Baltimore Orioles to introduce Mike Elias this morning

The Baltimore Orioles are scheduled to introduce new executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias at 11 a.m. today

We waited almost six weeks from the end of 2018 season to the point when the Baltimore Orioles announced Mike Elias as their new executive VP and general manager. Now that we know Elias will be leading the rebuild in Baltimore,we can start asking questions about how he’s going to do it.

Elias is sure to answer at least a handful of pressing questions during his Monday morning press conference, not least of which is what the future holds for vice president of baseball operations Brady Anderson. Anderson was initially brought into the Orioles front office in a special assistant role in 2012, but has served as the VP since 2013.

Whether Elias retains Anderson is to be seen, but it’ll be interesting to get his opinion on this. It’s well known that Anderson and former executive VP Dan Duquette didn’t exactly see eye to eye, and earlier this year it was reported that Anderson had surpassed Duquette on the front office depth chart, if you will.

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The tension was too much with both Anderson and Duquette in the front office in Baltimore. It probably has to be assumed that Elias will want to bring in his own guys, and Anderson isn’t one of them. Elias should be cleaning house, and it’s probably time for Anderson to go.

The same question goes for interim GM Brian Graham, who has been the director of player development in Baltimore since 2013. Will Elias have any interest in keeping Graham on staff in Baltimore? The Orioles have one of the worst farm systems in the majors; as director of player development, Graham is partly responsibly for that.

Also partly responsible, and likely on the chopping block is scouting director Gary Rajsich. The Orioles farm system looks as thin as ever and Elias will be responsible for building it from the ground up. Rajsich and Graham could be on the outside looking in come the end of November.

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Once he’s established himself in Baltimore, Elias will need to bring in a right-hand man. We can assume that it won’t be someone already in the Orioles organization, and there have been rumors that he could bring in former Astros special assistant Sig Mejdal.

Mejdal spearheaded the Astros analytics department and has worked with Elias since their days in St. Louis back in the mid-2000’s. Elias will be in need of a second in command in Baltimore and Mejdal fits that mold quite nicely. If Elias brings in Mejdal, the Orioles would be in for a much needed upgrade in their scouting and analytics department.

We can guess, but we’re not sure who’ll be the new manager in Baltimore next year. There have been rumors about Elias bringing on former Astros bench coach Joe Espada. Elias worked with Espada in Houston and the two presumably have a good relationship.

It’s probably not a bad thing to poach as many Astros executives and coaches as possible, but we don’t have much insight into Elias’ thinking here. He’s presumably looking for a younger, adaptable guy rather than the Buck Showalter type. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a manager with no prior experience sitting in the dugout in Baltimore next year.

We have a stacks of questions for the new Orioles top executive, and he’s surely going to address many of them later this morning. The event will be live on MASN and 105.7, and will be streaming on Twitter and Facebook at 11 am eastern.