Elias on building the Orioles and the 2025 draft

SARASOTA—Several years ago, before the Orioles became contenders, executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias said he believed his team would become a “transactional” club.

Over the past offseason, the Orioles added seven free agents, outfielders Dylan Carlson, Ramón Laureano and Tyler O’Neill, starting pitchers Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano, reliever Andrew Kittredge and catcher Gary Sánchez.

It’s possible that none of them may be with the Orioles beyond this season. O’Neill signed a three-year, $49.5 million contract, but he can opt out after this season. The Orioles hold 2026 options on Laureano ($6.5 million) and Kittredge ($9 million). Carlson does have three options, so there’s a decent chance he’ll be with the Orioles next year.

They also hold a $6.5 million 2026 option on infielder Jorge Mateo as part of the settlement of his arbitration case.

While their young core of Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser, Jackson Holliday, Grayson Rodriguez, Félix Bautista, Ryan Mountcastle and Samuel Basallo not yet eligible for free agency, they’re all likely to be Orioles in 2026.

Besides Morton, Sánchez and Sugano, starting pitcher Zach Eflin, first baseman Ryan O’Hearn, centerfielder Cedric Mullins and relievers Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto are all eligible for free agency following this season.

If each of those players become free agents, Elias will have to work hard to replace them, either from the minor leagues, trade or free agency, which is what he did after the 2024 season.

Elias doesn’t think that that’s going to be a constant after each season.

“Not necessarily. I think our offseason is going to look different every year,” he said at MLB Media Day last month in Bradenton.

“There’s a lot of case-by-case. There’s a lot of the team’s needs were, where the rosters at, what’s out on the market. So, I don’t think that there’s going to be any formula that’s hard and fast, year over year.”

The Orioles’ payroll has grown dramatically under David Rubenstein, who bought the team nearly a year ago. The team has a $160 million payroll. 15^th highest in the game.

Elias has regularly lauded Rubenstein and his group for allowing the Orioles to add payroll, and the owner said last month, he didn’t have a problem increasing the payroll even more.

“I don’t have a financial limit,” Rubenstein said. “The team is in very good financial shape. We don’t have debt problems, we don’t have financial challenges or anything like that.

“We want to put the best team on the field we can, and we don’t have a constraint by saying there’s a certain amount of money we’d spend. So we can get the best team we can get. We will try to do that, and if it costs money, then we’ll do it. But we don’t have any particular constraints.”

While the Orioles don’t have financial challenges, they’re in the American League East, which has its own challenges.

“This is a division with a lot of different shapes and sizes and the markets, so you’re going to do things a little bit differently if you’re [Tampa Bay] and the bigger cities,” Elias said.

“You’re going to find our own style. It’s going to continue to evolve here in Baltimore, but the main goal is to grow the franchise, to keep the baseball consistently successful and hopefully excellent. I really think the ownership group and the management team that we have in place and we’re continuing to build will be able to do that. I think it’s going to be a great thing over the next several years and longer in Baltimore.”

Over the past few years, Elias has traded some of the players he’s drafted, including infielders Joey Ortiz and Darell Hernaiz as well as minor league pitcher Jackson Baumeister in exchange for starters Corbin Burnes, Cole Irvin and Eflin.

The combination of graduating the young core from the minor leagues to the majors and trading prospects has resulted in a weaker farm system, something Elias believes is temporary.

“I think it’s exceptionally important for our franchise to draft well to build through the draft,” he said.

“You look at this team that we have right now, it’s by and large draft picks. It demonstrates the importance of what those can do, so we’re at a point now in the farm system where we had a ton of graduations. We made a lot of trades the last couple of years, and now we’ve got this draft where we’ve basically got three first-round picks. I think we’ve got like six in the top 100 or something like that. I do view it as a big draft for hopefully rebuilding our farm system a little bit with the new wave.”

The Orioles will pick 19^th and received the 30^th and 31^st picks as compensation for losing Burnes and Anthony Santander as free agents. They also have the 58^th pick in the second round, the 69^th in Competitive Balance Round B and the 93^rd in the third round.

Despite these picks carrying added importance, Elias isn’t returning to his roots as a scout and looking closely at high school and college players as he did in the years they drafted Rutschman, Cowser and Holliday.

“I don’t think so. I really have, once the team started winning in 2022 and once our picks dropped out of the top five in the draft, your priorities evolve with your personal time,” he said.

“The way that the draft works, and the way that scouting works, when you’re picking outside 10, maybe 15, the top 15 in the draft, it’s really unpredictable who’s going to be available down there, and unless you’re committing yourself to close to full-time on the road, I don’t know how much of a help I’m going to be in the process.

“I’m not planning on doing too much traveling for the draft, but if the staff wants me to see somebody or I can help them or they need a decision, I can do that.

“In 2019 and 2021 and 2022 with Holliday, I was out on the road a lot spending most of my time working on those high picks. I think I was even talking about they were the most important decisions that the organization would make that year. That’s just no longer the case. The day-to-day, running the team is so important where we’re at.”

Call for questions: I answer Orioles questions most weekdays. Please send yours to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com.