Every year Orioles baseball czar Mike Elias makes bold proclamations about competing with big market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox and Blue Jays in the AL East, which generally end up being false promises to attempt to sell tickets.
He also always provides a backdrop to those comments about the allegedly dire economic realities of his smaller market team – despite having multiple billionaires who employ him – when setting his objectives for the upcoming season. In reality, his franchise has been in massive decline since June 21, 2024 (23rd in MLB in wins since then), and not only has he been chasing those aforementioned teams throughout nearly the entirety of Elias’s tenure here, but the ugly truth is he has been completely unmasked by the small-market Tampa Rays in every way shape and form.
It’s staggering, actually.
Despite the Rays having massive ownership issues and massive stadium issues and massive revenue issues and playing a season in a minor league stadium due to a natural disaster, they outclass Elias and his fraudulent front office across the board. Despite far more drastic salary limitations than anything Elias dealt with (even when John Angelos still owned the team), and despite the Rays signing potentially-generational shortstop Wander Franco to a huge extension only for him to never play for them due to his extreme legal issues. (The O’s never signed Gunnar Henderson and he has a sub-700 OPS since last August and is the next to be sold off)
Let’s be real, Elias is a failure by any standard going into Year Nine of a perpetual rebuild but even in just comparison to the Rays, he is an unmitigated loser. The Rays are smarter and better and more innovative and more progressive and nuanced than he could dream to be. They introduced the opener and they continue to find incredible value on the margins and they have found an elite skipper and they are superior at player development and their infrastructure cultivating pitching is the envy of most organizations in baseball.
Meanwhile, Elias is good at saving money for the uber-rich, getting promotions for his unqualified minions and sounding like a cyborg in the process.
Just this season the Rays are the biggest surprise in the league yet again. And at the same time they are the runaway best team in the American League, the Rays (No. 1 in Baseball America rankings) still boast a far better farm system than Elias despite the Orioles (58-63) just selling off more talent and salary at the trade deadline again (including highly-versatile relief arm Tyler Wells to the Rays, a year after they totally fleeced Elias for All-Star reliever Bryan Baker).
So with the Orioles in Tampa for four games starting Friday – trying oh so desperately to crawl to .500 and stay on the fringes of the final Wild Card spot, while the Rays are the likely top seed – it’s a perfect time to compare Elias’s woeful tenure here with what the Rays have accomplished in the same window.
The Big Picture
Here’s what the two franchises have done since 2019. Elias was in a rebuild and the Rays were a real contender at that time, so some of this is skewed, but the numbers are staggering. In terms of the playoff wins, we must point out the Rays have only one postseason win since 2021 … but that’s still one more than Elias. All stats courtesy of baseballreference.com, and their STATHEAD service.
                                             Orioles                      Rays
Head-to-Head                    48-64                        64-48
Overall Record                   539-614                   652-500
Runs/Game                        4.5                             4.6
Runs Allowed/Game         4.9                             4.0
Playoff Appearances         2                                 5
Playoff Wins                        0                              15
Ouch.
Consider Elias shunned pitching at every turn instead for what he thought was a shortcut (dude is nothing if not lazy and entitled) to load up on allegedly MLB-ready college bats. And still he hasn’t produced more runs than the Rays in this huge sample size despite them going with a pitching-heavy model and speed-reliant rosters a lot of these years and shunning power bats.
Because smarter is better and baseball can be approached in a multitude of ways and there is far more to run production than launch-angle and hard-hit rate. Elias, for his Ivy League background, has been anything but smart running this team. And of course, the chasm between these franchises in run prevention is disgusting – a run a game over eight seasons. Factor in the Rays’ exponentially better defense almost every year and the fact they have a real manager while Elias hired daft puppets who are woefully overmatched, and you get these results:
Hitting At A Glance Since 2019
Team  W       L        R      HR   SB       OPS
BAL Â Â Â 539 Â Â Â 614 Â Â Â 5144 1406 650 Â Â Â .721
TBR Â Â Â 652 Â Â Â 500 Â Â Â 5300 1344 976 Â Â Â .728
So much for Elias being able to outsmart the rest of the league, let alone a Tampa franchise that has had to deal with more turmoil than the Orioles– and even more injuries; a pitching-based franchise suffering so many surgeries to Cy Young caliber arms is more than anything Elias has faced. Yet I don’t recall any press conferences where their owner and chief baseball exec debased themselves gaslighting people about ouchies being the reason their team sucks again.
As for the difference in pitching between these teams during The Elias Error, well, it’s a sorry state of affairs for Birdland:
Pitching At A Glance Since 2019
Team            ERA   HR    ERA+   WHIP    BB9    SO9
BALÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 4.58 Â Â 1511Â Â Â Â 92 Â Â Â Â Â 1.343Â Â Â Â 3.2 Â Â Â Â 8.2
TBRÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 3.71 Â Â 1331 Â Â Â 111 Â Â Â 1.179 Â Â Â Â 2.7Â Â Â Â 9.1
Head To Head
What’s happened when these teams have met over the years (besides broadcasters getting banished or whatever the hell that was really about)? Well, it’s pretty one sided! Here’s how it breaks down by season:
Orioles Yearly Results vs. Rays
Season                    W-L              RS-RA Â
2019Â (19 G)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 7-12Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 64-100Â Â
2020Â (10 G)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 4-6Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 32-35Â Â
2021Â (19 G) Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 1-18Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 71-150Â Â
2022Â (19 G)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 9-10Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 74-82Â
2023Â (13 G) Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 8-5Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 48-48Â Â
2024Â (13 G) Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 9-4Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 55-34Â Â
2025Â (13 G) Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 7-6Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 71-70Â Â
2026Â (6 G)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 3-3Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 36-35Â Â
That’s a collective run differential of -105. Not very good Ivy League! How are you going to win divisions that way? How come your magical supercomputer hasn’t solved this riddle yet? Newsflash: It never will. That’s a sham and this baseball exec is a conman.
The sooner he’s fired and his latest dugout jockey, too, the better things will get. But there’s not much reason to think this ownership even cares as they attempt to patch up another lost season down in Tampa, where they are so often exposed.
And whenever David Rubenstein does wake up and fire this feckless regime, hire some replacements from the Rays. They actually know what they’re doing, and they exceed expectations year after year.
Subscribe to “The Daily Flock” On YouTube For Orioles Coverage With Bite:
Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow