Elias aims to get O’s ‘up to speed’

New GM’s goal is for club to catch up with rest of MLB Tech expo offers glimpse into data-driven future of Orioles

In the middle of his first winter meetings in charge of the Orioles, one that that included the hiring of manager Brandon Hyde as he continued to build the organization in his image, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias had to do a lot of explaining on his philosophy regarding coaches and player development.

A month into his time with the Orioles, Elias is doing just as much answering about overall philosophy as anything specific.

Who he is has been hard to separate from what he was a part of in Houston, and the idea that the Orioles are going to try to replicate that success doesn’t do much to distinguish him from the Astros.

The time for all that will come, but in an interview with The Baltimore Sun this past week, Elias addressed some of his hopes for the organization in the context of analytics, his baseball background and the way he views the game, as well as how he feels the organization he's inherited will take to the concepts he expects to introduce. See ELIAS Q&A, page 5

Just beside the sprawling media work room where hundreds of writers tapped out the day’s news at this past week’s baseball winter meetings in Las Vegas, baseball executives across a makeshift hallway had an eye on writing the game’s future.

Because of the collection of data and the fast pace of technological advances, front-office executives requested Major League Baseball gather as many companies as they could in the fields of motion-capture technology, data management, wearable health tracking and even virtual reality, to — in a sense — meet them where they are.

The event’s purpose was twofold for the Orioles. They’ve made clear that the first step is building an analytics infrastructure that mirrors what worked for executive vice president Mike Elias and assistant general manager Sig Mejdal with the Houston Astros, and many of the vendors at Monday’s event knew the Astros well.

But it’s also about replicating the Astros’ reputation for innovation in technology and practices, for integrating new See DATA, page 5