The same way an odd relative’s idiosyncrasies grow to feel normal within the family, Mike Elias being promoted to president of baseball operations for the Orioles this winter and it only coming to light now, via a report from The Athletic, solidifies the club’s preference for secrecy. It is part of how the team operates.

The Orioles did it with former manager Brandon Hyde, extending his contract ahead of the 2021 season — the last year on his initial deal — and we only learned of it that September. Presumably, Elias has been in this boat before too, with his deals extended as he nears the completion of his seventh season running the Orioles.

When asked about contract extensions for players, a subject Elias has been pressed on for the duration of his tenure, he demurred, insisting it wasn’t beneficial to anyone for those details to be public.

This is kind of what you get here: a closed shop, at least in the baseball operations department, in terms of both information and personnel. With indications that Elias’ promotion will lead to possible additions in the front office, potentially a general manager, plus the pending search for Hyde’s permanent replacement in the dugout, things could open up a bit.

The question, as always, is how much will actually change?

New faces could bring new ideas. They could challenge norms, foster debate and drive the organization forward as everyone involved moves on from the wreckage their early-season tailspin wrought.

Perhaps the lack of noticeable or incremental changes resulting from Elias’ process of “very heavily evaluating everything that we do across the organization,” from the front office and analytics to player development, is because the major ones in the manager’s office and within Elias’ tight cadre of lieutenants are going to represent a new approach.

For now, the read is that those evaluations haven’t caused any changes in the Orioles’ operating model. They believe what they believe. Their philosophies are consistent, both in that they haven’t changed and that they’re applied the same way from top to bottom.

That’s not a bad thing. The aforementioned closed shop led in many cases to frictionless opportunities to try new things and forge bold campaigns to improve players, processes and the club as a whole.

Much more has worked than failed, and a lot of that is the product of not only the people involved but the setup. Their rebuilding efforts in the first three years under Elias were used to turn over every corner of the baseball operations department. There are valuable holdovers but many new faces.

Together, they built something special — back-to-back playoff appearances, a lineup full of homegrown stars produced by an industry-leading player development operation. Now they get to apply their skills on a larger scale with a real major league budget provided by the ownership group led by David Rubenstein and Michael Arougheti.

It’s notable, as we think about vacancies, how this group came together. The earliest way into the B&O Warehouse was to have worked with Elias before, which brought assistant general managers Sig Mejdal and Eve Rosenbaum, plus senior director of baseball strategy and operations Brendan Fournie to Baltimore.

Mejdal helped bring Matt Blood on board as farm director in 2019; he’s now vice president of player development and domestic scouting. Blood brought Anthony Villa, now the farm director, from his prior job in Texas.

Networking has similarly helped build out the major and minor league coaching staffs; pitching coach Drew French worked with his predecessor, Chris Holt, plus much of the front office in Houston. Hitting coach Cody Asche played with assistant hitting coach Tommy Joseph for the Phillies.

Asche was hired as a minor league hitting coordinator in 2023, and along with Grant Anders, Buck Britton, Sherman Johnson and Mitch Plassmeyer, he’s one of five major league coaches promoted from the farm system. Minor league staff roles have traditionally been the entry point to the organization on the field level, just the way entry-level analyst roles are to the front office.

Everything feels as if it’s been intentional. The alignment of thought created by who they’ve hired and promoted is a feature, not a bug.

It’s responsible for a lot of good things — their scouting and player development and their ability to maximize discarded players from other teams among them — and also has created areas where a different perspective could have improved outcomes. The rotation debacle that tanked this season and the rocky transition from Triple-A to the big leagues for so many hitters come to mind.

On the whole, though, what they do works. And they believe that strongly, even as they’re playing out the string in this lost season. No one inside the game needs me to tell them that, either. The way the Orioles operate is well known. Everything trickles down from Elias and those closest to him.

A new high-level executive or manager coming from outside the organization would be joining in that context, which leads to the most obvious questions around their hiring pursuits this fall. For starters, what kind of influence will a new manager have? Hyde and Elias had a strong partnership, and interim manager Tony Mansolino has balanced the on-field priorities this season with a refreshing approach in the clubhouse.

The priority needs to be an elevating presence for the homegrown stars, who have not dealt well with adversity over the last year-plus. That hypothetical candidate probably has experience in the manager’s office and probably will want a level of autonomy that’s hard to envision in most modern baseball organizations, let alone this one, where Elias’ influence is so heavy.

Same goes for an executive who would be working with an established group under Elias. Simply gaining entry into that inner circle would probably mean they’re largely on board with how the Orioles do things.

Even someone strong-willed, with fresh ideas, determined to help drive the Orioles forward will be joining an operation without much room to operate in any other way than the established one.

This whole episode — finding out about Elias’ offseason promotion weeks before the next offseason, likely only because word of general manager interviews for a team universally believed to already have one started to spread — illustrates that.

There is an Oriole Way. It’s mostly very effective. And then there are things like this secrecy that most charitably warrant a head scratch and more cynically could be called obfuscating and distracting for no reason.

I guess it makes sense for them, and for Elias, which means it’s how it is. Prospective candidates, both for the manager’s job or an executive role, probably know that, too.