With his ballclub off to a slow start, Mike Elias gave his first news conference of the season Tuesday. The Orioles’ executive vice president and general manager answered questions about the club’s growing list of injuries, contract extensions for young stars and more during the 24-minute session.

Here are five things we learned:

The Orioles’ injuries are already weighing on a roster that was built to withstand them

Elias didn’t have a bottle of water with him during the scrum inside the Orioles’ dugout. He could’ve used one after spending six minutes rattling off updates for each one of his injured players.

Zach Eflin. Grayson Rodriguez. Albert Suárez. Andrew Kittredge. Kyle Bradish. Tyler Wells. Trevor Rogers. Chayce McDermott. Colton Cowser. Enrique Bradfield Jr. Samuel Basallo.

While Elias didn’t seem parched, the roster he built is beginning to look so.

After Tuesday’s loss to the Cleveland Guardians, Baltimore is last in the American League East with a 6-10 record. It’s the latest in a season the Orioles have been below .500 since 2022, the final year of the rebuild.

“I think it’s part of baseball … and it’s certainly not limited to the Orioles,” Elias said. “So is it a factor in our slow record to start the year? Yes. Is it an excuse or a totality of the reason? No. There are other teams going through it, too, so it’s just something that we continue to deal with and we try to amass the most depth that we can.”The strength of this roster entering spring training was its depth, and that can still be the case. But players like Eflin, Rodriguez, Bradish and Cowser can’t be replaced. Teams can only survive a short period without them. Stack all the injuries together, and no amount of depth can make up for missing a quality start machine in Eflin, a budding ace in Rodriguez, a dominant arm in Bradish and the straw that stirs the drink in Cowser.

Elias said the Orioles have “already tapped into” the depth he spent all offseason building. While not as impactful as Eflin, Rodriguez or Bradish, the injuries to Suárez, Kittredge, Rogers and McDermott have wiped out even more depth.

“To say that on April 15 was not the plan,” Elias said. “To have Grayson and Eflin on the shelf simultaneously this quickly into the season, at no point were we forecasting that or expecting that. And that’s just the truth.”

There’s positive news on the horizon for the Orioles. Eflin, Rodriguez, Kittredge and Cowser are all expected back in the first half. Bradish, Suárez and Wells appear destined for second-half returns.

Can the Orioles tread water until they return?

Fans might be ready to panic, but Elias isn’t

April is the weirdest of all baseball months. Every game matters, but it’s too early for real analysis.

Last April, Yankees superstar Aaron Judge hit .207 with a .754 OPS. What followed was one of the best offensive seasons in baseball history. Two Aprils ago, Jorge Mateo hit .347 with a 1.062 OPS. What followed was one of the worst offensive seasons by any hitter that year.

All that to say: This slow start is not automatically a concerning presage of what’s to come, and Elias isn’t panicking.

“I certainly haven’t seen any signs of panic, and we’re continuing to retain the same approach on a night-to-night basis,” he said. “I try not to get too high when things are going great, and try not to get down when we’re losing. That’s how you have to approach baseball.”

Still, Elias acknowledged that the start to the season has been “disappointing.” He said he’s already on the phone with other general managers across MLB trying to line up trades, though he noted those are rare in April.

“We’re working,” Elias said. “We’re always looking outside and inside to bolster the team.”

What fans find more distressing is how much this sluggish start has mirrored the listless end to last season. Since June 21, the Orioles are 48-56.

Those Orioles’ downturn was partially caused by injuries, too, and whether these Orioles can climb out of the quicksand might solely depend on finally shaking off the injury bug. But a concerning start isn’t going to alter how Elias views his ballclub.

“[We] still see an enormous level of talent in this team, still see a playoff team,” he said. “We’re going to keep pushing away and working to get things back into place, to the degree that they aren’t in place, and doing everything we can across the organization to improve things and improve our record, and I think it’s going to happen.”

Brandon Hyde sets the lineups, and Elias agrees with them

Two Sundays ago, the Orioles deployed a strange lineup with Jorge Mateo in center field and left-handed hitters Cedric Mullins, Heston Kjerstad and Jackson Holliday on the bench against a reverse-splits lefty.

