What Orioles Recent Front Office Comments Reveal About Their Free-Agent Plans

Mike Elias doesn't have much of a poker face, and his intentions are remarkably easy to read if you know what to look for

Nov 4, 2025; Baltimore, MD, USA; President of Baseball Operations Mike Elias introduces Craig Albernaz as the Baltimore Orioles new Manager at Warehouse Bar. Mandatory Credit: Daniel Kucin Jr.-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

When last the Orioles sent proven baseball failure Mike Elias and “GM” Jared Banner to speak to the media, the conversation steered decidedly away from any concrete baseball news. Rookie “GM” Jared Banner was too busy falling all over himself praising Elias and business-side czar Catie Griggs to do much else, and Elias likes to pretend he plays his cards close to the vest … and then obvious leaks through the media in quasi-reports make him so transparent it’s almost painful.

But based on the breathless reporting in The Baltimore Banner about everybody being on the table via trade, allegedly, besides Pete Alonso and Gunnar Henderson, combined with a few kernels of wisdom we got from Assistant GM No. 4 at his big press conference with Elias, we believe the Orioles are sending real signals about some of the offseason ambitions, or lack thereof.

Call us cynics, we’ve been called far worse, but on the heels of Griggs firing Mr. Splash and multiple Oriole Birds, in a move they knew would be a PR nightmare (a real problem when you don’t even have a AA PR staff on hand) and then with the Orioles wanting the whole world to know they want to make all the trades in the world and with billionaire owner David Rubenstein alternating between crying poor about a lockout and bragging about how much money he is making running the O’s, we are already fearing the worst, friends.

There is only way to read this: the payroll will hit next year’s total, at best, and they want to check a ton of boxes in trades so Elias can save his boss’s money  and not have to overspend to get mostly middling players to come to a terrible organization for way more money than a good team would have to pay them. That’s the climate Elias has created through going on a decade of running this into the ground, and it was amplified by his newest flunky at last week’s press conference.

Read Between The Lines

Banner, who is supposedly in charge of the coaching staff  (even through Elias decided to keep the aimless puppet skipper in charge for another year before he was even really interviewing “GM” candidates), found an interesting way to spin the fact the Orioles don’t plan to make changes to what was one of the most overmatched and least useful groups of hitting and pitching coaches in MLB.

“We’re hoping for some continuity,” Banner opined. “Things could change - some of our staff members could get new, big opportunities elsewhere … But we’re hoping for some continuity.”

Here’s why that matters – he knows other teams are cheap, like the O’s and aren’t making a lot of staff changes either. And these guys stink and aren’t going anywhere; no one is trying to hire them. And they don’t want to spend more money to get better options and have to pay these people to go away. They are taking the cheap and easy way out – THE ELIAS WAY- and if you don’t think that’s a tell about what the private equity billionaires have planned for the open market, you really haven’t been paying attention.

They want to take on fixed costs in trade, get people like Jackson Holliday out of here the way they just jettisoned a second-overall pick (Heston Kjerstad) to stop having to deal with their obvious failures there. This is who they are and what they do and Elias wants guys on team-friendly deals via trade who he will never extend and can rent for a few seasons.

Same as it ever was. They tend to show their hand pretty early in the game. They aren't too hard to read and I have been calling out Elias's every move since the 2023 trade deadline.

They’re doing it already, via the local media – and soon enough the national (how many free agents will the access merchants claim they were the “runner-up” on this time?), too. Elias plays that game pretty well. He is a complete fraud when it comes to actually doing his job and ever making this team any better.