healthy in general, and it’s been embarrassing how poorly the top acquisitions and prospects have performed in Baltimore at the MLB level.

The interim baseball czar needs to bring some pitching coaches with him, and at least one of them needs to be above the age of 50 and have actually had a major league pitching career himself. It’s going to take a village and some of the villagers need to have a very different resume than the current staff.

Begin A Search For A New Medical Staff

The Ravens made a bold hire, bringing in the head of the New Zealand rugby team’s sports science and rehab and recovery and medicine to oversee their operations at the highest level. For all of their troubles with these matters, it frankly pales to the Orioles who ran an esteemed and beloved head training out in Brian Ebel with no explanation so Elias could bring in all of his own people.

They went from a team that was top five in IL stints over a three year period to one that cannot seemingly handle any medical issues. The soft tissue injuries have been a blight and star players and blowing out their oblique hitting lefty and then doing it batting from the right side. Constantly delaying obvious Tommy John surgeries for Kyle Bradish and Felix Bautista and now probably Westburg is ridiculous.

Players seemingly never come back on the team’s own timeline that they release through the media. They can’t keep a pitcher healthy for any extended spell and go out of their way to acquire pitches with extreme medical histories (Zach Eflin) and then act surprised when they fail and breakdown.

The sooner they get working on overhauling the entire medical staff the better. Ownership needs to get real about how and why they over-empowered so many of the first people who should have been let go (in baseball operations and communications and marketing) when they purchased this franchise.

August will be two years since they took over. They’ve punted on doing anything bright or inspired regarding their on-field product and allowed their worst people to sink them to embarrassing depths. Majority owner David Rubenstein went from spraying people with water guns in the stands and handing out bobbleheads of himself like he’s accomplished anything at all in the world of baseball to becoming a ghost, and a silent one at that.

The Orioles baseball ops has become a private-equity afterthought; a bush league organization across the board, run by billionaires who look like slum landlords when it comes to anything besides maximizing their $600M handout for stadium upgrades from public tax funds.

It’s time for the owners to at least pretend like they’re like engaged owners. Step up and act. You’re disgracing yourself with this mess, and the city of Baltimore.

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