What was that again Dave?

A year ago the announcement that David Rubenstein was buying the Orioles was met with as close to 100% approval rating as possible. I’ve racked my mind and decided that only John Fisher selling the Athletics would have been met with more enthusiasm by a fanbase and fans of baseball in general. 

Under the Angelos the future seemed bleak. Months before the team was sold John Angelos casually said that offering players 150 million dollar extensions was out of the question for Baltimore because of their market size and you couldn’t ever get him to stop saying how much he wanted to be like the Rays and the Guardians (both well run organizations but you always knew what Angelos meant was “I want to spend as little as possible to get a winning team”). 

The Rubenstein announcement brought new hope to Orioles fans, and suddenly the idea of free agent acquisitions and long term extensions didn’t feel like a fantasy. When you googled “David Rubenstein net worth” and saw a number hovering around 4 Billion and just below that was a news story that he had recently bought one of the original copies of the Magna Carta just for fun you could dream that the Orioles might even enter the upper class of MLB teams. The expectations may have been a bit lofty. 

Rubenstein has done a lot of good things since becoming the Orioles owner, he’s been engaging with the fans every chance he gets, they announced new more affordable concession prices at Camden Yards and the payroll has increased substantially but Rubenstein has yet to really flex that big money muscle that so many fans were anxious to see in action. 

On Monday Rubenstein met with the media and gave out several thoughtful answers that clarified much more how he views his position as owner of the Baltimore Orioles. I have compiled my favorite quotes from the session to review one by one to see what we really learned from everything Rubenstein had to say. Before we look at them I should give credit to Andy Kostka of the Baltimore Banner and Jacob Calvin Meyer of the Baltimore Sun as it was their articles and twitter accounts that I lifted these quotes from.

“[Mike Elias] is very numbers oriented, as he should be, and he has a great sabermetrics kind of team, so he doesn’t want to say, ‘Here’s a player. We can sign him for seven years. The economics show we’ll lose X dollars on it because he is not worth it, but we’ll make somebody happy on the first day we announce it.’ and that’s not his way of doing things. He wants to make sure everything pencils out. And so, he can pencil out how many games we’re going to win a year, what players are likely to do. It just amazes me how he’s so accurate in these things. I’m very fond of what he’s been able to build.”

We’re starting with a banger here. While this is not a perfectly transparent quote about Mike Elias’ process when it comes to free agents and extensions, it does give you more of an idea of how they are thinking about things compared to the word salad that Elias serves up at his pressers. 

It is interesting that even though Rubenstein has said money is not an issue when it comes to team building clearly Elias is very concerned with the “economics” of signing a long term deal. This means that either Mike Elias is just very considerate of David Rubenstein’s personal finances or he’s prioritizing building a good team at the lowest possible price over building the best team possible. 

The quote makes it seem like Elias only wants to sign deals that are going to be “worth it” for the length of the contract and that is demoralizing to hear because MLB superstars do not sign contracts that age well. Every time a free agent signs a big contract the team hopes they get good value for the first part of the deal and they know they’ll have to live with the last few years. If your strategy is to only sign guys to contracts that are “worth it” then you will get outbid every single time.

One of the things you can do with this quote is think about who they would have had this kind of conversation about. Rubenstein mentions a 7 year deal, it is possible that’s a completely random number but days before Corbin Burnes signed for 6 years 210 million it was leaked he was looking for 7 years 245 million. I view that leak as Burnes and his agent basically posting this meme on their story before signing that deal with the Diamondbacks. 

It’s interesting to think that a big reason that Burnes is not still an Oriole is that Elias sold Rubenstein on the idea that it wouldn’t be worth it to sign him to a 7 year deal. It is good to be financially responsible as a GM but I’d prefer to hear that our GM was asking the owner for more money rather than telling him that paying for an ace pitcher isn’t worth it. 

This quote also makes me curious about all the “pencilling out” that Mike Elias is doing. Rubenstein mentions he is impressed by how accurate Elias has been in predicting how many games they would win and how player would perform. Rubenstein has been with the org for a year so the only predictions he’s seen were those for the 2024 season and I just want to know what part of that season Mike Elias predicted so well. Did he predict the entire rotation except Corbin Burnes getting injured? Did he predict Craig Kimbrel being awful? Did he predict Adley Rutschman hitting worse than James McCann for the last 2 months of the season? The O’s did make the playoffs which is good but if 91 wins is what they were aiming for after a 101 win season then I’d be a little disappointed (also they got to 91 wins by sweeping the saddest Twins team of all time to end the year so it wasn’t like they cruised to 90 wins and then came down off the throttle).

