The Baltimore Orioles are expected to announce their new Head of Baseball Operations/GM today. Mike Elias, most recently the Assistant General Manager of the Houston Astros, will take over for the fired Dan Duquette.
Elias had been with the Astros since 2012 and was in charge of scouting and player development. He has built a strong reputation in those two categories, having been deeply involved with drafting and developing young players into MLB caliber players. The Astros boast having drafted the most MLB players in the league in recent years. The Orioles organization for years have been at or near the bottom in terms of their minor league and international player development systems so the hiring of Elias will hopefully bring change.
Elias will have his work cut out for him as the Orioles enter a rebuilding phase. Halfway through the abysmal 2018 season the team dumped Manny Machado, Jonathan Schoop, Darren O'Day, Kevin Gausman, and Brad Brach. And after the conclusion of the historically bad 2018 season, the Orioles fired Duquette and manager Buck Showalter.
Likely the first task at hand for Elias will be to find Showalter's replacement. The Bleacher Report article says that with his arrival in Baltimore, Elias' close associate in the Astros organization Sig Mejdal, Director of Decision Sciences, could follow him and get the Orioles organization up to speed in terms of using heavy analytics and data.
The 2019 season just became a lot more interesting.