When the Orioles traded for Corbin Burnes a few weeks ahead of spring training last year, the clear message it sent was that things were changing in Baltimore.

If they sign the top-end starter they’re seeking this winter — be it re-signing Burnes in free agency or otherwise splashing out tens of millions of dollars over multiple years for another top starter on the market — the Orioles’ transformation into, well, a real baseball team that’s trying to win like the big boys will be complete.

Not everyone leaves the free agent pitching frenzy with the prize they want, though. With Yusei Kikuchi and Blake Snell off the market and Baltimore reportedly in the mix for both but unsuccessful, the Orioles are finding that out firsthand.

We’re now six full years into Mike Elias’ tenure with the team, and there aren’t a lot of things left to learn about how he does business. We know how the draft works at this point. We know the patterns of the offseason. We know if Daz Cameron comes floating along the waiver wire, he’s putting in a claim. But we don’t really know how a major free agent pursuit — one they’re pretty openly making — is going to go.

There’s always going to be a team that wants to sign a top-end starting pitcher who is left without one. How will the Orioles react if it looks like it will be them? More to the point, will they let it?

To be clear, we’re not there yet. Burnes is still out there. Max Fried and Sean Manaea are still unsigned as well. I don’t really know anyone’s appetite for Jack Flaherty returning to Baltimore, but he’s an option, too, and perhaps most importantly someone another team could sign and keep other avenues open for the Orioles.

Nathan Eovaldi has often looked like that kind of top-tier guy against the Orioles, but he’s probably the cutoff if we’re talking about pitchers who can slot into the top handful of spots of a rotation that already includes, when healthy, Kyle Bradish, Zach Eflin, and Grayson Rodriguez.

With Snell signing for what he did — a reported five years for $182 million — the market is probably going to move quickly on the rest of them. It might not happen until the winter meetings, which kick off next week in Dallas, but when the run on pitching starts, this feels like one that will happen fast.

There are always good deals to be made, even when the pressure is on and time is of the essence. All it takes is one outlier offer, though, to make a good proposal look bad, and there’s no sympathy for the teams who miss out because of it. They just have to move on and figure something else out.

This feels unlike last winter, when the Orioles knew they needed a stand-in for Félix Bautista and targeted Craig Kimbrel. In prior offseasons, they were patient and selective in the mid-tier pitching market and got what they needed. They can still do that if they want to, but no one truly thought the Orioles would end up with a top-end starter in the winters they signed Jordan Lyles or Kyle Gibson.

This winter, that’s the expectation. So the options are basically to do something the Orioles are loath to do — act irrationally and spend beyond what they think someone is worth — or stick to their valuation framework and be forced to pivot.

Pivoting might not necessarily mean settling, but it would limit their options. They could sign a mid-tier starter in hopes of him being more than that and pair it with a trade. Garrett Crochet, an emergent left-handed ace for the Chicago White Sox, is an oft-mentioned option. There were some rumblings that as the Orioles were pursuing Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley in trade talks last year, they were considering acquiring him with an eye toward an eventual move to the rotation. There remain countless teams who could use a young hitter to build around who have lots of quality pitching to trade for it — Seattle and Miami chief among them.

Those types of trades are the kind the Orioles could have made any time they wanted to in the last few years, and ultimately did with Burnes. That’s not to knock the idea of doing it again. It’s just not the splash that a free agent signing would be, and, for once, the Orioles are in position to make one at the top of the market.

It’s going to feel different if they do. It’s also going to tell us a lot about how they work now, whether they get a deal across the line or not.