There are many reasons why the Yankees (suddenly not so improbably) are firmly ensconced in first place this Memorial Day weekend. Among them:
- Aaron Judge’s dominant season for the ages
- Brian Cashman’s grand slam offseason, allotting part of the $760 million he didn’t have to spend on Juan Soto with Max Fried, Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and even Devin Williams
- The emergence of Trent Grisham, who Cashman acquired as the throw-in with Soto in the December 2023 trade with San Diego, as one of the best all-around power/speed/defense center fielders in baseball
- Luke Weaver’s unsung ascendency as one of the most efficient closers in the game
- Superior 1-5 starting pitching now that Clark Schmidt is back
- Aside from Judge, the development of the other homegrown players, Ben Rice, Austin Wells, Anthony Dominguez and Anthony Volpe into dependable everyday players and Will Warren at the back end of the rotation.
But while Cashman can certainly take a bow for putting together a legitimate championship-contending team after the defection of Soto, another major factor in the Yankees’ 2025 supremacy that cannot be ignored is the disappearance of the rest of the American League East, all of whom have been under .500 most of the first two months. Of them, the Red Sox and Blue Jays would seem to have enough talent to eventually make a run at a postseason berth, but the real American League East quandary is what in the world happened to the Baltimore Orioles, who two years ago appeared on the verge of dominating the division for many seasons to come?
Indeed, that was what billionaire private equity mogul David Rubenstein must have thought when he bought the Orioles from the Angelos family in March of 2024 for $1.725 billion – the third-highest price ever for a baseball team. They had just come off a 101-win season in which their GM Mike Elias was voted major league executive of the year by his peers and their manager Brandon Hyde was named manager of the year by the Baseball Writers Association. But it was all a mirage and, as Rubenstein is hopefully finding out, Elias, who operates almost exclusively on analytics, is a fraud.
Hired as Orioles GM in December 2018 after serving as the top assistant with the Astros for now-disgraced Jeff Luhnow, who was generally regarded in baseball circles as the grand patriarch of analytics, Elias wasted no time in firing all the Orioles’ scouts and player development managers and coaches and replacing them with analytics geeks and personnel with mostly no major league experience. He then followed same formula as Luhnow did in Houston by subjecting Baltimore fans to four years of tanking in order to secure a bunch of high picks in the amateur draft.
The problem was, with the exception of catcher Adley Rutschman (who has since regressed mightily) the core players on that ’23 Oriole team – outfielders Cedric Mullins, Anthony Santander, and Austin Hays, first baseman Ryan Montcastle, righthanded starter Grayson Rodriguez and closer Felix Bautista – were all products of the previous Oriole GM Dan Duquette. Meanwhile, two years later not one of Elias’s No. 1 draft picks – all out of college — is looking like a potential superstar. Most are looking like busts. Rutschman (.213) who Elias selected No. 1 overall over Bobby Witt Jr. in 2019), outfielder Heston Kjersted (.203), the second overall pick in 2020), and infielder Jordan Westburg (.217), the 30th overall pick in 2020, are all underperforming. The jury is still out on outfielder Colton Cowser , the fifth overall pick in 2021 who’s been hurt this season after hitting 24 homers (but striking out 172 times) last year, and second baseman Jackson Holiday, the overall No. 1 pick in 2022, who struggled mightily as a rookie in ’24 but is holding his own at .268 with 6 HR as of Friday) this year. Another one, previously highly touted infielder Coby Mayo, a fourth round pick in 2020, was held out of numerous trade opportunities for frontline starting pitching by Elias, is hitting .215 at Triple A and may have been ruined.
As documented in my new book “Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals and Cooperstown” (Triumph), when Elias took over he had a meeting with all his scouts in preparation for the 2019 draft in which he and his top assistant Sig Mejdal informed them that they need not concern themselves with scouting pitchers. “We have our own formula with pitchers,” they told the scouts without revealing what it was.
Whatever it was, Elias has not drafted or developed a single quality major league starting pitcher in his seven years on the job, and after losing last year’s ace Corbin Burnes (who was acquired in a trade) to free agency, the Oriole rotation has only one starter with an ERA under 5.00 (35-year old Japanese import Tomoyuki Sugano) and the overall staff ranks 28th in the majors with a 5.45 ERA.
It was hoped by Orioles fans that, after years of incompetence and penuriousness by the Angeloses, Rubenstein would spend money to keep the team competitive with the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays. But that didn’t happen last winter when they did nothing to replace Burnes. Was it Elias who told Rubenstein he didn’t have to spend money to improve the team?
With the Orioles mired in last place, last Saturday Elias fired Hyde (after undermining him over the winter by firing most of his more experienced coaches) and replaced him on an interim basis with Doug Mansolino, another career minor leaguer who managed briefly in the minors in 1991 and 1997. He then disappeared for three days before finally addressing the media on the road in Milwaukee last Tuesday.
By now, Rubenstein should be seeing the light at what’s wrong with his new baseball team and that’s his general manager who’s proliferated the organization with analytical baseball neophytes. It’s now clear that Elias has done a terrible job of drafting, a terrible job of roster management and a terrible job of developing pitchers. Firing Hyde gave Elias cover, but if he wants to right this ship before it’s too late (which it may already be), Rubenstein needs to change course and bring in experienced baseball people who believe in the principles of scouting over metrics to run his team.
He might even start by dialing up Buck Showalter, who’s still immensely popular in Baltimore after eight mostly successful and overachieving years as Orioles manager. Another one is former Dodgers GM Ned Colletti, who made the playoffs in five of his nine seasons as Dodger GM from 2006-14 and was in the finals for the Oriole GM job before the Angeloses opted for Elias back in 2018.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Last Monday night Royals lefty Kris Bubic lost his bid for a no-hitter against the Giants when an official scorer changed an error to a hit in the sixth inning.With two outs in the sixth, the Royals second baseman Michael Massey slipped to the grass on the edge of the infield attempting to field Wilmer Flores’ grounder which then rolled into right field. It was the right call by official scorer Michael Duca to change it from an error to a hit but I would submit in this new era of emasculated starting pitchers and the disappearance of complete games, it’s a lot easier for official scorers to call a hit a hit and not fear the wrath of the fans on borderline calls when the starting pitcher more likely than not will not be allowed to finish the game anyway…Bravo to Red Sox reliever Liam Hendriks for calling out the hateful, vile and cruel threats he and his wife were recently subjected to by social media trolls. “Leaving comments and telling me to commit suicide and that you wish I’d died from cancer is disgusting and vile,” Hendriks posted on his own social media. “Maybe you should step back and re-evaluate your own life’s purpose before hiding behind a screen and attacking players and their families. I think I stand for all players who have had to deal with this when I say enough is enough.”…Going into the weekend Clay Holmes was nearly 15 innings shy of his previous one season high of 70 innings pitched. It’s not even June and you have to wonder how high can he go? For point of reference, Seth Lugo jumped from 65 innings to 146.1 after converting from reliever to starter with the Padres in 2023.
