Elias: "We’ve been going through a patch here for a few months and it’s been trying for all of us"

Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias’ media availability yesterday in the home dugout at Camden Yards hinted at bad news.

That’s what happens when an organization is pelted with it. The first instinct is to assume the worst and seek shelter.

There were three options with Elias: One or more of the injured players had a setback, a roster move warranted an explanation, or he just decided to meet the press before the last homestand of the season.

Elias declined to make an opening statement, which destroyed the injury theory. And the roster went unchanged.

“If it’s all right with you guys,” he said, “I’ll just open it up to questions.”

“You have any injury updates?” I asked, drawing unintended laughter.

“I don’t have it perfectly memorized,” he replied, “so I was kind of hoping you guys would have specific questions.”

Specific points were addressed over the 18-minute session, most importantly a string of positive injury and rehab updates. Not a bummer in the bunch. Ramón Urías hit on the field and ran sprints, with a rehab assignment nearing. Jordan Westburg took his first batting practice swings and also should rejoin the Orioles before the end of the month. Ryan Mountcastle started a hitting progression in Sarasota and is close to playing for the Tides. Danny Coulombe will make his third rehab appearance tonight and the club can decide whether he needs a fourth. Grayson Rodriguez completed another bullpen session and is “doing really well,” Elias said.

Rodriguez is the one who brings a slight pause, being on the “front end of the window,” as Elias phrased it, following an injury to his right lat/teres.

“It’s healing,” Elias said. “It seems like everything’s really moving in the right direction. Obviously, some days move a little faster than others, but it’s been a real steady course progression. That said, time and the calendar is not exactly our friend here with 12 games to go in the regular season, so we’re just kind of doing everything that we can to keep it moving in the right direction on a day-by-day basis, and sort of see where we’re at in terms of the calendar and then also our scenarios and what we’re projected to be in postseason-wise and all that, and we’ll see where we’re at with Grayson. But right now it’s a one-day-at-a-time thing.”

Facing live hitters is next for Rodriguez, but when? Norfolk’s season concludes on Sunday, which would necessitate the creation of fabricated at-bats. And then, there’s the issue of getting him stretched out to start.

Elias didn’t make a firm commitment to the possibility of using Rodriguez out of the bullpen in late September and the playoffs. He conceded that time is running out to get Rodriguez in starter mode, but he also talked about doing “the right thing for his health and career,” which must be taken into account. No direct answer was forthcoming because the Orioles don’t have it.

Beyond the updates was extensive talk about the team’s slide in the second half, including last night's 10-0 setback against the Giants. That’s pretty much the only other area of interest. Can injured guys return and what the heck went wrong beyond the personnel losses.

“Certainly been thinking about it a lot,” Elias said. “This is something that occupies every waking hour of my time and this team, this organization. We’ve been going through a patch here for a few months and it’s been trying for all of us. This is the first time I think this group has kind of experienced this collective struggle since we’ve been a winning team, and to me where I’m at today is, this is a group, players and staff, that has had a really long track record of success here.

“You go back to like the middle of 2022, this group of players more or less, and we’re one of the winningest teams in baseball since then, and now within the span of a few months it’s gotten away from us, and we’re going through a trying time. And this is the first time together I think that this group is experiencing this, and obviously there are circumstances outside of our control that are making it worse and perhaps causing a good deal of it. But I do think this group, all of us individually within this group, are experiencing this kind of negativity as a winning team, as a team that up to a couple months ago was one of the best teams in all of baseball.

“This is hitting all of us together at once, and when that happens, all of us I think individually reflect on it and what could do better or could have done better or will do better going forward. How to improve our own personal processes and approach. But overall, this is still that same group and we’re going to figure this out and we’re gonna get out of it. And I think we’re gonna get right here before the season’s over. I think we’re gonna make the playoffs and I think we’re gonna do really well in the playoffs. And so, I think this is something that this group is gonna get behind it, and the players that have been putting a lot of pressure on themselves to pick up the rest of the lineup, they’re gonna figure out the right approach and then we’re gonna get some guys back, and I think we’re gonna feel like ourselves again here before too late.”

That’s the stated goal. Now it must be realized. The season is down to 11 games.

“I believe in these guys, I believe in the staff,” Elias said. “This has been an unpleasant stretch here for the latter part of the summer and we’re all processing it individually, but we’re ready to pull this together and I believe that we’re going to. We’ve still got time to do so.”

Elias was asked if a contributing factor in the team’s failure to get past this brutal stretch could be a lack of veteran leadership or direction from coaches. He wasn’t buying it.

“I think they will get past it, first of all, so I’ll be clear about that,” he said. “When we’ve gone through an unsuccessful few months, couple of months like this, a lot of it is stuff that’s out of people’s control, but obviously not everybody’s approaching their jobs, their execution, their own processes perfectly and that starts with me. I look at that, but it does not affect my belief in the people that we’ve selected to play on this team, to coach this team to do their jobs, and they’ve proven their skill at that up until very, very recently over a pretty long period of time.

“We all have to make adjustments in this league. It's very competitive. The competition is always getting better. The competition is adjusting specifically to you, and we all need to self-modify and evolve to stay competitive in the major leagues, but that’s different than losing confidence in personnel or a group of people. I have extreme confidence in this group and these personnel, and that’s why I’m saying this ain’t over yet and we’re fighting every night, and I think we’ve got some fun in store for us if we can just keep the focus on a night-to-night basis, get some of these guys back healthy, get back people back to their approaches. And I think it’s starting to happen.”

Not lost in the 18-minute session was Elias’ willingness to take on any blame while discussing the motivating factors in how he constructed the roster.

“Trade deadline in particular and the offseason and everything going into it, I was very fixated on pitching, pitching depth, pitching improvements,” he said. “Going into the deadline, our rotation was scuffling. As it has turned out, we’ve had pitching injuries, but they’ve come way more on the position player side in very unexpected ways. That’s been unfortunate. It’s just another humbling reminder of how baseball keeps you on your toes and keeps you guessing. But the primary focus of mine has been bringing in pitchers, starting pitchers, help on that front. And it’s turned out here that’s not necessarily been the crisis we were expecting in the second half, and we’ve been paying for it.

“Ultimately, I put the roster together, I put the staff together, I put the personnel together. And results in this business, whether it’s this year or other years, it starts right here with me. But that’s been, I think, our focus this year, and the testing of our depth and a lot of depth we’ve lost is not something I anticipated in this degree in the second half on the position player side.”

The Orioles will get healthier. Does that get them deep in the playoffs? Right now they have to settle for leading the Royals by 2 1/2 games for the home wild card.

“We’re hoping at least a few of these guys, if not all, will be with us by the end of the season,” said manager Brandon Hyde. “The timetable exactly, we’re not really sure, but the progressions have gone really well these past few days and hopefully by this weekend, there’s a chance we’ve got a couple more guys.

“I want to believe we still have good baseball to play. We’ve shown signs of putting things together. It just hasn’t quite happened the second half. Still time to make it happen. It’s a real talented group. … We get some guys going offensively, could be a dangerous team down the stretch.”