In 2020, when the Orioles were rebuilding with a vision toward being a sustainable homegrown contender rather than one with billionaire owners willing to support a winner with money, president of baseball operations Mike Elias referred to the “very transactional” way clubs such as the Tampa Bay Rays constantly turned over their rosters and added future value as a model.

Look at him and these Orioles now. In trading four prospects — pitcher Michael Forret, outfielders Slater de Brun and Austin Overn, and catcher Caden Bodine — plus a draft pick to the Rays for right-hander Shane Baz, Elias made another offseason transaction that distances him from that line of thinking.

The value now is in talented, productive major leaguers. The future value going the other way is, to them, a risk worth taking. Baz makes the Orioles’ rotation better, and in dealing from pockets of depth in their farm system to add him for three years, Elias again took the tack of the big-time, well-resourced club they aspire to be rather than the scrappy, bootstraps outfit they once were.

It’s fair to wonder whether Baz replaces or upgrades or makes up for the departure of Grayson Rodriguez, whose November trade to the Los Angeles Angels for outfielder Taylor Ward kicked off this uncharacteristic Orioles offseason. Right down to their origin stories — Baz was a pop-up Texas prep arm a year before Rodriguez was — those parallels are fair, though Baz’s injury uncertainty was presumably resolved with Tommy John elbow surgery while Rodriguez’s path back to the mound is less clear.

And Baz, like Rodriguez, has real front-half upside in terms of where he can slot into a rotation. He locates his upper-90s fastball well, is constantly evolving his arsenal and had an xERA (3.85) over a full run better than his actual one (4.87) last year.

He misses bats well (9.52 strikeouts per nine) and limits baserunners, and he has done so pitching in this division.

Adding him now also maintains the Orioles’ flexibility to enhance their rotation in free agency. Baz easily could be the pitcher Elias and company count as a companion to Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers as part of their rotation for the first weekend of the season.

That would allow them to pivot cash resources in free agency to more of a quality depth arm than one of the top starters remaining on the market — but trading for Baz doesn’t preclude that, either. He can comfortably be an overqualified back-half starter if David Rubenstein, Michael Arougheti and ownership fund another massive free agent splash such as Framber Valdez or Ranger Suárez.

That cost is one the Orioles can stomach, as we’ve heard many times in this offseason that’s included the additions of Ward, free agent closer Ryan Helsley and slugger Pete Alonso. So, too, is this prospect haul, as large as it is.

That’s largely because of the depth the Orioles have built in the areas they traded from. Forret is their highest-rated prospect in the deal — No. 8 in my most recent Baseball America rankings — for his broad and dynamic arsenal, his performance (a 1.51 ERA and 0.82 WHIP in 74 innings in 2025) and his youth, given he doesn’t turn 22 until April.

He’s one to worry about coming back to haunt the Orioles — all of them are, really. But there are plenty of pitchers in the organization who can be contributing as much or more as Forret would have in a few years time: Trey Gibson, Luis De Leon and Esteban Mejia among them, with a strong next tier of Braxton Bragg, Nestor German, Boston Bateman, Juaron Watts-Brown and Levi Wells.

“We have to forget everything we knew about this front office and learn to live in a new reality.”

Similarly, de Brun and Overn are athletic outfielders who can impact the game a lot of ways and have the tools to be offensive forces as they develop. But, with Nate George emerging as an elite prospect and the Orioles still high on Enrique Bradfield Jr., they felt comfortable trading from the outfield, especially with Colton Cowser and Dylan Beavers already in the big leagues.

Bodine was a value pick on his own as the 30th selection of this draft, an advanced defensive catcher with discipline and contact ability from both sides of the plate whom the Orioles were surprised to have fall to them.

There’s a lot to like there, but Samuel Basallo and Adley Rutschman are locked in for the next few years. If the Orioles believe 2025 first-round pick Ike Irish can catch and that 2024 first-day pick Ethan Anderson was among the game’s most improved backstops in his first full pro season — both of which they do — then it’s another area of surplus to trade from.

When Elias had to sell off the pending free agents at the 2025 deadline, the results — combined with this summer’s draft — meant, despite the Orioles’ lack of volume of true impact prospects that they boasted in the first half of this decade, there were a lot of good players in the top 20 or so to make a deal like this more feasible than it would have been if parting with a player you view as a potential franchise cornerstone.

Combine the four players and the 33rd pick in next year’s draft, and this is clearly the most the Orioles have given up in one trade under Elias. They can continue to deal from depth, but it’s hard to make trades like this often. That speaks to the level of conviction the Orioles have in Baz and the shifting parameters of their value system, which seems skewed a lot more toward the present than the future.

Altogether, it’s another reason we have to forget everything we knew about this front office and learn to live in a new reality.

The Orioles have been transactional, that’s for sure. It’s just the adding kind, and it’s all toward the goal of making this team a contender in the AL East and beyond. Just like Helsley and Alonso, adding Baz is an impactful transaction, not a marginal one. And there’s a lot of value to that, too.