“You have to evolve. You have to adapt in this game. That’s always been the case, but you know, I think that’s the most concise lesson I can draw for you.”

That was all Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias had to say about the biggest lesson the last year has taught him, and how he’d apply that going forward.

Evolve and adapt.

The Orioles’ front office could tell themselves last year, after a second straight playoff sweep, that the performance exhibited over the preceding couple of years on the field was what mattered most, and that the randomness of baseball and the playoffs got to them.

Now, after an 87-loss season, it looks from most perspectives that more here is wilting than thriving.

Not Elias’ perspective though, which I suppose is the entire point. To evolve and adapt can of course mean the Orioles fundamentally change everything they believe in and how they build this team for 2026 and beyond, but more likely, based on the other 45 minutes of Elias’ media session, we’re talking about operational and functional changes to accentuate what until this recent stretch had worked.

On matters large and small, this puts outsize pressure on Elias to strike the right tone and demonstrate that the key lesson he outlined is actually implemented.

The only reason I’m not skeptical is because the bar is so low. Fortunately for him, as well as everyone involved with the Orioles, there are plenty of areas where simply clearing a low bar can go a long way toward adapting and evolving.

One is in the manager’s office. Elias spoke highly of Tony Mansolino’s performance and qualities as the interim manager but hinted at a quick search to fill that role, a process that would include Mansolino but feels more focused on external candidates.

Crucially, Elias said in the Orioles’ “particular situation,” experience will “definitely carry a lot of weight,” though he hedged that all traits “in the portfolio of the candidate” will be weighed.

That speaks to the possibility that someone with a track record of success elsewhere who has his own way of doing things could be hired to manage the Orioles going forward. Bob Melvin, most recently of the Giants, and Rocco Baldelli, who was let go in Minnesota on Monday, are immediate candidates who fit that bill.

Elias hired Brandon Hyde back in 2018 for his player development acumen, his steady demeanor and his experience seeing through a quick rebuild. That was the right manager for the Orioles at the time. Now, as this team seeks a quick improvement with most of its roster intact, he’s seeking to “figure out who the right fit is for this team for 2026.”

Executing that would be adapting and evolving to where this team is now. We can give him that.

Elsewhere, he noted that the team’s offensive philosophies, predicated on hard contact in the air and making good swing decisions to bring that hard contact about, “brought a lot of success, but like I said, you’ve got to adapt and evolve and adjust in this business.”

Elias said they’re “weighing that and addressing it,” and “absolutely” will not be doing things exactly the same next year. These hitting principles have in tandem with the Orioles’ draft philosophies (which favored hitters that could thrive under direction like this) created a lineup of homegrown players that until this year represented this organization’s greatest hope for contention.

Still, this feels like an area where the Orioles would be trying to evolve rather than rebuild from scratch. They tried to do that with a new set of hitting coaches this year, so the dynamics of any kind of change would be interesting. Given the homegrown hitters’ importance to any kind of quick turnaround, it’s not necessarily an area in which they can afford to hope a reversal to the mean occurs on its own.

Elias also acknowledged injuries have been “a major factor” in the last 18 months of Orioles baseball and that he expects “we’ll have hiring and restructuring and evolution to try to get better,” even in an area that has been remade over the last several years.

In offensive philosophy and player health, there will be a balance to strike in changing things that just recently turned over. That Elias telegraphed adjustments in those areas seems to mean that even if the extent of change is unclear, the front office is not sticking with things just for the sake of continuity.

Elias was asked separately about roster needs and said his wish list was probably the same as anyone following the team. These are areas of low-hanging fruit that can go a long way toward sentiment improvement around this team over the coming months.

But make no mistake on one thing. Though Elias mentioned that hiring a manager will include ownership and the business side — and he touched on his promotion, which will allow the Orioles to hire a general manager at some point — these all feel like relatively mechanical changes in how the Orioles do business.

The business they still do, however, will be in step with Elias’ overall vision. In complimenting the resources that control person David Rubenstein and the ownership group are making available, he basically said the front office still has to get good value for the money it spends. In explaining last year’s free agency, he said it was a mixed bag and that in some cases the processes were still sound.

New voices will of course challenge the status quo. To adapt and to evolve will change the status quo, too. But the landscape of Orioles baseball isn’t about to change. If this all works out, it will be because what Elias set out to build back in 2018 works. Adapting and evolving at this point can have a major impact in the areas he outlined, but they are only going to do so much.

If the Orioles get back to winning, it’ll have much more to do with what’s already in place than whatever changes come this winter.