I struggle to believe we’re really doing this again, which is an interesting reaction to the most predictable outcome imaginable.

We probably should have seen it as a sign that the Orioles’ pre-winter meetings moves this year — now a staple of how they operate in that they target what they covet early and get it done — did not include a starting pitcher but an outfielder in Tyler O’Neill and a backup catcher in Gary Sánchez.

The winter meetings began with Blake Snell off the free agent market and ended with Max Fried and Nathan Eovaldi joining him, with Garrett Crochet dealt to the Red Sox to eliminate one of the highest-profile names on the trade market as well. It would take a club-record commitment to re-sign Corbin Burnes on the open market, something that would negate the need to bring a Burnes replacement at the top of the market.

Until a solution is in place, the — again — most predictable and unproductive exercise imaginable will occur. An option will come off the board, and anyone with any degree of investment in the Orioles will look at the deal and say they could have done it. It must be said that MLB’s revenue streams are such that, even when John Angelos owned the team, the Orioles could have made a lot of these deals if they chose to.

Now, in the more well-heeled and optimistic era under David Rubenstein, Michael Arougheti and Co., the expectation is not just that they can but will sign a front-line starter. Some corners say they already should have. There’s not much of a distinction between holding a team to a championship-level standard and an impossible one.

I say this not to pressure the Orioles to throw bags of money at the last guy who fits their need left on the market, a la Ubaldo Jiménez or Yovani Gallardo or Andrew Cashner, but simply to acknowledge the reality. This is a dangerous game the Orioles are playing right now, both with the actual, real-life stakes of succeeding or failing in the public pursuit of a really good starting pitcher and in terms of perception.

None of this is to say they should do this just to shut everyone up, though that would be nice at this point. Just because the most prominent national baseball voices, whose furnaces are fed by the coal of trades and attendant speculation, think they should do more doesn’t mean they have to. Just because discontented voices locally are amplified through, well, paying for Twitter and generally having a platform for their unhappiness, it doesn’t mean they’ll think whatever signing or trade the Orioles eventually make will be sufficient anyway. That’s just how these things go.

The risk the Orioles are running, at this point, is letting themselves down. So much of their success to this point came, essentially, with one hand tied behind their backs. Rubenstein and his group cut that bind and armed them with the resources to compete at the top of the market, we presume, and yet the Orioles seem to be having trouble with the idea that nothing is rational in that stratosphere of free agent contracts.

They’ve made some bad deals — free agents and trades — in the past, but no one is setting out to make a bad deal on purpose, and thus, as the bidding goes higher and higher on some of these pitchers, other clubs have topped the Orioles at every turn. So here we are, where just because a bunch of flights left Dallas on Wednesday and the Orioles’ pitching staff looks the same as it did when the front office arrived there, a referendum on the offseason is seemingly in order.

This space is one where there’s all the time in the world for understanding and explaining the Orioles’ rationale. I think it’s helpful, and valuable, to understand why they do what they do and believe what they believe, so that’s my first impulse most of the time.

Here’s the thing: This time last year, from when the Rangers swept the Orioles out of the playoffs through most of the offseason, I thought they were fine to be judicious in their pursuit of a top starter. That was due to the elite season Kyle Bradish had, Grayson Rodriguez’s second-half breakout and the potential for a solid middle tier of starters with Dean Kremer, Tyler Wells, DL Hall and a returning John Means. A lot of pitchers signed elsewhere, and they wore the criticism for it for months.

Then — and you’ll never convince me these things are unrelated — Bradish’s elbow was injured as he was ramping up and the Burnes trade happened. That tells me they looked at the prospect of Rodriguez, Kremer, Wells and health-related questions on Bradish and Means and felt the urgency to add upside to the group. It was the right move, even if the cost in Joey Ortiz and Hall was a high one. Burnes was fantastic, and the Orioles probably don’t make the playoffs without that trade.

Fast-forward to now, and they also have the very good Zach Eflin in the mix, with Rodriguez and Kremer locked into rotation spots, Cade Povich coming off a strong finish to the season and Albert Suárez there to soak up work until Bradish and Wells are finished rehabbing their elbow injures. If last year’s group needed strengthening after Bradish’s initial elbow injury, this year’s does too.

Everyone knows there’s still time for that to happen, and more than a handful of options that would upgrade the current group. The objectively best outcome would be that the Orioles win the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes and have a cost-controlled, front-line starter for the rest of the decade, but that’s the dream of 29 other teams as well.

We know that decision won’t come until next month. Until then, there’s nothing to do but look on with envy at all the deals we think the Orioles could have made in hopes that the one they actually do is worth the wait.

With Burnes, it was. The Orioles made that trade for a reason. And, for those same reasons a year later, they owe it to themselves to do something similar.