Elias to lead Orioles’ rebuilding
After bottoming out, Baltimore plucks a new GM from the Astros’ front office
BALTIMORE — Mike Elias, who first as scouting director and later as assistant general manager played a major role in the Houston Astros’ rebuild that culminated in a 2017 World Series title, will get the chance to replicate that as the Orioles’ next executive vice president and general manager, the club announced Friday afternoon.
That experience with one of the model modern feats of organization-building in Houston helped the Orioles choose Elias, 35, to take over for executive vice president Dan Duquette, who was dismissed Oct. 3 with his contract set to expire after the Orioles’ franchise-record 115-loss season.
The hire adds another step in Elias’ swift rise to one of baseball’s top jobs, having entered the game shortly after his graduation from Yale University in 2006 and quickly ascending into the game’s top front offices.
Elias joined the St. Louis Cardinals in 2007 as an area scout after playing at Yale, climbing to manager of amateur scouting in 2010. He held that role through January 2012, when he joined former Cardinals vice president of scouting and player development Jeff Luhnow in Houston. Luhnow brought Elias on as a special assistant and then scouting director in 2012, with Elias promoted to assistant general manager with player development responsibilities and minorleague operations added to his purview.
He was credited with steering the organization toward star shortstop Carlos Correa with the top overall pick in 2012 — the same pick the Orioles have in the 2019 draft — and the Astros are credited not only with hitting on many of the high draft picks of their rebuild (including Alex Bregman, Lance McCullers Jr. and Kyle Tucker), but integrating analytics into every part of their organization and using it to build a productive farm system.
Elias was part of three drafts from 2012 to 2014 in which the Astros had the first overall pick, as the Orioles do in 2019. Elias was the scouting director for two of those.
Elias is the third high-profile departure from the Astros front office this off-season. Director of research and development Mike Fast left to become a special assistant with the Atlanta Braves, while Sig Megdal, a special assistant who helped build the Astros’ analytics department after coming to baseball from a NASA background, left last month. Megdal could join Elias in Baltimore to do the same with the Orioles, according to multiple reports, including MLB.com.
While they had plenty of time to formulate a list of possible candidates given Duquette was in the final year of his contract and the Orioles never sniffed the playoff race, the process ended up taking the longest of the three clubs who needed new baseball operations heads this off-season.
The New York Mets had a wideranging, public search that landed them former agent Brodie Van Wagenen on Oct. 29. The San Francisco Giants hired Sudbury, Ont., native Farhan Zaidi away from the Los Angeles Dodgers on Nov. 6.
Elias has his work cut out for him.
The major-league roster is thin on young talent, with Dylan Bundy, Mychal Givens and Trey Mancini the only established, homegrown players around for fans to connect to. Free agent contracts to veterans Chris Davis, Mark Trumbo, Alex Cobb and Andrew Cashner haven’t yielded the return the club has hoped.
Their farm system, while improved some by the July trades that sent out former all-stars Manny Machado, Zach Britton, Brad Brach, Jonathan Schoop and Darren O’Day, plus former first-round pick Kevin Gausman, is lacking in true up-the-middle talent and has much more depth than impact potential.