This is a small thing but I really don’t care for the “we’ll make somebody happy on the first day we announce it” part of the quote. He’s framing his statement like they have to choose between being smart and making the fans happy. What makes fans happy is when the team gets better and the benefit of signing a good player to a long term deal is it improves your team. I don’t think fans being happy and good team building have to be in conflict with each other although the Orioles fans haven’t experienced an exciting signing since Mike Elias took over in 2018 so maybe he feels that way.

The last part of the quote is that he’s fond of what Mike Elias has built and I have to say I agree with that. It may not always seem like it but I do like this team, they are a very talented group and I give Mike Elias a lot of credit for putting this all together. 

“I don’t have a financial limit, the team is in very good financial shape. We don’t have any debt problems, we don’t have any financial challenges or anything like that. We want to put the best team on the field we can and we don’t have a constraint by saying there’s a certain amount of money we’d spend. So we can get the best team we can get. We will try to do that and if it costs more money then we’ll do it, but we don’t have any particular financial constraints.” 

This quote looks nice on paper but the question he was asked was about if he would consider allowing the payroll to go over 200 million and while his answer of there is no limit implies that he would spend a billion dollars if he had to he technically did avoid having to say that he would field a 200 million dollar team. 

I do believe based on how things have gone in the first year of the Rubenstein era that the payroll will eventually eclipse 200 million but why give the media a quote with a number in it that they can keep bringing up over and over again, to me this just shows some of Rubenstein’s savvy with the media. 

As far as the actual “no limit” comment goes, it is a slightly odd thing to say when you are 15th in the league in payroll and you don’t exactly have a perfect roster but I do at least partially believe him in the sense that I don’t think that the Orioles payroll is at 161 million because David Rubenstein told Mike Elias he could only spend 161 million dollars this season. From both of their comments it seems like there hasn’t been an instance where Elias wanted to spend money and Rubenstein said no. So you could see Rubenstein saying “there’s no limit” because he’s never had to limit them. 

Now this could all be a front and in reality Elias is on both knees begging for more funds and Rubenstein might be gripping the purse strings and screaming “YOU”LL NEVER GET MORE THAN 161 MILLION DOLLARS FROM ME BOY!” but that just seems unlikely idk.

Limit or not Elias clearly prefers to bolster the roster by signing 1 year contracts so my question is if he’s being told there’s no limit to the spending, why didn’t he aim a little higher on some of these short term deals? 

The Orioles signed Andrew Kittridge for 10 million dollars, the Dodgers signed Kirby Yates for 13 million dollars. Things being equal Yates probably chooses the Dodgers but would he have gone to Baltimore for 15 million? Kittridge is a good addition but Yates would have been a better one. 

Similarly the Orioles signed Ramon Laureano to a 4 million dollar contract, the Diamondbacks signed Randal Grichuk to a 5 million dollar contract. Now maybe, like Corbin Burnes, Randal Grichuk just loves Arizona but would he have signed in Baltimore for 8 million dollars? 

Anyway I’m backseat GMing in a way that is probably infuriating for anyone with any real knowledge of the Orioles offseason contract offers so I’ll stop by my challenge to Mike Elias would be to try and find that limit that Rubenstein is pretending doesn’t exist. 

“I recognize how baseball operates, and it would be great if you can sign some people to longer term contracts, but it takes awhile to do it, and right now we are focused on getting the team ready for the season and we’ll see what unfolds. I would certainly like the best young players we have on the team and those are two (Rutschman and Henderson) I just mentioned to stay here like Brooks Robinson was here in his entire career, Jim Palmer was here his entire career. We’d like to have players stay with Baltimore for a long long time, their entire career.”

Followed quickly by: 

“Baseball is different than it was in the Brooks Robinson days and the Jim Palmer days, and we recognize that. We think that we are putting together a team that they are very happy with and we’re providing an atmosphere that they are very happy with and we will just have to see what unfolds, but we’re not unaware of the desirability of what you suggest. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

This one starts off nice and then gets a little dicey towards the end. I do appreciate hearing that at least someone with some power would like to see Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson remain on the Orioles for many years. 

I do get a little confused by some of the language that makes it seem like Rubenstein is not the one in control of whether these guys will get extended. Language like “we’ll just have to see what unfolds” creates more questions. Will there ever be a point where Rubenstein steps in and says “we have the money to extend player X so we are extending player X”? So far it seems like Elias has sold Rubenstein on the benefits of allowing some of the Orioles best players to walk out the door in free agency rather than offering them long term contracts. Will there be any pushback when it comes time to say goodbye to Adley Rutschman?

“That’s the conundrum you always face. If you get a pitcher who’s 30 years old and he wants an 8 year contract, how many pitchers pitching at 38 are that good? There are some. So that’s the issue. The way baseball operates as you know you get these long term deals. If a player gets injured in his first year and can’t play again, what do you do? The Nationals signed a great pitcher a number of years ago, they had a great pitcher a number of years ago and he got injured right after signing. Stephen Strasburg. And so it’s a problem.” 

