Orioles GM Elias speaks 3 days after firing manager, says he's evaluating reasons for team's decline

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Orioles general manager Mike Elias broke his silence about his decision to fire manager Brandon Hyde, saying Tuesday he’s doing an across-the-board evaluation to determine what has caused Baltimore’s remarkably rapid decline.

“You go back to last June, we were on top of the sport in almost every facet of the sport, including majors and minors,” Elias said before the Orioles fell 5-2 at Milwaukee for their eighth straight loss. “Now we find ourselves where we find ourselves. This has been hitting us all very hard, but it’s unusual for that to be so sudden.”

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Mike Elias, executive vice president and general manager for the Baltimore Orioles, speaks to the media before a baseball game against the Milwaukee Brewers, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Aaron Gash)

Elias fired Hyde on Saturday, and until Tuesday, only players and interim manager Tony Mansolino had answered reporters’ questions about the move. The Orioles, who won a combined 192 games from 2023-24, are last in the American League East and own the third-worst record (15-32) in the majors.

Elias praised Hyde for getting the Orioles back into contention but said the time had come for a new voice. Baltimore has gone 0-4 since Mansolino was promoted from third-base coach.

“I want to emphatically credit (Hyde) for the wonderful job that he did and the skill set that he has,” Elias said. “I’m sure he’s going to continue and have a fantastic career. It’s very endemic to sports. After a certain number of years, sometimes organizations try something different, and that’s what this was.”

Elias was asked why he waited this long to speak about the move.

“It’s a pretty hectic few days,” he said. “I got Tony in place and traveled up here with the team. I just needed a couple of days.”

Hyde was named the AL manager of the year in 2023 after leading the Orioles to a 101-61 record and their first division title since 2014. Baltimore followed that up by going 91-71 and returning to the playoffs as a wild card last year, though it struggled to a 34-38 record to finish the season.

This year, the Orioles have been dreadful despite bringing back the young core that sparked the franchise’s resurgence.

“I’m in the process of very heavily evaluating everything that we do across the organization — that (includes) the front office, analytics department, player development,” Elias said. “You name it, we’re looking at it very hard.

“To our credit, this has something that has not been lingering for years and years. This is something that’s mounted in months, and it’s been very tough on those of us in leadership positions in the organization, but we’re focused on fixing it right now. I think the main focus is trying to stabilize this team, improve the play on the field and get this core of players back on track.”

The Orioles entered Tuesday with a 5.53 ERA that ranked ahead of only major league-worst Colorado (5.85). Baltimore added Japanese veteran Tomoyuki Sugano, 41-year-old Charlie Morton and 37-year-old Kyle Gibson on one-year deals in the offseason to try to help offset the loss of four-time All-Star and 2021 Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes, who signed a six-year, $210 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Sugano is 4-3 with a 3.08 ERA, but Morton is 0-7 with a 7.68 ERA and currently working out of the bullpen. Gibson was released after going 0-3 with a 16.78 ERA.

Baltimore’s offensive struggles are a bigger surprise.

The Orioles entered Tuesday ranked 25th in the majors in runs (173) after finishing fourth in that category last year and seventh in 2023. The Orioles also were 25th in batting average (.230) and 18th in slugging percentage (.388) after being the top 10 in both categories each of the last two years.

“I think I’ve been pretty clear that our pitching staff, our starting pitching staff, has been a huge problem,” Elias said. “I put that on myself and the front office in terms of roster construction. The position player group, again, we haven’t had perfect health, but this is a universally lauded group and (has) had a lot of success. There’s underperformance happening there, and that’s something we need to address via player development, via coaching.”

Elias said he’s confident he can help Baltimore rebound. He took over when the Orioles were coming off a 47-115 season in 2018 and hired Hyde a month later.

Now, he’ll try to do it again, without Hyde.

“I think a big point of pride for me throughout my career has been my ability to adapt in a sport where you’ve got to do that,” Elias said. “What we’re going through right now and the degree to which we’re going through is well below anyone’s standards, including mine. This is deeply disappointing. I’m doing everything in my power to correct and improve it going forward.”

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CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — A pack of veterinarians clambered over hefty metal crates on Tuesday morning, loading them one by one onto a fleet of semi-trucks. Among the cargo: tigers, monkeys, jaguars, elephants and lions – all fleeing the latest wave of cartel violence eclipsing the northern Mexican city of Culiacan.

For years, exotic pets of cartel members and circus animals have been living in a small animal refuge on the outskirts of Sinaloa’s capital. However, a bloody power struggle erupted last year between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, plunging the region into unprecedented violence and leaving the leaders of the Ostok Sanctuary reeling from armed attacks, constant death threats and a cutoff from essential supplies needed to keep their 700 animals alive.

The aid organization left Culiacan Tuesday and transported the animals hours across the state in hopes that they’ll escape the brunt of the violence. But fighting has grown so widespread in the region that many fear it will inevitably catch up.

