The first Winter Meetings with Mike Elias in the Orioles’ front office wasn’t about improving the product on the field. Six years ago, the new executive vice president/general manager stayed busy interviewing candidates to fill positions in departments that needed to be built or restructured, and hiring his first manager – the news of an agreement with Cubs bench coach Brandon Hyde breaking as Elias met with media in his hotel suite.

Elias is in Dallas this week searching for at least one starting pitcher and reliever. He’s already found his right fielder and backup catcher, moves he can’t discuss publicly until contracts are signed. Priorities since the 2018 offseason have shifted like tectonic plates.

One of the most important decisions was made prior to the Orioles’ arrival at the Hilton Anatole Hotel. The coaching staff had vacancies that needed to be filled – two assistant hitting coaches, a bench coach and major league coach. The solution was promoting offensive strategy coach Cody Asche to hitting coach, hiring Tommy Joseph and naming Sherman Johnson assistants, promoting Triple-A Norfolk manager Buck Britton to major league coach and hiring former catcher Robinson Chirinos as bench coach.

Johnson also maintains his duties as upper-level hitting coordinator.

Chirinos is making his coaching debut as the replacement for Fredi González. His final season as a player was in 2022, when he appeared in 67 games with the Orioles and backed up Adley Rutschman.

“I’m super excited for our coaching staff,” assistant general manager Eve Rosenbaum said this week. “With Chirinos, he’s a former catcher, I’m a former catcher, so I’m biased toward former catchers. They’ve just got a way of seeing the game and relating to people and keeping track of everything that’s going on. They’re always so in tune with their pitchers and trying to pick up on little things to express someone’s behavior, how they’re feeling that day.

“We had Robbie as a player. I was just so impressed with his calm demeanor and his ability to reach out to players and check in on them and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing, what are you working on today, you want to talk through this?’ As the catcher, he was in the clubhouse studying the opposing team and studying our pitchers for hours at a time. It was just really impressive to see his own individual work ethic, and then the care and attention that he paid to the rest of his teammates. And I think you also want those qualities on your coaching staff, especially with our team.

“We’re a pretty young team. We have a lot of high expectations on our group and we’re playing in the super-high profile AL East with some very, very competitive teams. Just to have a veteran guy in there who’s now coaching and is keeping an eye out for all of the players and checking in on them and checking in with all of the coaches and making sure that everyone is on the same page and nothing gets lost when everyone is just so busy and (Brandon) Hyde is so focused on tonight’s game or the next day’s game. So he’s gonna be great at that. Obviously it’s gonna take some time to adjust to coaching, but from what I’ve seen, I think he’ll adapt and adjust quickly.”

Hyde always spoke highly of Chirinos and tabbed him as a future coach and manager.

“For me, Robbie is a huge reason and a huge part of the culture change in our clubhouse and how we played the game,” Hyde said. “That started midway through 2022, really after Adley got there. But Robbie’s mentality of helping convince our players, let’s bring a winning mentality on a night-in, night-out basis was huge. It gave our guys a ton of confidence. He kept the clubhouse light and kept the clubhouse loose, but also was able to have tough conversations, and I think that’s what’s going to make him a really, really good coach. So I’m really excited to add him.”

Britton never reached the majors as a player, appearing in 828 games over nine minor league seasons. He managed in the Orioles’ system for six years, the last three with Triple-A Norfolk, guiding the Tides to the Triple-A National and International League championships in 2023. He was named International League Manager of the Year, four summers after his selection as Eastern League Manager of the Year with Double-A Bowie.

“Really, the best way to prepare to become a manager is to get managerial experience, and Buck has that,” Rosenbaum said. “He has coached a lot of our players who are now on the big league team, and we’ve always gotten really, really great feedback on him. So he’s someone who can jump in, and he’s the opposite of Robbie in that he doesn’t have big league experience but he does have the managerial experience, so he knows the flow of the game and the things you’ve got to watch out for in terms of, OK, who might be coming up to pinch-hit, what might the other team be doing right now, what are they thinking that we might need to start preparing our guys for? And he also has great relationships with the players, especially with our young players.”

Asche keeps climbing the ladder since retiring as a player. He served as the Orioles’ upper-level hitting coordinator in 2022 before spending the last two seasons as offensive strategy coach. Co-hitting coaches Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte left the organization after the 2024 season – the former to become director of hitting with the White Sox and the latter to become the Twins’ hitting coach – and the team altered the structure by pairing two assistants with Asche.

“Very excited about the staff,” Elias said. “Cody has been a successful member of our hitting department starting in the minor leagues. Helped develop a lot of these young position players that we have who are forming the backbone of our team, and he made a really good transition to being a major league coach. He was a little bit in the background of our hitting group, just given his job duties and the title that he had, but was right there in the thick of things with all of our hitting guys.

“I know we slumped in the second half, but this is a group of hitting coaches that by and large has had a lot of success and we’ve had an enormous level of demand for hiring coaches away from us. He’s somebody that we value really highly and have continued to promote. This is a huge opportunity for him. And he’s a former major league player, too, so he knows what it’s all about. Just a good blend of skills and our players really like and respect him.”