Is Mike Elias the Worst at Free Agency?

As I watched Charlie Morton surrender a 3 run bomb to give the Tigers a lead in the second game of a double header that the Orioles were destined to lose, a thought occurred to me. 

It wasn’t a ground breaking thought, and perhaps many Orioles fans have already had this thought but as Riley Greene rounded the bases on Saturday I thought to myself “Is Mike Elias the worst GM in the league at free agency?” 

Charlie Morton is the worst pitcher in the league.

Tyler O’Neill is already on the IL after being a negative on offense and defense and on the bases in his time playing. 

By WAR Gary Sanchez has been as bad as Morton. 

Dylan Carlson is hitless so far. 

Kyle Gibson gave up homers to 4 of the first 5 hitters he faced in his only start this year. 

Andrew Kittredge hasn’t played. 

By fWAR, only Ramon Laureano and Tomoyuki Sugano haven’t been negative players and it’s not like either of them are tearing it up to make up for what the other free agent acquisitions have done so far. 

And the Orioles are paying these guys a combined 72 million dollars this year. 

Think about it, the Dodgers are (kind of) paying 70 million a year for Shohei Ohtani and for 2 million dollars more the Orioles get to enjoy this crack squad of free agent signings. 

Anyway back to the question of is Mike Elias the worst. 

Elias took over the team after the 2018 season so I decided to leave the 2019 offseason out of the equation since he was coming into a real mess (or did I decide to do that because Fangaphs offseason tracker only goes back to the 2020 season? I’m calling those intersecting facts a happy accident). 

So what we’re looking at to decide if Mike is the worst at free agency are all of the major league free agent signings since the 2020 offseason. We’ll look at the WAR each team got from their free agent signings, the amount of money they spent on those free agents and of course the dollars per WAR. 

The final decision of who is the worst won’t simply be least WAR or worst dollars/WAR ratio it’ll be a rich tapestry of all the factors. 

PROCESS NOTES

If you are only interested in looking at the results you can skip this section but I wanted to be up front about some of the decisions I made and how I got these numbers. 

Here is the whole process: 

I looked at the offseason tracker going back to 2020 for 29 of the 30 teams (the A’s only goes back to last year) 

I noted down all of the Major League Free Agent Signings for each team. 

I did not note down any minor league signings even if I recognized the name as someone who eventually did contribute to that team. As an example Matt Carpenter was a minor league signing the year he went ballistic for the Yankees so in my tables the Yankees don’t get credit for the WAR that Matt Carpenter accrued that season. The reason for this is because I view signing vets to minor league deals and signing a major league free agent to be different skill sets and the whole purpose of this exercise is to determine who is the worst at free agency so the minor league deals tend to muck up the picture. (also do you have any idea how many minor league deals get signed each offseason?)

Another decision I made was to only count free agent signings from before April. Similarly to with the minor league deals the reason for this is because I wanted to evaluate how each team does at using free agency to build their team each offseason and I think there is a difference between signing a free agent in January and planning for them to play a role on the team and signing a free agent in July because your third baseman got hurt. 

I also didn’t include free agent signings where the player was on that team the year before. I know that technically when a players contract ends they become a free agent and no matter where they end up signing they are a “free agent signing” with that team but signing your own players just feels different than signing a free agent away from another team so in the spirit of what I was searching for I left guys re-signing with their same team out of the equation. 

Among the most notable instances of this is that Jurickson Profar signed a 1 year deal with the Padres the year before he had his breakout season and then he signed another 1 year deal with them the year that he broke out. So on my sheet the Padres only get credit for that first season. Sorry. 

Similarly with players that sign a contract and then get extended off their contract I only counted WAR from the first version of the contract.

I did however count it if a player left a team and then signed with them again. Like Andrew McCutchen signing with the Pirates after playing for the Phillies. So there’s that. 

This next one was tricky but I tried to filter out what I ended up calling “roster churn signings”. These were instances where a player signed as a major league free agent (usually for the league minimum) and then played in just a game or two before being cut. Again the purpose for this is to focus on the GMs ability to evaluate talent and plan for the season and if someone was clearly signed to hold a roster spot and be cut in the first week of the season then I didn’t feel like they should be in my tables screwing up the math. As I said this one was tricky so it is possible I missed a few instances of this but I did my best. 

Once I had listed all the players and their WAR I went over to Spotrac to get their contract value. 

For 95% of the contracts this was very easy, simply find the total contract value and plug it into the sheet but for some contracts it was a little tricky. 

For contracts that are still going on I decided to only count the amount of money that has been earned by the player so far. For example Gerrit Cole signed a 9 year 324 Million dollar contract but through the 2024 season he has only been paid for 5 of those seasons completely so only those 5 seasons of WAR and money go on the sheet. 

Hopefully that makes sense, the reason is because we are looking at dollars/WAR so much and if we just put the whole contract value on the sheet it screws with good long term deals and make them appear less valuable than they should. 

Another tricky thing is that so many of these contracts are either front loaded or back loaded or have deferred money so to make things simple when it came to the money spent so far on an active contract I just took the AAV and multiplied it by the years completed so far. This was done so that back loaded contracts wouldn’t be over valued, there are so many deals were the last 2 years of the deal are a big jump in pay and to me it felt wrong to give those GMs that are hurting their team down the line an advantage over GMs that signed their players to front loaded or balanced deals so we just went AAV for everyone. 

