Elias opened up about his thoughts on the season and his current status in his role with the team.
One day after the Baltimore Orioles’ 2026 season came to an abrupt end, Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias did not shy from his honest thoughts on the team’s results on the year.
Baltimore had finished the year with a 79-82 record, ending the season in fourth place in the AL East and missing the postseason with a losing record for the second consecutive year.
“The results need to be better,” Elias said, according to Jacob Calvin Meyer of The Baltimore Sun. “This is the second straight year. We’re tired of it.”
Elias opened up about multiple fronts regarding the Orioles, including not only the future of the team, but his own future at his current helm. He said that he has not yet been told by David Rubenstein, the Orioles’ owner, if he will return as the Orioles’ general manager in 2027.
“I don’t seek those assurances. I work as hard as I possibly can,” Elias said. “I pour everything I have into this every day until someone tells me to stop.”
Ever since Elias was hired into the general manager role in 2018, the Orioles have had three winning seasons from 2022-2024. In his first three seasons, Baltimore had seen some significant losing seasons, but seemed to have gotten past their rebuild with a few winning campaigns.
Baltimore made the postseason in 2023 and 2024, but did not record a playoff win in both years. Instead, the team’s emergence out of the rebuild has not gone the way the Orioles had hoped it would.
In 2025, the Orioles finished 12 games under .500 in what turned out to be a disappointing season. Baltimore had fired manager Brandon Hyde 43 games into the season. The team hired Craig Albernaz as manager heading into 2026, who did not lead the team back into contention in his first year as a major-league skipper.
Elias’ tenure has begun to be defined by the Orioles’ sudden return to non-contention. With the roster that they have, the expectation is to win, so the pressure is definitely on if he were to return to the role.
As Elias enters his ninth offseason as the team’s general manager, one of his goals is to expand the Orioles’ baseball operations department. Currently, the size of their department ranks 29th among 30 MLB teams as one of the smallest.
The end goal, of course, is to turn things around and bring the Orioles back to contention.
“I’ve lived in Baltimore a long time,” Elias said. “I know how important this is and how badly we all want it.”