That lineup set off an uproar among some Orioles fans, especially after Mateo’s dropped fly ball in center field played a major factor in Baltimore losing the game in Kansas City. Tuesday’s lineup against the Guardians had a similar reaction with Ramón Laureano and Mateo in the lineup over Kjerstad and Holliday versus a soft-tossing lefty.

With all this lineup talk, who actually makes them? Who gets the final call?

“I am not involved with lineups,” Elias said. “Our front office produces information that helps Brandon and the advanced team that works with Brandon to choose the lineups on a nightly basis. But our philosophy is that the guys in the clubhouse should be deciding that.”

Of course, Elias put his backing behind Hyde, his manager since taking over ahead of the 2019 season. The GM realizes that his manager has a nightly balancing act between injuries, matchups, splits, slumps and much more.

“I’m in total support, and what I’ve seen from the lineups that we’ve had make sense to me,” Elias said. “There are all kinds of things on a night-to-night basis behind the scenes that we don’t report. … There’s 162 games, we play so much baseball, we’ve got to rotate players through and we have to rest guys.”

Elias doesn’t regret how he operated the Orioles’ offseason

This winter, Elias oversaw one of the largest year-over-year payroll augmentations in Baltimore’s history, going from $92.9 million to $164.5 million. That marked the highest percentage increase (77%) by any MLB team this offseason.

In owner David Rubenstein’s first offseason as owner, Elias signed eight major leaguers for a combined $73.25 million in 2025, though none of those players are guaranteed to be in Baltimore in 2026 and beyond.

Elias did not make a splash this offseason, notably not re-signing ace Corbin Burnes or bringing in an arm of his caliber. The Yankees and Red Sox both added aces, while the Orioles saw theirs choose Arizona and, as a consolation prize, Elias signed veterans Tomoyuki Sugano and Charlie Morton to one-year deals.

A little over three turns through Elias’ new rotation, the group sports the worst ERA in MLB at 5.54. Morton, 41, is at a loss about his rough start with an 8.84 ERA through four starts. Kremer’s is 8.16. Eflin accounted for three of the Orioles’ four quality starts, but now he’s on the shelf.

Does Elias regret not investing more in his rotation?

“It is not feasible to land and execute every single thing that you want to do, try to do, in the offseason,” Elias said. “And my entire job is balancing the needs of the team, the needs of the roster, versus the acquisition cost and what that might do to affect future seasons. That’s the job of being a general manager.

“We made moves that we wanted to, and I think we had some unfortunate breaks here early on.”

Elias is historically reticent when discussing specific players or negotiations, but recent comments from Burnes while the Orioles were in Arizona — and reports that Elias offered $180 million over four years to the right-hander — allowed him to speak in a slightly more frank manner about the topic. Burnes signed for $210 million over six years to be closer to his family in the Phoenix area.

“We made a good offer and a good run, good effort to retain Corbin Burnes,” Elias said. “We knew it was gonna be competitive. We knew it wasn’t gonna be easy. It ultimately didn’t end up with him staying with the team. I can’t criticize his going to the Diamondbacks. It makes sense to me.

“It was something that we worked on, and it didn’t cross the finish line.”

Elias isn’t blind to the contract extension discourse

“I’m aware of the conversation around us,” Elias acknowledged.

Since 2019, the Orioles are the only MLB team that has not signed a player to a contract extension of four-plus guaranteed years. Elias has faced plenty of hurdles in this department. Until the past year, the team operated bottom-five payrolls under former CEO and Chairman John Angelos. Mega-agent Scott Boras, whose clients are normally reluctant to sign before free agency, represents prime extension candidates Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg and Holliday. And players like Henderson and Rutschman can now smell the money they’d make on the open market.

However, does that explain why Elias has been unable or unwilling to do what the rest of his contemporaries have? Elias said he’d be “a little more revelatory” about extensions than he’s been in the past before saying the following:

“This is something we’re working on,” he said. “There’s guys on this team that we would like to have on this team longer than they’re currently slated for.

“We are doing everything within our power to do as well on this front as we can.”

The discourse won’t quiet down, though, until Elias extends somebody. Whether that comes tomorrow, next month, next year or never remains to be seen, but the GM isn’t going to ditch his philosophy of creating a sustainable team for years to come to achieve this goal.

“It’s certainly not something that I can or want to force unilaterally,” Elias said.

Have a news tip? Contact Jacob Calvin Meyer at jameyer@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/JCalvinMeyer.