One question that has been tickling the back of my mind ever since the Orioles season took a turn for the worse is “What does David Rubenstein think about all this?”
I’m sure when Rubenstein bought the team he was sold the idea that he was buying a powerhouse that would be one of the best teams in baseball for years to come.
When the sale was announced, the Orioles were coming off a 101 win season, they had 2 of the brightest young stars in baseball in Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson already up in the big leagues performing like stars and one of, if not the best farm system in baseball with the number 1 prospect in baseball banging on the door in triple A.
I have been critical of Mike Elias a lot recently but when Rubenstein bought the team in 2024 it would have been hard to argue that Elias wasn’t one of the best GMs in the sport based on the team’s recent success and the rich farm system that they had to continue to build on. And not that this award means that much but they also had the reigning Manager of the Year in Brandon Hyde.
From the perspective of a Private Equity billionaire I could easily see Rubenstein thinking “We have the leadership and on field talent already in the building. All I have to do is greenlight more payroll and invest in the business side and we’ll be winning games and rolling in cash.”
Imagine how great it would have felt to be Rubenstein this time last year. The team had a top 2 record in the AL, 60% of your starting lineup were all star finalists, you had a Cy Young contender at the top of your rotation as well as the favorite for Rookie of the Year, and you were walking around the stadium throwing out hats to hoards of fans who view you as a savior.
Fast forward to today and it’s almost the exact opposite. A bottom 3 record in the AL, the whole team underperforming except 1 DH, the worst rotation in the league and suddenly the farm system has dried up. Suddenly it’s not as fun to walk around the park throwing out hats.
That would be tremendously frustrating, you spend a billion dollars, one year you’re a hero and the next, to quote Jesse Pinkman, you’re “persona non gratis”. If you’re Rubenstein you have to be thinking this is not what I signed up for.
What I’ve said so far in this blog might sound like I am dunking on Rubenstein but that couldn’t be farther from the truth, in reality I feel something similar to sympathy for him. I signed a lease at an apartment complex with a pool and the pool has been closed for months so I know what it’s like to spend money on something and have it not be what you were hoping for.
Joking aside, I do think that some of the general sentiment around Rubenstein has gotten overly negative. As I take the pulse of the baseball media, the opinion that seems most common is along the lines of “We thought this new owner was going to come in and change things for the Orioles but he hasn’t done much.” I’ve even seen/heard some people say that he might be worse than John Angelos, I’m not saying that that’s a mainstream take but I HAVE seen it.
I just don’t think either of those takes are especially fair or accurate. Rubenstein took full control of the team about halfway through last season and in both transaction cycles he’s been a part of as the owner he has okayed increases in payroll.
At the trade deadline last year the O’s took on several multi year contracts most notably Zach Eflin’s and in the offseason this year the O’s increased their payroll by about 70 million dollars which almost doubled the payroll from the last year of the Angelos.
I can poke holes at the lack of long term deals but the investment was there in a way that it hasn’t been in Baltimore in many many years. In fact if you go back to my offseason preview blog from last October here is what I said would be fair to expect as far as what Rubenstein might invest in the team in his first offseason.
I don’t always get a lot right on here but that was pretty spot on.
So Rubenstein has met my expectations as far as raising the payroll to a more respectable number. Like I said, it is fair to point out that there have been no long term contracts handed out but I truly believe that has much more to do with the GM than Rubenstein himself.
Rubenstein has been determined not to get involved on the baseball side of the business and before this season he had stayed pretty true to his word (we’ll get into that later) so I don’t hold the bad offseason moves or lack of extensions against him.
There was also quite a bit of criticism around the David Rubenstein bobblehead that the Orioles gave out in April. It was a bit of an eyebrow raiser when it was announced in the offseason after the Orioles failed to sign any big free agents and then when the Orioles were already in a tailspin by the time of the giveaway it got even more negative attention. The most common take seemed to be more or less: “Oh this guy didn’t want to sign any free agents and now he’s making a bobblehead of himself.”
