There will be something refreshing come Thursday morning for those with their feet on the Sarasota dirt. Every pop of a mitt during the first workout for Orioles pitchers and catchers will grow far louder than whatever discourse the team’s offseason has generated.

Make no mistake — it was fantastic that there was so much to talk about. I don’t know how many people would have guessed the Orioles would sign seven major league free agents and be carrying a payroll near $160 million entering camp, nor would anyone think their payroll would have spiked to that level without a high-priced free agent starter on a multiyear deal.

But that’s what we have, for better or worse. Now we start the process of seeing if any of this actually works. The projections have had their say. True to form when it comes to this Orioles offseason, the evaluation of the team’s moves really comes down to perspective.

Last week, Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA forecasting system was bullish on the Orioles. It had them at 89.2 wins, though that’s backed up to 88.5 since. Still, that’s better than the 87 wins last year’s team was projected for by PECOTA, and it finished at 91. FanGraphs has the Orioles projected at 82.9 wins, which would put them outside the AL playoff picture. For comparison’s sake, last year’s FanGraphs forecast was 84.2 wins. FanGraphs’ ZiPS projections have them at 89 wins, atop the AL East.

The discrepancies probably come down to a few things, namely the volatility in projecting young players, the unpredictability of situational hitting and the overall quality of the Orioles’ rotation. All are likely bullish on the offense as a whole. Taken together, they’re neither validating nor undermining the work Mike Elias and his team have done this winter.

I’d personally been holding out to see what these forecasts said to help clarify my own thinking on an offseason of roster building that is now at a point where one of two things can happen. Either this is it and we can grapple with it on its own terms, or there’s still a rotation topper to be added, at which point you’re really just frosting a cake that’s already baked.

I don’t know if I’d necessarily call the roster we’re looking at now an unfrosted cake, though. It’s more like a tray of cupcakes, and most of them are frosted. They’re good cupcakes, too, not the box kind but made from scratch and with a whole lot of butter.

The Orioles could have an All-Star-caliber performer at every position on the infield, catcher included, and have more outfielders than they’ll know what to do with. The bullpen is full of experience. We’re really just talking about a rotation that has plenty of capable participants and no true ace as of yet.

So, on the whole plate of cupcakes, maybe we’ll say one or two aren’t frosted. It’s not the end of the world. Any parent who thinks it would be wasteful to throw out the cupcake their kid ate the frosting off and takes it down themselves knows what I’m talking about. You definitely don’t feel good about it, but you also don’t feel too bad about it. If they’re good cupcakes, you just roll with it. If they aren’t, you wonder what the point was.

These are good cupcakes we’re dealing with here. And this is a team that is going to be near the most expensive Orioles roster ever based on the free agent signings they’ve made. The Athletic had their 57% increase in payroll as the largest in the league. It’s still the homegrown stars that make this team both lovable and viable as a contender.

The offseason is the most viable avenue for a team to improve itself, and the Orioles had a unique one. After Tyler O’Neill’s three-year deal that could actually be a one-year contract, given he can opt out, it was all one-year deals for veterans. None of these deals is bad on its face, but it’s not the best players on the market who are signing one-year contracts, so naturally it can be said that the Orioles didn’t add any top talent in free agency.

I think it’s obvious by now, through reporting by The Banner and other outlets, that the Orioles were interested in several players who would have changed that perception, be it Blake Snell, Corbin Burnes or Jeff Hoffman on the mound. At the Birdland Caravan, Elias called the dearth of long-term commitments “something that doesn’t need to be the case,” and seemed to view the flexibility all the team’s pending free agents and one-year contracts create as an unintended benefit that the front office will take advantage of. If this is what it meant to do, he probably would have said so.

The result is an active, productive offseason that feels unsatisfying to many. The extent that feeling matters is not really relevant. This is a front office that at the beginning of its tenure seemed immune to the blowback from trading the only established players the team had, mostly because it thought it was the best thing it could do to help the team improve in the future but also because those established players cost money. It’s spending money now and is also seemingly immune to the idea that it should have spent it differently.

Perhaps that’s because the Orioles don’t feel that way. Perhaps the lack of a rotation topper ultimately detracts too much from all the cupcakes that are actually frosted.

There’s no doubt, however, that, even as I get down to spring training next week, the sounds of actual baseball won’t fully drown out the discussion about how this team was put together this winter. At this point, given how unique it was, not much will.