Man, this is tricky.

On one hand, it’s still the first week of March and the man whose incredibly relatable soft-mattress back discomfort was the first in this series of early-spring health issues for the Orioles — Jordan Westburg — has already returned to Grapefruit League play.

He was out of action for about a week and a half, which is the kind of thing that happens in spring training every year, all across the league, and has no bearing on the season to come.

The other hand is that, in his period of absence, Gunnar Henderson suffered what the team has called a mild right intercostal muscle strain, Andrew Kittredge’s knee has bothered him, Grayson Rodriguez had an alarming performance and reported to camp Thursday with triceps soreness, and Tyler O’Neill was scratched for what the team said were precautionary reasons with left ribcage soreness that manager Brandon Hyde said he wasn’t concerned about.

It’s discomfiting, to say the least. Even at this place in the calendar, and even with the quality depth Mike Elias and his team assembled this winter, it’s feeling like there are too many important Orioles in the training room to overlook it.

It feels incumbent on me to explain, then, why I want to worry right now but am fighting the urge.

I want to worry because I remember last spring, when learning of Kyle Bradish and John Means’ report-day elbow injuries felt ominous but not yet overwhelming in the moment but obviously proved to be more than that.

For a team that in 2023 had pretty much everything go right for it, save for Félix Bautista’s late-season elbow injury, the circumstances of Bradish and Means entering camp proved detrimental in season and in retrospect were a harbinger of the snake-bit season to come. The rotation and pitching staff fell apart after their comebacks were halted by elbow surgeries, prompting a series of trades that ultimately sapped the Orioles of their hitting depth, which it turned out they would need as the offense started flagging in the second half.

I understand why I did it in the moment, but I was certainly whistling through the graveyard where last year’s Orioles were concerned, and I don’t want to do that again. So, I want to worry.

I want to worry because of who we’re talking about: Henderson, on whom so much here depends; Rodriguez, the team’s best shot at a true top-end starter but someone whose body hasn’t allowed him to be that guy yet; O’Neill, a player who will be incredibly valuable to the Orioles’ offense this year but who hasn’t been a threat to Cal Ripken Jr.’s consecutive-games streak to this point in his career; and Kittredge, a valuable reliever.

Some are sources of worry based on their histories; some are because they’re irreplaceable. All, however, are liable to play massive roles in this Orioles’ season, and as long as Henderson isn’t a long-term absentee, whatever worry I want to feel is overwhelmed by the belief that this team is built to withstand absences like this.

I felt that way last year, too, if we’re being fair, and the validity of that depends on perspective. Ending the year with four significant starters on the injured list, missing several key hitters for most of the second half and winning 91 games is the kind of thing deep teams do. And these Orioles were truly built to accumulate as many regular-season wins as possible simply to get to the playoffs, where anything can happen, and simply by reversion to the mean something good is eventually going to happen to them.

So that’s where the worry dissipates for me. There’s certainly going to be a level at which any number of long-term injuries can combine to undermine the Orioles’ season. I’m just going to be particularly sensitive to anything that keeps this team from having its best players available and at their best in September and October, because that’s how we’re ultimately going to judge this team.

We’re a long way from that now, which is challenging to keep sight of and will remain so for the coming weeks and months. Nothing will change the part where, in a time when pretty much everything that comes up on one’s news feed can be met with the simple question, “Are you kidding me?” the Orioles’ injuries are popping up apace and eliciting a similar reaction.

I don’t have a solution for that. I just have a feeling that this is going to be a wall-of-worry situation, where the obstacles and reasons for the Orioles to falter keep piling up and they push higher anyway.

Of course, it’s also possible this is just setting the Orioles on course for another year when those obstacles prevent them from meeting the high expectations in front of them. That’s worth worrying about, I’m afraid. I’m just not there yet.