With the trade deadline less than five weeks away, Mike Elias is holding out hope that the Orioles can orchestrate a turnaround. But he also recognizes that they’re running out of time to do it.

The Orioles’ executive vice president and general manager has held wide-ranging discussions within the front office on how they will approach the deadline, keeping all options on the table as the team attempts to climb back into the playoff race.

“As I talk right now, we’re a long arms reach, but we’re something of an arm’s reach from a wild-card spot,” Elias told The Baltimore Sun on Friday before their 22-8 win over Tampa Bay. “There are a lot of teams ahead of us, though, and the odds are against us, but we’re very focused day to day right now on winning as many games as we can.

“But look, there is a calendar that we’ve got to keep our eye on. And when the time comes to assess where we’re at at the trade deadline, we’ll make a reasoned move as a front office for starting to kind of set course for the rest of season and what’s best for the organization overall. But I’m hoping that we can stay relevant in the playoff chase and kind of build our record back up from now until then.”Baltimore crossed the official midpoint of the season Friday, landing at 35-46 to pull within seven games of the third wild card in the American League. The Orioles have played much better under interim manager Tony Mansolino (20-18) than they did with former skipper Brandon Hyde (15-28), though they still have a long way to go to achieve playoff relevancy.

They’ve improved their standing in the wild-card hunt by only 1 1/2 games since Hyde was fired and leapfrogged one club — the Athletics — leaving seven teams to surpass. FanGraphs pegs their playoff odds at 3.3%, just below their 3.7% mark the day Mansolino took over.

It’s going to take an even greater leap for the Orioles to gain enough ground that they’ll be in striking distance of a playoff spot by the July 31 deadline.

“Honestly, I feel like we’ve been showing it these past couple weeks or month, however (long) it’s been,” shortstop Gunnar Henderson said last weekend. “We’ve gone on a few good runs and we’re going out there and putting up a lot of runs so I feel like we’ve kind of hit our stride a little bit. We still have a lot of room to go, but yeah, we’ve been making strides in the right direction and we’ve been winning a decent amount of games.”

Should the Orioles decide to sell, Elias wasn’t ready to commit to trading players with multiple years of control in addition to those on expiring deals. First baseman Ryan O’Hearn, center fielder Cedric Mullins, starters Zach Eflin and Tomoyuki Sugano and relievers Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto are among their players on track for free agency this winter.

“We as a front office, whether it’s a trade deadline or two years in advance, we’ve always got to talk and look through scenarios,” Elias said. “So, it doesn’t mean we’re not having those discussions in the office, but in terms of publicly addressing what our strategy might be, just not there yet. But we’re doing the preparation that we can.”

The Rubenstein factor: Orioles owner David Rubenstein and his partners signed off on a nearly $72 million increase in player salaries year over year last offseason, giving Baltimore its largest opening day payroll ($164.6 million) in franchise history not adjusted for inflation, according to Cot’s Contracts.

Their investments haven’t paid off in the win column thus far, however, and the Orioles’ offseason additions have had mixed results. Right-hander Charlie Morton (one year, $15 million) has stabilized his season while fellow starter Sugano (one year, $13 million) has stumbled through his past few starts. Outfielder Tyler O’Neill (three years, $49.5 million) has been limited to 24 games this year because of injuries.

“They continue to be very supportive of what we’re doing and the people here,” Elias said of ownership group. “They’re like all of us, disappointed and flummoxed about where we’re at and they’re involved with me and talking through it and trying to figure out ways to get out of this swoon. So, this is definitely not to their standards and they’re rightly concerned when we have a season like this, but they’ve been very, very constructive and I think their attitude remains so and they’re smart guys and they understand how things work.”

Elias said in the days after Hyde’s dismissal that the Orioles were reviewing “everything about what we do” to identify the factors that led to the club’s poor start as well as their flat finish to the 2024 campaign. The front office hasn’t reached any conclusions based on those evaluations yet, but Elias said that they’re still holding meetings to discuss where they can improve their thinking.

Yet given the young stable of position players the organization is built around remains under team control for the next few years, the front office expects ownership to continue devoting resources into player payroll to help the club contend in 2026 and beyond regardless of how the rest of this season goes.

“The new ownership group that’s taken over, they’re very well equipped and they’re very serious about running the team,” Elias said. “I think wherever baseball operations recommends devoting resources, they’re going to make those available to whatever degree you can imagine being reasonable. So, haven’t crossed that bridge yet, but certainly the owners are there for us.”

Holding on Basallo: One way the Orioles could enhance their chances of making a run down the stretch would be promoting top catching prospect Samuel Basallo, who’s hitting .269 with 15 home runs and a .971 OPS in 52 games for Triple-A Norfolk this season.

However, the 20-year-old is the youngest player in Triple-A and injuries have held him to just 18 starts behind the plate in 2025. The Orioles want to see Basallo get more repetitions at catcher and hone his skills at one of baseball’s most difficult positions before the club considers calling him up to the majors.

“On the offensive side of the ball, power has been elite and his batted-ball contact has been great, but he’s still racking up plate appearances against high-level professional pitching and learning how to manage at-bats and see pitches and draw walks here and there,” Elias said. “Overall, it’s been really positive, especially for a guy his age in Triple-A. His catching is really coming along impressively. He just hasn’t done a lot of it at the high levels.

“That’s a very demanding skill position to kind of skip past all that, and suddenly you’re managing pitching staffs in the AL East and stuff so very, very pleased with where he’s at. I think his development thus far has been one of the big positives of a season that has had a lot of negatives, but we just got to keep him on the right track and his time is coming.”

While it’s unlikely the Orioles promote him any time soon, even with catchers Adley Rutschman (oblique strain) and Maverick Handley (concussion) on the injured list, Elias does see Basallo as a player who is in consideration to reach the majors before the end of the season.

“I do think he’s on the table for 2025,” Elias said. “We’ll obviously take the decision as it comes in the whole context of circumstances, but I think we’re hoping that he’s a part of the 2025 team.”

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