That’s a take that is pretty understandable coming from frustrated fans but even on one of my favorite podcasts Effectively Wild talked about it and seemed to really be hammering home the point that Rubenstein made the bobblehead and that he wanted the bobblehead and told them to make him a bobblehead etc.
Maybe I’m totally misreading David Rubenstein’s character and he actually did call the marketing and promotions team and demand a bobblehead but I feel very confident that the bobblehead was someone else’s idea and at most Rubenstein okayed it, if that.
As someone who has worked in marketing adjacent roles I feel confident that the process went more or less like this.
Step 1. The Marketing and Promotions team sat down to plan out the 2025 giveaways
Step 2. They looked at the social media posts from 2024 and sorted by most engagement
Step 3. One of the top performing posts was related to Rubenstein throwing out hats
Step 4. Since people clearly love the owner they decide to do a Rubenstein related giveaway
Step 5. After debating whether to put him on a shirt or a hat they decide on the bobblehead
Step 6. Profit
Again I could be wrong about this and I should also say that in a moment of emotional distress I might have made a bobblehead related jab at Rubenstein somewhere on the internet but in general I think much of the hubbub around the bobblehead was overblown.
Anyway back to my original question:
What does David Rubenstein think about the 2025 Orioles?
I think he’s pissed and here’s a few clues as to why.
The obvious starting point is the firing of Brandon Hyde which I maintain is not something that Mike Elias wanted to do. If Mike Elias had wanted to fire Brandon Hyde he could have done it after they swooned to finish 2024 and got swept out of the playoffs. If for some reason he really thought Hyde was the guy after 2024 but saw something he didn’t like to start the year he wouldn’t have done a media tour telling everyone “Brandon Hyde did nothing wrong and this isn’t his fault” a week before firing him.
I know that the “X manager is still our guy” quote is often a kiss of death but there’s just no way that Elias did all those media hits knowing he would have to fire Hyde the next week. Elias likes to project a calm in control “everything is part of my plan” type image and telling everyone under the sun that you love your manager and then days later firing him is not calm and in control, it looks desperate and scapegoaty.
Especially with you not speaking to the media for days after the firing and then when you do talk to the media you say “I worked closely with ownership on this decision.”
Did you work closely with ownership or did you do a bunch of media saying that things were about to turn around and then they got worse and the owner called you and said fire somebody?
I think you got told to fire somebody.
The next clue is that it was reported in the Athletic that opposing front offices have not heard that the Orioles are looking to sell. Here is the exact quote from Jim Bowden’s piece:
“[Elias] seems to be focusing on adding a top of the rotation starter and doesn’t appear to have the mindset of a seller right now.”
It’s always hard to determine the validity of “sources’ in pieces like this but Jim Bowden is pretty reputable, it’s not like this a rumor from a twitter burner.
Reading this simple sentence got my antennas up. A thought raced through my mind and I felt like Brian Windhorst at the First Take table with my fingers in the air. “Why would Mike Elias do that?”
Where the Orioles sit in the standings is a very interesting spot. 6.5 games back of the last wildcard spot with three and half months left to play is far from insurmountable. The issue is the amount of teams they would have to leapfrog to get into that final spot.
If it was the Mariners in the last wild card spot and the Orioles were the next closest team at 6.5 games back I would actually feel pretty confident the O’s could reel them in. Last year the Mariners broke a record for shortest amount of time to blow a ten game lead in the standings so the idea that they could blow a 6.5 game lead in the wildcard is not crazy.
The problem is that it’s not just the Mariners that stand between the O’s and the playoffs, there are 7 teams between the Orioles and the final Wild Card spot so to make the playoffs the O’s would have to be 6.5 games better than the Mariners, 6.5 games better than the Guardians, 6 games better than the Red Sox, 4.5 games better than the Royals, 4.5 games better than the Rangers, 4 games better than the Angels and 4 games better than the Twins.
