Orioles hire Jared Banner as general manager

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The Orioles are hiring Jared Banner to be their general manager under president of baseball operations Mike Elias, the club announced Monday.

Elias said the Orioles were seeking “outside voices” to help the organization get back on track, and Banner is the most significant external addition since Elias’ hiring in 2018.

Banner joins from the Chicago Cubs, where he served as the assistant general manager. Prior to holding the AGM title, Banner worked as the Cubs’ vice president of player development.

Banner also worked in player development with the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets earlier in his career.

With Baltimore, Banner will lead the organization’s player development, coaching and performance efforts, according to a release announcing the hiring. Banner will partner with Elias on strategy, staffing and acquisitions.

“When I first heard Mike’s vision, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. The Orioles are a storied franchise with a passionate fanbase, a historic ballpark, and an organization full of talent,” Banner said in a statement. “I look forward to building upon the foundation laid by Mike and his team to construct a world-class organization and bring Championships back to Baltimore. I am extremely grateful to [owners] Mike [Arougheti], David [Rubenstein], and Mike for the opportunity, and I am excited to get to work.”

A source with direct knowledge of Baltimore’s general manager search said there was a focus on finding someone with a player development background. The Orioles’ young core has stagnated after rising through the minors.

In a 2023 story from MLB.com, Banner said that his approach when it comes to elevating minor league talent relies on a marriage of analytics and the eye test.

“It’s communication and collaboration,” Banner told MLB.com . “I don’t think you want to move to any one side. I think we do try to stay grounded in the evidence, but at the end of the day, [the minor leaguers] are human beings. There needs to be a human touch, a care, a belief in each other and a culture created. Those are things we focus on as much as any statistic.”

Banner’s hiring shows a willingness from Baltimore to expand its baseball operations department.

“With our ownership group now, we have a good opportunity to sort of participate in that growth a little bit more than we’ve been doing,” Elias said at the end of the season.

“And there’s parts of our baseball operation that I think I could use some different voices and ideas in more than others. I don’t know that I want to get into it here on the stage, but you’ll probably be able to see as these hires come in where we’re looking for some impact.”

Banner just finished his 18th year in baseball operations. In a statement, Elias called Banner “one of the rising talents in our league for some time” who has “demonstrated success running multiple different departments and has worked alongside some of the best people and front office talent in the league across multiple stops.”

“He is a perfect fit to grow, evolve and improve the Orioles’ baseball operations, and I look forward to working with him very closely as we build for 2027 and beyond,” Elias continued.

The Orioles began their search for a general manager under Elias last year, but the efforts were paused in November. Elias, who received a promotion early in 2025 — although it didn’t become public until later in the year — said during last year’s GM Meetings in Las Vegas that the calendar was tight, and that Baltimore would seek a general manager in the future.

The front office went through a small restructuring ahead of 2026 as Danny Haas joined as a special assistant and Will Robertson took over draft operations.

There have been even more alterations following Baltimore’s second straight losing season.

Director of player and staff development Matt Blood, who ran the Orioles’ farm system since his hire in September 2019 and played a significant role in the club’s ascent out of the rebuilding years, left the organization in September.

Assistant general manager Sig Mejdal, who was Elias’ first hire after coming from the Houston Astros in 2018, relinquished day-to-day oversight of the analytics department and will instead focus on new technology and associated research, an area where the Orioles have plenty of room to catch up to peers.

Elias said it was likely that leadership of the analytics department would be filled internally, though he didn’t offer specifics when he spoke late in the season on the matter. Assistant general managers Eve Rosenbaum and Brendan Fournie both remain in their roles, but Elias said at the end of the season they were seeking “good people” to join the front office.

“It’s case-by-case, and it’s individually-based, like every hiring,” he said. “To answer a little more interestingly, we have a small operation. It has been, I’ve seen in some metrics, it’s like 29th in the league in terms of size in baseball operations, so we just have a lot of needs.”