Orioles GM breaks silence about controversial managerial firing

Baltimore Orioles general manager Mike Elias waited three days to speak publicly after he made Brandon Hyde, the 2023 American League Manager of the Year, the fall guy for an underwhelming offseason and poor start.

Hyde was fired Sunday with the team holding a 15-29 record. (It's 15-31 two games into the regime of interim manager Tony Mansolino.) Few outsiders blamed Hyde for the team's 5.53 earned-run average or inability to re-sign ace right-hander Corbin Burnes.

The job of improving a team that had made back-to-back first-round postseason exits fell to Elias, the Orioles' seventh-year general manager. Team owner David Rubenstein, who bought the team in 2024 from the Angelos family, had the audacity to hawk bobbleheads of himself for a promotion in April. Yet neither he nor Elias had spoken publicly about Hyde's firing — until Tuesday.

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Elias addressed the obvious question first: why wait so long to talk?

“It’s a pretty hectic few days," Elias said, via Matt Weyrich of the Baltimore Sun. "Got Tony [Mansolino, the interim manager] in place and traveled up here with the team and just needed a couple days.”

As for the disastrous performance of the Orioles' pitching staff, Elias told reporters (including Brendan Mortenson of MASN) “I think I’ve been pretty clear that our pitching staff, our starting pitching staff, it’s been a huge problem. I’ve put that on myself and the front office in terms of roster construction.”

While acknowledging the obvious, Elias did not make it clear how he'll turn around a team with playoff ambitions and little time to change course. One free-agent signing, 41-year-old right-hander Charlie Morton, is 0-7 with a 7.68 ERA. While Morton earned a mere demotion to the bullpen, right-hander Kyle Gibson (0-3, 16.78 ERA) was released Tuesday. The internal solutions to the O's pitching woes have yet to demonstrate they can save the season.

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Elias wasn't particularly convincing in explaining why Hyde should shoulder the blame.

"We want something new in order to, hopefully, restore (the team) to the level of play that we expect of ourselves," he said, via Mortenson.

Only hindsight will reveal whether the O's recent moves constitute a shuffling of the deck chairs on a sinking ship, or meaningful change. They're 12 games out of first place in the American League East through Monday, and more than one move away from looking like a contender.

If Elias doesn't get to work on reshaping the roster quickly, he might need to dust off his own resume.

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