I’m pointing out the unlikeliness of the Orioles making the playoffs because I am certain that if I can do the caveman math to find that the Orioles playoff probabilities are almost nonexistent that the Orioles “data driven” front office has already determined that the season is over.
And yet reputable sources say that Mike Elias does not have a sellers mindset and instead is looking for a top of the rotation starter. Why would he do that?
It just goes against everything we know about Mike Elias. Elias sold at the 2022 deadline when the O’s where knocking on the door of a playoff spot, he didn’t buy in 2023 because he didn’t want to go all in before the team was ready and now he’s going to buy the top of the rotation starter the team has needed for years in a season where they’re in 13th place in the AL???
Why would Mike Elias do that?
If Mike Elias felt like no matter what he was going to continue to be the GM of the Baltimore Orioles he would have no problem declaring this a loss season and doing a total fire sale at the deadline and doing a press conference talking about injury luck and “reloading” and sustainable winning.
BUT if Elias was worried that if things get too ugly for the Orioles this year that he could be fired and some other GM might swoop in and put the finishing touches on his rebuild and get all the glory he might feel motivated to make sure this Orioles team is competitive for the rest of the season and finish the year with a record as close to .500 as possible.
Part of keeping your job as a GM is selling yourself to the owner. This is especially tricky when the owner you are selling yourself to wasn’t the same owner that hired you. That is the situation that Mike Elias finds himself in. He had a bit of a head start based on where the team was when Rubenstein bought it in 2024 but with how bad that season ended and how bad the 2025 season has gone so far he’s going to have to sell himself to Rubenstein this offseason.
Imagine it’s the day after the last game of the season and David Rubenstein calls Mike Elias into his office and says “Tell me why I shouldn’t fire you.”
If you’re Mike Elias and the team battled the rest of the season and you traded for a good starter at the deadline and you finished 80-82 you can pretty easily point to the fact that the team had a winning record after they fired Brandon Hyde and got a little healthier.
You basically pin the entire season on some bad luck in April and May and say “Who we were from June on is who we are” and with who we get back from injury next season along with the players we can bring in because we have 11 expiring contracts on our 26 man roster we can supercharge our team for next year and be contenders again.
That would be a pretty compelling case and I bet Mike could keep his job.
On the flip side if Elias sells at the deadline and the team limps to the finish and the O’s record at the end of the season is 69-93 what is he supposed to say if David Rubenstein says “tell me why shouldn’t I fire you”?
“Because the double AA pitcher I got from flipping Ramon Laureano is going to be good in 2027”?
“Because at least we aren’t paying Corbin Burnes to have Tommy John surgery”?
“Because we won the division in 2023”?
He could try to make a case of “look at what I’ve done since 2018 to turn this team around” but Private Equity guys tend to be a very “what have you done for me lately” group.
If you take away Elias’ “I did a good job drafting during the rebuild” defense I just don’t think there is a very compelling case to make besides “trust me bro”. If the O’s don’t sell at the deadline I would take that as a pretty clear sign that ownership got involved and mandated the GM to keep the team competitive. If they do sell at the deadline then I was misled by Jim Bowden so you can direct your complaints to him.
Would David Rubenstein being more involved with baseball decisions be a good thing?
So far at every step of the way David Rubenstein has said that he wants to let the baseball people make the baseball decisions and he’ll handle the business side. I really believe he meant that but he would not be the first owner to come in with intentions of being hands off, greenlight an increase in payroll, and then watch the team underperform and think “Well it’s my money getting spent I better get involved.”
But is that a good thing?
When you’ve been as frustrated as many Orioles have been with Elias’ stubborn cautiousness with free agency and signing extensions, the idea of a free spending owner coming in and throwing money around is exciting.
If Rubenstein fired Elias this offseason and then extended Adley Rutschman and signed Dylan Cease to a 7 year deal it would feel like rain after a 10 year drought but there are definite downsides to the meddling owner spending spree.