The last tricky thing with the contracts and the WAR was trades. I contemplated how to capture trades as best as possible. At first I tried to find exactly how much money the team trading for the player took on in each deal but this proved rather difficult and it was pretty different with each case. The trade deadline isn’t even in the middle of the season so it’s not like you can split it in half evenly. 

I ended up just making it so the team that signed the player originally got credit for the money spent AND the WAR accrued during the season even if the player got traded mid season. If the player got traded between seasons I only counted the money and WAR where the player spent entire seasons. 

Out of all the decisions I made, the trades are where I felt the worst. If I had a team of researchers I would love to get the exact money spent but for just 1 feeble minded man it was too difficult at present. If you know a good way to get this kind of info in a way that is easily available please reach out to me (The.Dishwasher1954@gmail.com) 

I should also note that the WAR numbers are as of May 1st. 

Some other quick notes:

I know that Jean Segura signed with the Marlins a couple of seaons ago but I could not find the contract details on Spotrac so he’s not on the sheet.

I removed Trevor Bauer from the Dodgers sheet.

If you are interested in seeing the names, salaries and stats that went into each table you can check out the google sheet I did all the work on here: Free Agent Spending

THE RESULTS

We’ll start with the 2025 offseason since those are the most cut and dry results first let’s look at who is getting the most WAR from their 2025 free agent class. 

So we can see most of the league is somewhere between .2 WAR and -.2 WAR but there are teams already starting to separate themselves. 

At the good end of the spectrum the Cubs lead the pack with 3 WAR most of which comes from Carson Kelly followed by the Mets who have a bunch of guys contributing to their 2.5 WAR total and the Red Sox whose 2.1 WAR is carried by Alex Bregman. 

On the negative side you have the Nationals who are being weighed down primarily by Josh Bell and the Orioles who’s -1.3 WAR is a real team effort. 

So by the most simple metric of who’s free agents have the least WAR the Orioles haven’t actually been the worst so far this season but let’s take a look at how much everyone spent on their free agents before we hang the banner. 

There are a lot of things you could look at here like what the heck is Seattle doing but I feel like the best way to bring home the point of who had the worst free agency in 2025 is to look at where the top 8 spenders rank in the WAR. 

The Mets 

Spending: 1st  – WAR: 2nd 

The Dodgers

Spending: 2nd – WAR: 13th 

The Red Sox

Spending: 3rd – WAR: 3rd 

The Orioles 

Spending: 4th – WAR: 29th 

The Blue Jays 

Spending: 5th – WAR: 11th 

The Tigers 

Spending: 6th – WAR: 6th 

The Angels 

Spending: 7th – WAR: 15th 

The Yankees

Spending: 8th – WAR: 4th 

The conclusion here is obvious but I still have to say it the Orioles spent more money than almost any other team in the league on 2025 free agents and they are getting less from their free agents than all but 1 team. 

At least the Nationals are only paying 17 million for -1.5 WAR the Orioles are paying 72 million dollars this year for a group of guys giving them -1.3 WAR it’s terrible and you could say this is early in the season so they should be given more time but I actually believe that the fact that it is early benefits the Orioles here because Charlie Morton, Kyle Gibson and Gary Sanchez look like they are only going to get deeper into the negative and the free agents the other teams spent money on are mostly going to go into the positive. 

Right now the Mets free agents have accrued 3.8 more WAR than the Orioles free agents and I bet by the end of the season the difference will be more than 10.

So the fact that nobody did it worse in free agency then Mike Elias this year is undeniable but what about during his whole tenure. Surely he hasn’t been the worst free agency GM for the last half decade right? 

Here are the rankings for Free Agency WAR from 2020-2024

So upon looking at these numbers I have no choice but to declare that the Rockies are the very worst front office in baseball at free agency (and probably everything) but the Orioles are dangerously close for a team that is supposed to be a contender in their window. 

As of right now the only redeeming quality about the Orioles free agency experience is that they haven’t done it much and their dollars/WAR ratio is middle of the pack. 

However I have a feeling that after this season in which they spent more in free agency than they had in the last 5 combined that precious ratio is not going to be so good and I predict that if I were to do this same exercise at the end of the season with the 2025 free agents priced in they’ll have a bottom 5 Dollar/WAR ratio. 

Just today Mike Elias came out and took accountability for the Orioles slow start and had to answer a bunch of questions about his baseball team looking really bad.

I don’t think that he is on the hot seat yet but after an offseason where he spent 70 million dollars and it resulted in a team that not only has a disappointing record but loses in ways that are genuinely embarrassing I wouldn’t be surprised if that seat gets hotter as the losing streaks and double digit blowouts keep mounting up. 

Even though David Rubenstien has been insistent that money is not an issue and that he doesn’t intend on putting his hands on the baseball operations he does come from the world of Private Equity so even if he has no intention of overstepping I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he finds himself thinking “I gave this guy the green light to increase the payroll by 70 million dollars and he turned all that money into a group a negative players” and then having the logical follow up thought “Is this guy bad at his job?” and then maybe thinking “I could give one of my grandkids 70 million dollars and I bet they would do better than -1.3 WAR.” and who knows what else but the point is that this disaster of an offseason has to shake ownerships faith in the front office they inherited.