All month, Orioles fans have been wondering two things.

What have the Orioles done with Mike Elias? And who is this wild man running the front office?

Surely, this is not right. After years of being an offseason wallflower (aside from the wild one-off trade for Corbin Burnes), Elias and the Orioles are wheeling and dealing at the craps table — sloshing a vodka tonic with one hand and asking all the spectators to blow on the dice in the other.

They’re spending money and moving draft picks, going from one of Major League Baseball’s most tightfisted operations to, at least, the middle tier of franchises trying to win now.

You know what? I love to see it.

I can’t promise that trading for Tampa Bay right-hander Shane Baz — who looks a little bit like Grayson Rodriguez if you squint at his stat profile — is going to be a winning move. Ditto for trading for Taylor Ward and signing Pete Alonso for big money.

But the moves, to me, are not as important as a total shift in mindset — a necessary one, to boot. The Orioles are switching up the way they do business, getting more comfortable taking big swings and moving with a lot more conviction.

If they bottom out in 2026 the way they bottomed out in 2025, it will at least be with the courage to try something different — which by itself is worth applauding. It gives a lot of hope for how Baltimore will finish the offseason.

In September, when Elias recapped a 75-87 campaign and attested that the front office had learned difficult lessons, I wasn’t sure I believed him.

From the moment he declared “liftoff” in 2022 after that trade deadline, really only the Burnes trade stuck out as a purely ambitious, win-now gambit. Elias said he had learned about the need to “adapt” and “evolve,” but he had put very few of the lessons into action.

“I’m really looking forward to the winter and putting together a better team next year and having a better season,” he said. “And there’s a lot behind the scenes going into that and to make ourselves better.”

Now, in mid-December, we can buy those reflections at face value. When Elias hoarded picks and prospects at the last trade deadline, we had seen this from the Orioles before. What we’ve seen almost never is how he executed the second step — trading four prospects (and a pick) for Baz.

The Orioles have traditionally been too calculated to take big risks in trades, doing careful alignments of team control and projected value and not taking a shot if they felt the cost could come back to bite them.

Real winners, however, think big.

They don’t worry about what happens if they take too many risks — they worry about what happens if they don’t risk enough. That’s why the Dodgers and the Blue Jays, the teams that met in the World Series, have made two of the splashiest free agency signings with closer Edwin Diaz and starter Dylan Cease, respectively.

For real winners, you can never be loaded enough.

The Orioles are getting perilously, thrillingly close to that school of thought. After boasting that there are no financial limitations for the front office, David Rubenstein and his group have acted like deep-pocketed owners by taking Alonso off the market with a $155 million contract.

Accordingly, it gives Elias more freedom with his picks and prospects — the Orioles no longer have to be as protective of them if they can also hand out bags of cash in free agency.

The Orioles should not be done. Baz has appealing upside as a former first-round pick who throws hard, but he’s not an ace. But Baltimore’s aggressive approach expands the scope of possibility.

There are high-profile pitchers left on the market, and the Orioles have shown a willingness to swing big trades or pay big money — it feels less and less like they’ll leave the table empty-handed, or making the marginal deals that barely moved the needle last offseason.

There is risk involved, of course, but at least the Orioles are not willing to fail the same way twice. If they wilted because of inaction in 2025, they’re going to go all out in a title pursuit in 2026 — cost be damned. If anything, Baltimore fans should be more satisfied that Elias and the front office are going for it.

There are pros and cons to the two approaches — wallflower or gambler. After watching the Orioles go for half-measures in the last few years, being this close to the action is a lot more fun.