After the Orioles ended the season with a 75-87 record, the ballclub’s leaders held a news conference Monday to discuss what went wrong in 2025, the open managerial job, the offseason and more.
Interim manager Tony Mansolino and president of baseball operations and general manager Mike Elias spent more than 70 minutes answering questions in the Warehouse at Camden Yards.
Here are five things we learned:
Mansolino is in managerial purgatory
So … that was awkward? Or at least it should’ve been?
In the days and weeks after Mansolino was promoted to interim manager, his sessions with the media before and after games were shockingly honest but also somewhat unpolished. That’s a great thing for the media, and perhaps not the best thing for the ballclub that put Mansolino in an impossible situation.
The team put Mansolino in an impossible position again Monday, and he handled it as well as anyone could have.
After the interim skipper — is he still the interim skipper? — sat down to begin his end-of-season news conference, the first question he was asked was about his status with the club. How strange to have Mansolino be the first one asked that question. “No, just under consideration,” Mansolino said.
Mansolino moved through his 27-minute session in a sort of purgatory, and he’ll likely spend the next month in limbo, too, as the Orioles conduct their search.
“I would love to be here,” Mansolino said. “But … you do have to kind of hedge and make sure you’re going to be able to pay your bills and take care of your wife and kids.”
“This place has treated me incredibly good,” he continued. “I’ll be forever thankful whichever path I go down in the future.”
Elias didn’t specify why he’s handling his managerial search this way rather than making a decision on Mansolino after the season ended. Surely, 119 games is a large enough sample that if Mansolino definitively was or wasn’t the man for the job that the decision would have been made. Therefore, it’s not a leap to view this as the Orioles are comfortable with Mansolino being their manager next season — “We think he did a terrific job” — but that there are others on the open market they believe they could prefer more.
Elias was mostly mum about the managerial search — except for one attribute
It’s important not to read too much into everything Elias says at these news conferences. That might sound counterintuitive in the middle of a “5 things we learned” story, but it’s critical to understand that Elias spoke for 44 minutes and his goal is to not say anything that could hurt himself or the organization.
He never answers questions about extensions or contracts. Monday, he mostly declined to answer what his goals this offseason will be. And he didn’t want to list out the attributes he’s seeking in his next manager and the general manager he could hire beneath him since his secret promotion last offseason.
But Elias was asked about his interest in hiring an experienced manager, and he notably didn’t obfuscate. He chose to answer the question and affirmed that, while it’s not everything, experience could be a valuable asset, especially for a young ballclub with hitters who declined or underperformed in 2025.
While there might not be a clear top candidate on the market, there are several experienced managers without a job, including Bob Melvin, Skip Shumaker, Scott Servais, David Ross and Joe Maddon.
“I think experience is usually, overwhelmingly usually, a big positive,” Elias said. “It is, in our particular situation, I think it will definitely carry a lot of weight given all the factors. But if you look at history, it is not a requisite for managerial success, nor does it guarantee success. … We’ll just look at the whole picture and the person and try to decide who’s best for us right now. But experience would definitely be an attractive feature by and large.”
Elias remains optimistic about 2025’s worst performers
If you had to create a shortlist of the reasons the 2025 Orioles finished in last place in the American League East, they would be, in no order: injuries, underperformance, starting pitching woes, an ineffective offseason and the decline of the young core.
Three players cover those five categories and were major reasons behind the club’s downturn: Grayson Rodriguez, Tyler O’Neill and Heston Kjerstad. Elias was asked about all three Monday, and he spoke optimistically about what the trio can provide for the 2026 club.
Rodriguez, a candidate entering spring training to be the Orioles’ opening day starter, didn’t pitch a single inning this season after dealing with persistent elbow and lat muscle injuries. He underwent surgery in August to remove bone chips in his elbow, and Elias said he remains on track to be ready for spring training.
“I think he’s kind of got an underdog, under-the-radar mentality right now, which is good, and I think he’s due for some good luck on the injury front after what happened last year, “Elias said. “I am bullish about his situation.”
Elias didn’t provide details about Kjerstad’s situation, only saying he has an unspecified “medical condition” and that he’s “responded favorably” to the treatment he’s received. Kjerstad, the club’s No. 2 overall pick in 2020, has missed time with multiple maladies throughout his career, but he always performed at the plate — until this year when he posted a .192 batting average and .566 OPS in 54 games. He was demoted to Triple-A and continued to struggle before he was placed on the Norfolk Tides’ injured list with fatigue in late July. He didn’t play over the season’s final two months.
“He’s in a good spot right now and pointed in the right direction,” Elias said. “We’re going to see him in spring training, and I’m really looking forward to that because we missed the real Heston Kjerstad this year.”
