Kyle Goon: Do the Orioles’ owners care about winning? How they handle Mike Elias will leave no doubt.

You either care about winning or you don’t.

Remember, there are only two options as the Orioles try to resurrect their season. Beware of hedging: “We care about winning, but …”

If things keep going south — and, gee, it kind of feels like they will because the Orioles have lost six of their last eight games — then there is just one group I’m interested in seeing if it really, truly cares: ownership.

If the Orioles are not in position to buy at the Aug. 3 trade deadline to chase a playoff spot, David Rubenstein, Michael Arougheti and their ownership group must fire president of baseball operations Mike Elias.

It’s not a choice so much as a test. Do the Orioles owners care about winning? If they do, there is no other option.

There are many people in the baseball world waiting to see how committed this relatively new ownership group is to chasing a championship. No stakeholder is more important than the fans, and they are getting restless and rowdy — impatient to see their club get back over .500 for the first time since April 15.

On the night manager Craig Albernaz acknowledged his players had been dealing with “noise,” I was sitting in the crowd taking in a rare game in the paid seats. While I had heard boos through the windows of the Camden Yards press box, the hostility feels more thick in the air when the jeers are all around you, even with just 17,146 fans in the stands.

Misplays from Gunnar Henderson and Blaze Alexander in the infield struck a nerve. After a ninth-inning Orioles strikeout, one man behind me shouted dryly: “At least we can play defense.”

It’s a little funny that any visiting fan to Camden Yards can quickly count the ways this ownership group has improved the game experience since it took over in March 2024. The team has a higher payroll; the park is refurbished with a fresh video board and sound system; the merchandise and concessions are more appealing.

If the only standard that mattered was pouring in more resources than the Angelos family, these owners would be the most popular rich folks in town.

But the fans care about one thing most: winning. And that’s why so many of them are booing the Orioles or — even worse — not showing up at all.

Fans going after their own players and coaches can get unnecessarily ugly, but I understand the general frustration. In 2023, Birdland members thought they were about to inherit the baseball world on the heels of a 101-win season. Now their ticket plans cost more and their team wins far less.

The park upgrades are substantial, but the only thing anyone really wants to pay more for is to see a winning team.

Successful teams care about winning maniacally. In baseball, that’s the Dodgers, who add big-money stars every year because winning the World Series never diminishes their appetite for another championship.

In the NFL, I think of the Eagles, who routinely replace their coaches when they don’t reach the Super Bowl. The Golden State Warriors won the most games ever in an NBA regular season in 2016 — then they added Kevin Durant, because they didn’t win the finals.

I know the Orioles cannot expect to throw resources around at those levels every year — but goodness, would it kill them to once try to act like an organization that wants to win like crazy? Even this season’s big swing to add Pete Alonso as a free agent felt as if it were one or two moves away from fully pushing Baltimore’s chips into the pot.

Sometimes it is important for management to hold a steady hand in the face of mob rule. If fans had their wishes, many clubs would be changing managers every month. But, if Elias and this front office preside over a third straight season of diminishing returns from the club’s 2023 AL East title, the mob has a right to see accountability for that slide.

It feels as if we’ve been heading toward a crossroads for a while, so a reckoning might seem inevitable. But, if you want to guess how the Orioles might hedge, I see two possibilities.

One: Elias is a capable seller. He has consistently collected useful pieces during the rebuild, guys from whom little was expected initially, such as Kyle Bradish and Yennier Cano. His recent errors aside, Alexander has been a hell of a pickup this year, acquired in the kind of on-the-margins deal at which Elias excels. Ownership might trust Elias more to sell than buy at this deadline, and it may not trust an interim to handle those deals.

Two: The shadow of labor negotiations may make ownership think twice about changing hands. If the Orioles hire a new executive, that person might be sitting on his hands for the first few months of the year if the owners and the MLBPA head toward a lockout. The divide between those two groups makes a stoppage seem inevitable.

Keeping a skilled asset manager or having an experienced executive to navigate uncertain waters may appear to be reasonable justification for not making a change. But Elias has been in Baltimore for eight years, and it’s looking dangerously as though the Orioles will never win a playoff game in that span.

Either that’s acceptable for the team owners or it’s not. If you’re serious about winning, neither of those two issues should stand in the way of finding someone who can.

I am not openly rooting for the downfall of Elias or this front office. I do not casually call out people to lose their jobs. Although I often don’t agree with his approach and think he’s unwilling to take enough risks, it’s clear to me that Elias earnestly wants to win and that he feels pain when the Orioles fall short of big goals.

If there can be a miraculous turnaround this summer, and if the Orioles can go on a magical underdog run into the postseason, that would be one hell of a story. And Elias would be a great character in that narrative — dodging the gallows just long enough to get back to the right side of the ledger.

But the idea of a late surge and surprise redemption for Elias feels increasingly like a fairy tale, fading into the haze with every Orioles loss. If that dream evaporates, what Rubenstein and Arougheti will be left with is one organization-defining decision they must make.

The Orioles either care about winning or they don’t. And if they care about winning, there have to be consequences for losing.