When An Owner Shows You Who He Really Is And Tells You What He Truly Cares About, Believe Him Birdland

When a franchise that bragged back in 2022 to have opened a “decade-long window” of competing to win the powerful American League East, is having a second straight lost season it demands answers and a full accounting.

When that franchise, in fact, experienced not the “liftoff” failed baseball czar Mike Elias promised on Aug. 8, 2022, but a colossal nosedive, becoming one of the seven worst teams in MLB since June 21, 2024, a level of seriousness and circumspection and introspection is required. So when the current stewards of this sinking ship decide to speak publicly – failure-obsessed Elias in his monthly capacity and private-equity-obsessed billionaire owner David Rubenstein for the first time really all season – as they did before Friday’s game, every word and intonation will naturally be parsed carefully.

Especially with the trade deadline now looming and the Orioles again much closer to last place in the AL than actually threatening in their division. Anyone who truly cared about winning – as Elias once professed – or cared about the health of the franchise or cared about the fan experience (beyond finding new ways to gouge them) or cared about having a quality on-field product, would have been seeking blame and begging for forgiveness and accepting that massive changes are still required and this baseball operation clearly isn’t close to good enough.

They would have acknowledged that this is not what was promised in the offseason or at spring training or when Elias met with the media in late April to pretend this team didn’t clearly have the same inherent flaws as 2025 (when in fact he constructed it to do just that) and that this year would be different. They would have at least winked back that, yeah, prospects are still rotting and Adley never plays and Gunnar 2026 is somehow as bad as Adley 2025 and we still can’t hit a damn offspeed pitch.

Instead, you got baseball losers gaslighting you, in stereo, parroting the same pathetic talking points that only losers would allow to come out of their mouths at a time like this. You got dual excuse making and alternative facts and baloney about injuries (but nothing about Elias going younger and cheaper and overmatched with his new medical team, same as the latest laughable puppet manager overmatched in the dugout).

This is all they think they need to do to placate you and raise the value of their investment, fueled by all the ballpark upgrades. So this is what you get, Birdland.

With any real baseball fan in this region waiting desperately for Rubenstein to give any indication that he cared and had a pulse and understood the organizational rot that has torpedoed his franchise, they tried to take you for a fool and dupe you again. So you got the owner professing a team that has won more than three games in a row once all season could win “seven out of 10” the rest of the season, and everything was fine and it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise. And Elias, is in fact, a baseball genius.

Maybe It's Better Rubenstein Says Nothing At All

“Mike, he was the baseball executive of the year a few years ago, widely regarded as outstanding by his peers and other people in baseball,” Rubenstein rambled during Kyle Bradish's contract extension press conference. “Absolutely (he has long-term confidence in him).

“And he’s done a terrific job. I’m very, very happy, and we couldn’t be more pleased. We’ve had some injuries, 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.”

This is a titan of business who also makes money hosting shows on Bloomberg and interviewing the richest people in the world and who writes books and understands the power of words and language and context. So for those who would point out he wouldn’t want to undermine his current GM right before the trade deadline, I would counter that there is a vast middle ground he could have explored that includes a lot less “very” and really” and over-the-top fan fiction. He could have constructed a statement to address this as well, to at least nod back at reality.

So, in lieu of that, I’m going to accept him for what he projected here – a total rube, a mark, a gullible and content loser. An absentee owner who will gleefully stomach what should humiliate him on a nightly basis all for the bottom line.

I’ll accept that he truly values Elias because Elias views the game and players and the product as cynically as the owners do, and he thinks Elias is adept at doing just enough to stay quasi-competitive on the cheap as they plot to break the union in the upcoming labor Armageddon (Rubenstein started whining about a non-existent salary cap as soon as he bought in).

I’m going to accept that the person who dictates the fate of the Baltimore Orioles – no parades since 1983 and no playoff wins in a decade – is a bumbling, bamboozled, buffoon when it comes to this team, so out of his depth as to not even understand how to read the standings or comprehend basic math and statistics and who cannot discern the difference between the way say, the Dodgers play baseball, and his horse-crap operation pretends to play it.

I’m going to accept that whatever acumen he may have amassed becoming respected in his other endeavors actually hinders his ability to have the faintest of clues about what the hell he is doing owning a baseball team. I’m going to accept that this is who he really is, and that the new sports bar they opened in right field and the scoreboard our tax money built for him and ripping out the best pressbox in baseball for a vacant playpen to schmooze with other CEOs is what this really is about for him.

It’s long been clear that The Warehouse is so full of contemptable characters that no one in PR or marketing – the industry is laughing at this operation across the board as guest after guest speaks to on “The Daily Flock Show” – will try to save him from himself. All of them are in on the take, part of the problem, so this is their shameful brand of baseball and salesmanship.

The Joke's On Birdland

Just accept it Baltimore: Rubenstein truly is content with this state of affairs, and he thinks you suckers should be, too.

I’m going to accept that this is really what they think of you. And, perhaps most sadly of all, that they think they can get away with this as long as they want (and as complicit as the media in this town are, they just might be right).

The guy who couldn’t wait to throw hats and bobbleheads in your face and strut down the concourse to sell his product when they were winning, who then went underground when the reality of his baseball talent Ponzi scheme came to light, shunned any chance to send even a faint signal that he saw this for what it is.

Instead, he doubled and tripled down on the insipid executives who execute this scheme for him. Shame on you for thinking this would be any different than 2025 (just with a slightly higher payroll); they haven’t fooled me since the 2023 trade deadline, by the way. If you took him and Elias at their word about how much they were pushing to win back when they were trying to peddle new Birdland Memberships, that’s your problem.

And you’d best get on board and stay on board, because this is all you’re ever going to get. A few long-term contracts (pitchers under $100M total, a soon-to-be-DH in his 30s, a teenager we could buy really cheap) and an extensive vanity project for a halfwit GM and his calculator-worshipping minions to try to look smart enough on the margins to get two million people to show up at Camden Yards while they continue to butcher it and bastardize it.

These are grifters and con-men, not real baseball men. And when they open their mouths, the joke will always be on the consumer.

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