It’s a foregone conclusion that the Orioles team that leaves Camden Yards for Chicago on Thursday afternoon will be different than the one that returns. Even so, the team was kind enough to provide a glimpse this week of what it will look like down the stretch.

The Orioles are hitting again. That much is clear.

And that’s a good thing, because the trades that have already occurred out of their bullpen and those of rotation pieces that are expected by Thursday’s deadline are liable to leave an extremely inexperienced pitching staff to close the season with.

As we saw this week, that can work out sometimes. It can also backfire, as Thursday showed. There’s no getting used to it — ask anyone around the rebuilding-era Orioles. But you can at least be prepared for it.

Many have spent the entire summer prepared for an Orioles offense like the one that put up 66 runs in the last seven games while hitting 18 home runs and getting production up and down the lineup. If a healthy core of Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Jackson Holliday remains intact, there’s a pretty high offensive floor. They’re now getting what they expected from Tyler O’Neill and should have steady first base production in Ryan Mountcastle and Coby Mayo if Ryan O’Hearn is moved.

The players we know will be here in a week had standout series. Henderson went 10-for-25 with a 1.123 OPS. Rutschman returned from an oblique strain Monday to go 4-for-14 with three doubles.

Westburg capped a hot July in which he had a .927 OPS with a homestand on which he went 11-for-29 with a pair of home runs and a 1.055 OPS. O’Neill homered in four consecutive games to finish the homestand with a 1.676 OPS, and Cowser got back into a groove a bit with a home run and an .836 OPS.

There will be days when they overwhelm opposing pitchers, and those will be thesis-affirming in a sense as the Orioles look for signs that they can get back to contention in 2026. They’ve long believed in this offense and the core they’ve built, and two months of rewarding that faith would be helpful as they enter a pivotal offseason of roster building.

There will also be days when they’ll hit a ton and it won’t be enough, as was the case Thursday. Interim manager Tony Mansolino laughed when asked if he had his bullpen lined up ahead of Wednesday’s game, a day after a doubleheader during which the Orioles traded Seranthony Domínguez and used all of their top arms to seal a pair of wins.

It was a dicey but necessary situation to hand a save opportunity to recent call-up Corbin Martin on Wednesday, and that worked out, as these things do from time to time. A day later, though, Grant Wolfram yielded a run in relief of Dean Kremer (and could have had more on his ledger if not for a Cedric Mullins home run robbery), and Yennier Cano allowed five of his own to spoil a feel-good send-off for this team and a few of its core players.

The Orioles are going to pitch who they have available on a given night, and it’s no knock on any of the individuals involved to say there will be more pitchers on that lineup card who don’t have long track records of major league success than do. This is absolutely a time for some of them to seize these opportunities and grab a larger role, for this year and beyond.

It’s just not going to happen consistently. I’ve seen enough bullpens built this way to know that one day’s hero can cede that moniker as quickly as he earned it. There will be a keeper or two emerging in some form or fashion, and there will be opportunities for the likes of Cano to regain something resembling his All-Star form.

But, as the Orioles sort out who those keepers are, there will be some duds. The bullpen door will swing open and it’ll be white-knuckle time, with two exceptions. One will be if the Orioles bludgeon the other team’s starter and don’t stop scoring, which doesn’t sound as crazy now as it did a week ago. The other is that the rotation struggles to keep games close, no matter how many runs the Orioles score.

It could be weeks before the return of Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells can cover for the possible trades of Charlie Morton, Zach Eflin and Tomoyuki Sugano.

Two months of that feels like a lot. It’s a lot of pressure to put on the hitters, but after being underwhelming for stretches, it’s their turn to step up.