Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias and manager Craig Albernaz met with the media on Monday to discuss the 2026 season.
Here are excerpts from the session:
Elias on Gunnar Henderson’s sore right wrist:
“Well, it certainly never helps when you’re fighting through something. Credit to Gunnar, he stayed out on the field all year and played so hard. And I don’t – Alby rested him here and there – but I don’t recall him ever being too hurt to play a game, and he didn’t spend time on the IL [injury list] and in that sense, I mean he did a great job navigating everything. It’s part of baseball, and I think the organization and Gunnar handled that particular situation about as well as you could. But, yeah, we’ve been getting killed by injuries the last couple of years, it’s no secret. We don’t make an excuse about it, and it’s a very hard thing to control. But we’re going to do whatever we can within our control to get better results on that front going forward.”
Albernaz on Henderson’s injury status:
“It’s always a day-to-day check-in, but also anyone that’s been around Gunnar, sometimes you just have to just let him be because he’s intense and he’s as competitive as anyone I’ve been around. But with Gunnar, there was extra work in the training room to make sure that [his wrist issue], it was not ready to go for the game – but you want to make sure you stay on top of it so it doesn’t get worse.
“Gunnar and the training staff did a great job, and Gunnar also made an adjustment with his bat as well, where he had a regular knob bat pretty much the whole year … but towards the end of the season, he switched to an ax handle, and that helped a lot. I always say this, but the real separator from big league players and minor league players is that big league players are the elite of the elite compensators. Where they play every day, it’s 162 games, and you’re not 100 percent healthy – just [on] Day One of spring training. After that, it’s a slow decline, and Gunnar did a great job of going out there and playing for us. I know it wasn’t the results that he wanted, but you look up and he had over .700 OPS and 24 homers. It’s still productive for a shortstop at this level. So, I’m proud of Gunnar the way he went about his business this year.”
Elias on dealing with Rubenstein, Arougheti, others
“Very robust group, as a lot are nowadays, or a lot of the newer groups are increasingly, there’s a lot of people involved. David’s in charge, Michael Arougheti is extremely high in the ownership group and knows what he’s doing and is very involved, as well. And then we have other people to varying degrees of involvement. But it’s an excellent group.
“They’re around a lot, they’re very supportive, they’re very communicative. It’s a very deep ownership group. It’s thrilling to have. And like I said, it’s been super frustrating that, we did pretty well in ’22, ’23 and ’24, and now we’ve got this new group in and we haven’t been able to deliver the results. So to answer your question, the communication is continuing on a fairly daily basis over the next few week and we’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about.”
Elias on organizational pitching
“At the moment, we do have a lot of pitching talent in the organization. We’re happy with it. That can often be an ephemeral thing. These guys can get hurt easily and there’s a lot of variability in pitching. So, we’re kind of paranoid about that, but I do credit — obviously the players — but our development staff at the major and minor league levels toward the work that they’re doing with those guys. I think our pitching department is in really good hands at the major and minor league level, and we’re excited about what, by and large, most of those prospects did this year. But also, we had really good performances in the bullpen and the rotation this year as well. So, kind of trying to keep a strength a strength. We hope to roll that into next year. But like I’ve been saying, it’s really hard to stay on top of things in this business. But right now, we have a lot of things. It has been a disappointing season. We are in a good spot organizationally. We have talent. We have flexibility. We have great owners. We have good people. We’ve just got to execute and put it to work better next year, and I’m hopeful that our pitching in the organization right now should be a strength going into spring training.”
Albernaz on what will be different in 2027
“Every single day like we talked about throughout the year, you know myself, the coaching staff, Mike as well. We always talk through each situation each day. Things that we can do differently.
“But as like a bigger aspect of it, there is one word that keeps on coming up, each player I talk to, each coaching staff member. It’s the word execution. That is the biggest thing. It’s executing our game plan when the hitter is in the box. Executing our game plan when we’re on the mound. Executing on defense, baserunning. Execution is the biggest thing. And that is something that we’re going to be diving into and drilling hard this offseason and then looking forward in spring training.”
Notes: For the second time this season, Pete Alonso was named American League Player of the Week. Alonso also won the honor on August 17th. He’s won it seven times in his career. Alonso is also one of 14 finalists at first base for the All-MLB team. … Longtime Orioles broadcaster Bill O’Donnell is one of 10 finalists for the Ford C. Frick Award presented by the Baseball Hall of Fame. O’Donneill, who called Orioles games for 17 seasons, from 1966-1982, partnered with Chuck Thompson, a previous winner. … Single-A Delmarva trainer Maggie Hunt was named the Carolina League’s Athletic Trainer of the Year.
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