Owners like to bask in the glow of a press conference where the team announces a big contract but when those deals don’t work out and the team has to work around an albatros deal billionaires don’t often make great foxhole guys and you worry that once the spender’s high wears off the owner will say “well we tried to spend and it didn’t work out now I’m bored. Why don’t we try to run our team more like they do in Tampa?”
I’ve used this example before and like most cross sport comparisons it’s not perfect but look no further than the Phoenix Suns to see the kind of trouble an overly excited owner can get you into.
In 2021 the Suns made the finals and in 2022 they won 65 games. They had a young core of players they had drafted and developed around their homegrown superstar and they were winning in spite of having a penny pinching unpopular owner. (Sound familiar?)
Halfway through the 2023 season the Suns were sold to billionaire Matt Ishbia who was super eager to take over the team. The first thing Ishbia did was get on the phone with Nets owner Joe Tsai and trade away multiple members of the team’s young core along with every draft pick that could be spared in exchange for Kevin Durant.
That team came up short in the playoffs and all the Suns have done since is make win now move after win now move and the team has gotten worse every year. They’ve doubled down and tripled down and quadrupled down and come up empty every time.
This week they had to trade away Kevin Durant because he didn’t want to spend the last few years of his career playing for a team with no future. As of today there isn’t a team in the NBA further away from winning an NBA championship than the Phoenix Suns.
Matt Ishbia has many of the traits that I would want in an owner, he wants to win, he cares about the fan experience, and he isn’t afraid to spend money but his eagerness to win has set the team back at least 5 years.
To me it’s a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of having an owner who overrules the front office. If Rubenstein were to really start getting involved in baseball decisions there is no guarantee that his moves will be any good and once the owner gets involved it’s not like someone can fire them or reign them in.
As an example let’s say that Rubenstein were to come in and demand that the Orioles extend one of their young players like Colton Cowser (not a Boras client so more realistic, not that being realistic matters that much when this whole blog is built on hypotheticals and speculation but whatever) and the Orioles ended up signing Cowser to a slightly above market deal, I think most people would be ok with that deal and would feel like having Rubenstein step in and demand that someone be extended was a good thing.
But then a few months later Rubenstein watches a Sandy Alcantara 2022 highlight video and decides that the Orioles must have him so he calls up the front office and says “Trade for Sandy, I don’t care what it takes” and the front office calls the Marlins and the Marlins realize that they’ve been mandated to get Alcantara so they ask for Samuel Basallo and the front office comes back to Rubenstein and says “They only want to do the deal for Basallo” and to that Rubenstein says “Well we already have a catcher so just do it.” and the Orioles do a Basallo for Sandy Alcantara trade.
Well now the meddling owner thing seems a bit f***ed up.
I’m not saying this to make a “devil that you know” case in favor of Mike Elias.
Whether you have a meddling owner who ruins the team by making aggressive but misguided moves or a scared of his own shadow GM who ruins a team by not making any moves either way the team gets ruined.
Honestly we don’t even know that David Rubenstein would be bad at meddling. Maybe he would meddle just the right amount. After all he does seem to be working pretty closely with Cal Ripken so you would have that between Rubenstein’s business experience and the Iron Man’s baseball experience they could do a decent job but probably not though.
The way I see it is that the Orioles best case scenario is that David Rubenstein still wants to be hands off on baseball decisions but he is watching Elias more closely now in what will ultimately be his final months as the Orioles GM. In the offseason it’s thnks fr th mmrs Mike Elias and he brings in a GM who knows how to navigate free agency and manage a contender.
Rubenstein’s time as owner has not been flawless. On the business side, which is his side, they’ve sold an invasive sponsorship deal to T. Rowe Price, they’ve made certain season ticket holder perks more expensive and less perky and they’re going to spend taxpayer money building luxury suites for the wealthy fair weather fans.
I’m probably forgetting some things but from what I remember there have been disappointments and plenty of reason to criticize and I don’t want this blog to be interprested as me doing this meme
but I think he is mostly innocent on the baseball moves front so far. However that will change if in response to this season he doesn’t make some changes to the way this front office operates.
The Dishwasher 
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