It wasn’t just hope that things were about to change. Within days, they did — and in some ways haven’t stopped.

We learned a year ago this week that a group led by Baltimore-born billionaire David Rubenstein was buying the Orioles from the Angelos family and, presumably, adding a meaningful catalyst — money — to what had been a deliberate but successful effort by Mike Elias and his team to rebuild the club into an on-field contender.

Related or not, Elias signaled the new era by acquiring ace Corbin Burnes later that week. Rubenstein didn’t officially take over for a few months, but all the inevitable change in the year since we learned the team’s fate has taken many forms: some fast, some not, but all at least heading in a direction that delivers on much of the promise that merely being different would ultimately lead to better.

All of the Warehouse intrigue of years past was equally amusing and bemusing, but the reality is that many people’s interest in the impacts of ownership doesn’t stretch much beyond the seating bowl of Camden Yards. Right or wrong, the Angelos family’s stewardship of the team was seen by many as placing a ceiling on the team’s upside, no matter how good the young core Elias built grew to be. After all, one of John Angelos’ last public comments before the sale was to The New York Times in the summer of 2023, speculating that extending any of their homegrown stars would make the team “so financially underwater that you’d have to raise the prices massively.”

Rubenstein notably hasn’t extended any of their young stars either, but the Orioles will be running a payroll that’s significantly higher than in the end of the Angelos era. The Orioles lost key players in free agency to the kind of long-term deals they’ve been loath to give out (All-Stars Burnes and Anthony Santander), but between players brought in at the 2024 trade deadline and signed in free agency this winter, they have added nearly $100 million to their 2025 payroll.

Elias said Friday at the Birdland Caravan that the new ownership group “really liberated us to do our jobs,” which feels like an apt description.

It’s incredibly unique in that little of the added payroll is for players who will be here beyond this season at this point. That speaks to the new group’s resources being deployed by Elias and his front office in a manner they see fit, rather than at the directive of ownership, who probably would have been thrilled to introduce a marquee signing or two at Camden Yards this winter to put proverbial points on the board and make a statement that they’re serious.

The lack of that type of move looms large over this offseason, but doesn’t necessarily undermine it. We’re talking about a significant increase in payroll in less than a year, so it’s hard to call it deliberate, but that feels appropriate in describing how Rubenstein’s influence on this franchise’s future is being realized.

Nothing the Orioles have done this winter is going to keep them from being good in the coming years, and similarly, the work done to rehabilitate the franchise outside of baseball operations is taking shape in an encouraging way. Catie Griggs, the club’s president of business operations, is building out a leadership team with plenty of experience outside the organization that can help the Orioles modernize and maximize the ballpark and their fan base.

Their progress will be more tangible to fans. There have already been price increases for some Birdland memberships and the creation of an expansive value menu for concessions. Over the coming years the ballpark will change with a new video board and, presumably, broader efforts to improve the fan experience at a park that hasn’t been updated much in its 30-plus years of existence.

Much like the on-field progress, the foundation feels like it’s being put in place to build in the direction the newer, well-resourced owners see as most appropriate. Justifiably, that process won’t be happening overnight.

Some of this, we have to assume, would have happened if the team had not been sold. The lease to keep the Orioles at Camden Yards and unlock the state money to improve it was agreed to in December 2023, before the sale. Winning baseball and increased attendance would have unlocked more money for Elias and his team to spend. But considering that the projected payroll of $157 million is near the club-record of $164 million in 2017 — and it seemed like the last ownership group was uncomfortable with that number — it’s unlikely that Angelos would have spent to this level this quickly.

All of this is to say that while there’s a lot riding on the major league team’s success in 2025 to determine whether they’ve spent all this money well, the promise of change has certainly been delivered since we learned that Rubenstein and his group were taking over the club.

To speak the new owner’s language from the world of investing, however, he’s been performing against some easy comps. His performance and results have been judged against those of his predecessors. While good on their own, they are positively glowing by comparison. The further we get from his takeover of the team, the more fairly he’ll be compared to the rest of the league’s owners and judged for his team’s success. Until then, most of the last year has more than lived up to expectations.