“We’ve never seen violence this extreme,” said Ernesto Zazueta, president of the Ostok Sanctuary. “We’re worried for the animals that come here to have a better future.”

Violence in the city exploded eight months ago when two rival Sinaloa Cartel factions began warring for territory after the dramatic kidnapping of the leader of one of the groups by a son of notorious capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán who then delivered him to U.S. authorities via a private plane.

Since then, intense fighting between the heavily armed factions has become the new normal for civilians in Culiacan, a city which for years avoided the worst of Mexico’s violence in large part because the Sinaloa Cartel maintained such complete control.

“With the escalating war between the two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, they have begun to extort, kidnap and rob cars because they need funds to finance their war,” said security analyst David Saucedo. “And the civilians in Culiacan are the ones that suffer.”

Zazueta, the sanctuary director, said their flight from the city is another sign of just how far the warfare has seeped into daily life.

This week, refuge staff loaded up roaring animals onto a convoy as some trainers attempted to sooth the animals. One murmured in a soft voice as he fed a bag of carrots to an elephant in a shipping container, “I’m going to be right here, no one will do anything to you.”

Veterinarians and animals traveled along the freeway to seaside Mazatlan, where they released the animals into another wildlife reserve. Their caravan of vehicles flying large white flags, in a sign of peace, rolled past young men in black ski masks perched on motorcycles who watched them intently — a reminder of what the animals and refuge workers were leaving behind.

The relocation came after months of planning and training the animals, a move made by the organization in an act of desperation. They said the sanctuary was caught in the crossfire of the warfare because of its proximity to the town of Jesús María, a stronghold of Los Chapitos, one of the warring factions.

During intense periods of violence, staff at the sanctuary could hear gunshots echoing nearby, the roar of cars and helicopters overhead, something they say scares the animals. Cartel fighting regularly blocked staff off from reaching the sanctuary, and some animals went days without eating. Many have started to lose fur and at least two animals have died due to the situation, Zazueta said.

Complicating matters is the fact that an increasing number of the animals they rescue are former narco pets left abandoned in rural swathes of the state. In one case, a Bengal tiger was discovered chained in a plaza, caught in the center of shootouts. Urban legends circulate in Sinaloa that capos feed their enemies to pet lions.

Diego García, a refuge staff member, is among those who travel out to rescue those animals. He said he regularly receives anonymous threats, with callers claiming to know his address and how to find him. He worries he’ll be targeted for taking away the former pets of capos. Zazueta said the refuge also receives calls threatening to burn the sanctuary to the ground and kill the animals if payment isn’t made.

“There’s no safe place left in this city these days,” said García.

That’s the feeling for many in the city of 1 million. When the sun rises, parents check for news of shootouts as if it were the weather, to determine if it’s safe to send their kids to school. Burned houses sit riddled with bullets and occasionally bodies appear hanging from bridges outside the city. By night, Culiacan turns into a ghost town, leaving bars and clubs shuttered and many without work.

“My son, my son, I’m here. I’m not going to leave you alone,” screamed one mother, sobbing on the side of the road and cursing officials as they inspected her son’s dead body, splayed out and surrounded by bullet casings late Monday night. “Why do the police do nothing?” she cried out.

In February, while driving a refuge vehicle used for animal transport, García said he was forced from the car by an armed, masked man in an SUV. At gunpoint, they stole the truck, animal medicine and tools used by the group for rescues and left him trembling on the side of the road.

The breaking point for the Ostok Sanctuary came in March, when one of the two elephants in their care, Bireki, injured her foot. Veterinarians scrambled to find a specialist to treat her in Mexico, the United States and beyond. No one would brave the trip to Culiacan.

“We asked ourselves, ‘what are we doing here?’” Zazueta said. “We can’t risk this happening again. If we don’t leave, who will treat them?”

The concern by many is that Mexico’s crackdown on the cartels will be met with even more violent power moves by criminal organizations, as has happened in the past, said Saucedo, the security analyst.

Zazueta blames local government and security forces for not doing more, and said their pleas for help in the past eight months have gone unanswered.

Sinaloa’s governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request comment.

The sanctuary made the move without any public announcement, worried that they might face repercussions from local officials or the same cartels forcing them to flee, but they hope the animals will find some relief in Mazatlan after years of conflict.

García, the sanctuary staff member, is not so sure. While he hopes for the best, he said he’s also watched cartel violence spread like a cancer across the Latin American country. Mazatlan, too, is also facing bursts of violence, though nothing compared to the Sinaloan capital.

“It’s at least more stable,” he said. “Because here, today, it’s just suffocating.”

But as the sun set Tuesday, dozens of refuge workers, families and local media gathered at an animal refuge in Mazatlan, craning their necks to catch of glimpse of trailers loaded with elephants, lions and tigers dozing and peering out curiously at the beginning of their new lives.

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Associated Press videojournalist Fernanda Pesce contributed to this report from Culiacan, Mexico.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america