It’s incredibly disappointing for Orioles fans that Framber Valdez signed elsewhere, and the team’s lack of success at the top of the free agent pitching market is potentially a fatal flaw. But now that Valdez has joined Detroit, litigating why he’s not an Oriole is kind of beside the point.

Process it for as long as you want and however you want. Just know that asking “Now what?” will not likely provide a satisfactory answer, because it’s increasingly clear the Orioles feel the trade for Shane Baz addressed their needs at the top of the rotation.

The questions that will go a long way toward defining 2026 are as follows: Do they really believe that to be the case? Can he deliver on it?

These are questions worth thinking about, and the answers are worth exploring. Only the latter matters, because the best version of Baz every fifth day would be a boon for the Orioles no matter what the other four starters provide.

What’s uneasy about it all is the uncertainty. It’s not exactly reverse-engineering the solution to say he’s the main part of their rotation upgrades, but it’s not been proven yet. Much of the team’s offseason — swapping Grayson Rodriguez for Taylor Ward, signing Pete Alonso and Ryan Helsley — was about eliminating uncertainty in key corners of the roster. Baz being the front-half starter president of baseball operations Mike Elias sought feels incongruous at best, even if he turns out to be just that.

Elias said in November the Orioles were pursuing a pitcher in the “‘top’ or ‘front’ or ‘top half’ of the rotation,” and that’s a fair prism to view the team’s inability, lack of interest or both when it comes to locking down a top starter such as Valdez or Ranger Suárez.

He also said a lot of things that, in retrospect, can be viewed as saying Baz fits that bill. After the trade, Elias said: “I think he has a ceiling to tap into being a top-of-the-rotation starter. We’re not necessarily asking that of him in 2026, but he has that potential.”

Later asked if his offseason aims were accomplished, he said some phrases like “good value exchange” and “take advantage of those opportunities” about further potential moves but went on to specifically say the top of the team’s wish list included a back end reliever, one starting pitcher and a big bat. He said the Orioles “definitely checked those boxes.”

Because Elias is still drawing a salary and had to show up to work every day, he left the door open to further moves. He brought Zach Eflin back into the mix not long thereafter, another attempt to strengthen the rotation. But with apologies to Zac Gallen — the only real contender to be put into the front half of a rotation that includes Kyle Bradish, Trevor Rogers, Baz and Eflin — it’s clear now that a lot is going to be placed on Baz’s shoulders.

No one is doubting the ability. Baz has electric stuff. At last month’s Birdland Caravan event at the Senator Theatre, Alonso said Baz was one of the toughest pitchers he faced last year and, having played at Tampa’s Steinbrenner Field often in high school, he believed the hitting conditions there in the summer obscured Baz’s true abilities.

Alonso said he texted Elias and manager Craig Albernaz after the deal. “I said, ‘This guy’s nasty. This is going to be huge for us.’”

On “The Banner Baseball Show,” Albernaz said, “with his upside, with his pedigree, [Baz] has all the potential in the world to be an ace and to go out there and be in the conversation for a Cy Young. Not saying this year, but I’m saying down the road, with the stuff he has and the mentality he has — he’s a true competitor with elite stuff.”

At the time, Baz’s acquisition seemed to give the Orioles options. They could add someone above him and he’d be overqualified for the back half of the rotation, or they could bet on him to be more than that by adding a depth starter later on.

It seems they’ve gone for the latter, and the gap between what they’re hoping for and what they could have had — albeit at a price — is large.

Valdez, based on FanGraphs’ ZiPS projections, is forecast to be worth 7.9 wins above replacement over the three-year life of his contract, earning $115 million in the process. I admittedly thought Baz would be comparable to that before I looked, yet at 5.1 fWAR over that period, it’s almost a full win less valuable per year before he hits free agency — albeit for no more than $20 million through the arbitration process and likely a good bit less than that.

All context included, it’s at least a debate whether you’d rather have Baz over the next three years or Valdez. The context excluded is that without Valdez, or anyone of his caliber, you have to drop the qualifiers about what Baz can be in the future.

Even if Bradish and Rogers are great and Eflin is back to being productive and healthy, Baz needs to be an ace and in the Cy Young conversation in 2026, not down the road. He needs that to be asked of him in 2026, because the Orioles just had a season of their competitive window tanked by starting pitching additions that not only failed to meet their modest upsides but didn’t provide much value at all.

This offseason was meant to erase all that and mostly has. The Orioles traded significant capital to have Baz. As it’s shaping up, they need him to be better than he’s ever been, right now.

If everyone else around him does the same, this is going to be an elite rotation. If you’re not counting on that to be true, you wouldn’t be counting on Baz to be the big upgrade. And it seems as though the Orioles are.