Amidst the changes already implemented in the Orioles’ front office with about a week remaining in another disappointing season is an apparent commitment to retain two key figures in the organization for 2027.

None of it qualifies as a shocking development. More like confirmation.

President of baseball operations Mike Elias said earlier today that he expects to stay in his role next year.

“That’s my assumption,” he said during a 19-minute dugout media session

“I work every day. It’s a big responsibility kind of stewarding this franchise, and I remain focused on that every day and what is the best decision for the organization and the franchise in that moment.”

Elias also indicated that Craig Albernaz will return as manager, which seemed to be the likely outcome all along. He wasn’t brought here on a one-year trial basis.

“We’re going to continue to build around Craig,” Elias said.

“There’s a lot of positives to what he brings to the table. But I look at where we are, our record, and how we feel like we’ve disappointed ourselves this season, and I think it means all of us have room to get better and improve, so we’re kind of focused on that.”

The day began with the Orioles 75-79 and three games back of the last Wild Card with eight to play.

“We’ve got a lot of players that have either been hurt or had a dip in their production or haven’t hit the ground running to the degree that we hoped and everyone hoped at the major league level,” Elias said. “I feel like I’ve been talking this issue to death, but it’s certainly something that has been a big factor and we talk about it quite a bit. And we want to get better in that space anyway that we can.

“I’m not ready to start talking about offseason plans, but I think we need to make the team better. I thought we put together a really good team this year. A lot of people did externally. We’ve just come short of the wins and losses and the projections that everybody had, and there’s been a lot of factors in that. But the bottom line is, we need to put together a better team next year. And so, not ready to say what that looks like but we’re beginning that work right now.

“We’ve had players that haven’t put up the statistics that we would have thought, that everybody thought, but we’ve had a lot of injuries. I don’t want to cite that overly as an excuse, but we’re one of the top couple teams in the league in terms of quantity and also quality of missed time. And I don’t think we played well enough in our division. I think that’s really hurt us, and that’s something that we had been doing pretty well the past few years. So there’s a lot of things, and attention’s going to be required in a lot of areas to do better.”

The front office shakeup has included the decision to part ways with vice president of player and staff development Matt Blood and adjusting assistant general manager Sig Mejdal’s responsibilities from overseeing the analytics department to managing the research of emerging technologies and innovative practices across baseball operations.

Asked whether more shuffling is in the cards, Elias said, “I don’t know that I can predict that. To some degree it depends on, we’ll get calls from other teams looking to interview our people and that will trigger some change. So I don’t want to close the door on any more change. And we’re still in the midst of our staffing and hiring cycle.”

Elias has also held the title of general manager, but he could make an outside hire.

“I plan on going out and trying to talk to talented executives from other teams,” he said. “We have titles available that we can use to try to gain permission to talk to people. That’s one of them. And I expect to do that.

“I think that we’re in a position where we have a lot of things going for us, but we’re on the smaller side and we would like to explore outside help and outside talent, and the owners and I have been discussing that. They’re very supportive, and they will be very supportive of anyone new that we bring into this organization, as well. They’re looking to build, so we want to enhance the department, get bigger, get better, and we’re going to be leaning into that quite a bit this fall.”

The Orioles could stay in-house to fill the duties that Mejdal is relinquishing, the personnel that’s already taking on bigger responsibilities in terms of management, administration, and overseeing the club’s model and processes.

“Sig’s gonna be focused more on outside research,” Elias said. “We have guys who can step in and are stepping in to manage the department. But I do want to explore what’s out there and how we’re able to talk to, and it’s very possible that the persons that we land on have contributions in that space.”

Among the holdovers are senior director of baseball systems and analytics operations Di Zou, director of pro player analytics Ryan Hardin, director of draft analytics Michael Weis and director of data science operations Daniel Martin.

“There’s more and I’m not touching on everyone, but some of the guys that have been here for several years, they’re ready for more,” Elias said.

Blood was promoted to his most recent title in November after serving as vice president of player development and domestic scouting.

“This is the time of year we start looking at staffing and looking at the future and how we’re going to do things next year and what we might do differently next year,” Elias said. “I had some extensive conversations with him, and we decided that the player development space would be appropriate for new leadership going forward.

“Matt did a lot of great work here helping to set up our franchise, get us out of rebuild into a level where we won the American League East. There’s a lot of terrific people here that are here on account of Matt. But talking to him, we agreed that going forward, it was a good time for a different direction in terms of leadership.”

Elias wasn’t ready to announce and paint a picture of what might be done differently in player development. That’s coming later.

“There’s some stuff that we’ve pretty clearly been doing really well, and there’s other areas where we’re getting a lot of feedback subjectively and objectively that we can do better,” Elias said. “So I think having new people involved in that will help speed up that process.”