This is probably my least favorite quote of the day. It is a little bit more illuminating how Elias has been able to convince Rubenstein that these long term extensions are bad. 

If you told an executive at any company that you were going to give a consultant an 8 year 200 million dollar contract and that you really only expected them to be of any value for the first 5 years of the contract they would look at you like you were out of your mind but that is simply how big time baseball contracts work. 

The Yankees do not expect Aaron Judge to be worth 40 million dollars in 2031 but that is what they will be paying him, the Mets do not expect Juan Soto to be worth 46 million dollars in 2039 but that is what they will be paying him and that is just how things work. In 2031 when Aaron Judge is creaking around the Yankees’ clubhouse doing physical therapy and collecting millions of dollars nobody is going to say the Yankees were stupid for signing him to that deal. 

I understand Rubenstein’s distaste for these deals but he needs to be taught that that’s how business is done. Instead it appears Elias is waving the worst possible scenario in his face to keep him very comfortable with not offering any long term contracts. 

The worst part is that the story of the Nationals is actually a triumph for pitching contracts. The Nationals won the World Series because they signed Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin as free agents and extended Stephen Strasburg. Without those aggressive team building moves they would never have sniffed a World Series. They owe the greatest moment in their franchise’s history to the fact that their GM gave out 3 big pitching contracts.

Rubenstein is correct that the contract they gave Strasburg after that World Series has not aged well and is at least partially responsible for that team imploding but now the Nationals are already on the other side of their rebuild even with the bad contract. 

If the Nationals manage to sneak into the playoffs this year and win even one game they will have won the World Series, blown up their roster and won a playoff game before the Orioles do which would be embarrassing. 

“I would say the best way to phrase it, everybody in baseball wants to have a competitive environment so every fan thinks every team can win any given year. Having a competitive environment is what we want and what other owners want and ultimately I think that’s what I think the fans really want too is a competitive environment so no matter what city you live in you think your team can win that year when the season begins, and that’s what I’m mostly focused on.”

This one goes around in circles a bit but this is Rubenstein following up on his comments he made a few weeks ago about baseball having a salary cap. This is an odd crusade for Rubenstein to be on, everything he is saying is true I’m sure almost all if not all the owners would like there to be a salary cap in fact I believe there was a poll early this offseason on MLB Trade Rumors where fans voted resoundingly for a salary cap but the players do not want that and unlike in the NBA the MLB players union does not get ragdolled in negotiations so a salary cap would have to come with such massive concessions from the owners on other fronts that there’s no chance it’s coming within David Rubenstein’s life. 

Now some people have taken these comments to be Rubenstein laying the groundwork for being significantly cheaper than his “no financial limits” comments would have you believe but I am optimistic that is not the case. This feels more like him as a new owner looking at the business he just entered and thinking out loud “If the other big leagues all have salary caps why doesn’t this one?” 

Rubenstein has yet to be involved in a CBA negotiation so I’ll be interested to see if as that negotiation gets closer he continues to bang this drum. Will any other owner put their arm around him and say “that’s not really something we’re prioritizing in these negotiations.” or will Rubenstein ride the wave of Dodgers fatigue and rally the other owners and make the salary cap a priority? 

“What I wanted to have was more of a complete team that was as good as the people dealing with the baseball side… The business side I thought needed more ballast. We recruited some people and Catie [Griggs] has really done the recruiting of those people and I think we’re in good shape now.” 

This was maybe my favorite quote because the business side of a team is an underrated part of team building. Everyone wants to see their team spend money but where does that money come from? You can look up how much money your owner has but that money isn’t sitting in the bank waiting to be spent on utility infielders and starting pitching depth. 

The fact is that whether your owner is rich or whether your owner is Mark Attanasio if the business side of the baseball team makes more money from tickets, events, merchandise, ads or any number of revenue streams then there will be more money to spend on baseball players assuming your owner isn’t a greed bastard whose goal is to field the cheapest baseball team possible so that he can walk away with as much profit as possible. 

Rubenstein has indicated he wants to spend money on the team but he also made it clear that he doesn’t want the Orioles to be in the red so vamping up the business side of the Orioles will only make it easier for him to invest more in baseball side and it’s good that he cares about that.

The reactions to these quotes online were overwhelmingly negative. People seemed to be reminded of the John Angelos press conferences where he would talk about why they couldn’t spend money but that he had a lot of faith in Mike Elias to figure out how to field a winning team anyway given the circumstances. 

However, David Rubenstein is not John Angelos. Over the past year the increased investment in the team, the stadium and the business side of the Orioles has been significant and is only growing and in the next few years the Orioles will benefit from those investments both on the field and up in the Warehouse.