In the Orioles’ biggest addition of the offseason, O’Neill gave the Orioles a .199 batting average and nine home runs in 54 games in the first year of the three-year, $49.5 million contract he received. Injuries were once again an issue, as the outfielder landed on the shelf three times for neck, shoulder and wrist injuries.
But Elias still believes O’Neill can be the impact bat that he was paid to be.
“From what I see as an evaluator, the talent is there,” Elias said. “The power, the swing, the way moves in the outfield, that player is in there. … He’s frustrated, too, and now that we’ve had him for a year, we’re talking with him and trying to plan out ways to do as best as we can to keep him in tip-top form for as much as possible next year, because I do think he can really raise the ceiling of this team and I’m optimistic about it.”
Elias knows how important this offseason is
When asked for his timeline to hire a manager, Elias said “ASAP.” Why the rush?
“I’ve got a very busy offseason ahead of me.”
This winter isn’t just the most important of Elias’ time with the Orioles. It might be one of the most critical in franchise history.
Of course, Elias knows this. Yale doesn’t typically allow people to study there if they don’t have the most basic deductive reasoning skills. But it’s worth noting given how pragmatic and process-oriented Elias, his front office and the entire organization is. Pragmatism is a noble trait. But so is urgency.
This is not just another offseason, and Elias recognizes that.
“We, as an organization, have talked a lot about our disappointments with this season,” Elias said. “I’ve talked a lot — and certainly a lot of meditation going on behind the scenes — but this season is over, and our offseason is beginning and we are pointed forward and we’re working toward next year. That’s my entire fixation right now, is improving our season next year and bouncing back to where this group of players and this organization can and should be.
“There’s a lot of work ahead of us. Our goal for this offseason is to have a team, when we start in Sarasota, [Florida,] to have a team that we all believe and that the baseball world believes and the rest of the division believes, is of a quality to compete for the division title in 2026. We’re going to try to put that team together this winter and I will be laser focused on that work.”
After the Orioles were swept out of the 2024 postseason, Elias expressed he would evaluate every aspect of the organization to get the team over the hump. There were few major changes (publicly) entering 2025.
What has Elias’ main takeaway from the past 365 days been?
“You have to evolve, you have to adapt in this game. That’s always been the case, but I think that’s the most concise lesson I can draw,” Elias said.
The rotation will (obviously) be a major focus
The wording of the question gave Elias an out.
The Orioles entered the season without a capable No. 1 starting pitcher and ended it with two. Kyle Bradish returned from Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery, and Trevor Rogers revived his career. Both will enter 2025 worthy of being No. 1 starters.
Elias was asked if acquiring a No. 3 starter behind Bradish and Rogers is a goal this offseason. He chose to be more broad in his answer than was asked of him.
“Yeah, I would like a strong front half of the rotation guy to go along with those if we can, and we’ll be on the hunt for pitching improvements in that area and others,” Elias said.
This does not mean Elias is automatically going to acquire a No. 1 or No. 2 starter rather than settling for a No. 3. These designations are also pointless to quibble over.
But it was a sign that Elias is thinking about front-line pitching after an offseason in which he settled for low-ceiling, back-end veterans in Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano and watched that strategy backfire.
“I think like any offseason or season, you rarely hit on 100% of moves,” Elias said. “We had mixed results with acquisitions this year and probably more mixed than we would want or to our standards, and that was definitely a factor in how the season went. You look at each individual case and the decision, how it was made, and there are often times where I got a really bad outcome, but I look back at the process and how the decision was arrived at, and if you’re really being honest — which I try to be — you say, ‘OK, I can see how it happened,’ and you might do that again if you go back in time and it just didn’t work out well. And then there’s others where we’ve learned or taken constructive criticism on ourselves about how we arrived at that decision, and I try to continuously do that.”
Front-of-the-rotation starting pitchers don’t grow on trees, though. They will be expensive, whether via free agency or trade. Elias is more confident in his ability to swing a trade than he was a year ago given the organization’s improved prospect depth after adding 37 players through the draft and trade deadline — a system he believes is one of the 10 best in baseball.
He also has the financial backing under owner David Rubenstein that he didn’t have under former Chairman and CEO John Angelos. The Orioles opened 2025 with a $162 million payroll, but about $116 million will likely come off the books from the players who were traded at the deadline, are set to hit free agency or will likely be non-tendered.
“They’re going to make available everything that we need to responsibly invest in the team and the baseball operation and the stadium and the facilities,” Elias said of Rubenstein’s ownership group. “You don’t want to be wasteful, and you don’t do it for its own sake. But these guys are a huge positive for us, and I’m very blessed to have that behind me.”
Have a news tip? Contact Jacob Calvin Meyer at [email protected], 410-332-6200 and x.com/JCalvinMeyer.