Dylan Beavers and Samuel Basallo, both deservedly summoned to the Orioles’ roster this weekend to get their first cracks at the majors and add a new element to this lost season, are more than just upgrades to the lineup spots they’ll hold for the next six weeks.

They’re proof points that the Orioles can deliver the kinds of players that now populate their farm systems — the projects and the international prospects — to the majors and help eventually support a competitive team without picking at the top of the draft every year.

We know what might have to be different if this team is going to do the things required to get where it wants to go — rebuild the pitching staff, win a playoff game, then several to win a series, etc.

But the Orioles need to stay good at what they’re good at. We know they’re good at scouting and developing hitters. Even as that takes a different form than it did in the early rebuilding years, there’s no use abandoning what got them to this point. It was shepherding talented hitters to the big leagues.

Even as the paths will get longer, this weekend showed they’re up for the task.

It’s a bad-faith argument not worth engaging with, the one where the Orioles don’t get any credit for hitting on so many of the high draft picks the 2018 collapse and the ensuing rebuilding years yielded. This puts No. 1 overall picks Adley Rutschman and Jackson Holliday in the same boat as Gunnar Henderson (42nd overall in 2019) and Jordan Westburg (30th overall in 2020), but the common thread is that they all moved quickly through the minors, even with a pandemic and lost minor league season impacting their path to Baltimore.

Still, ask anyone on the scouting or player development side and they’ll tell you that what they have to do now (with the high pick they’ll get in 2026 the exception) in picking later in every round is more challenging than their assignment at the beginning of all this. The further down the draft board you go, the more work there is to do.

Beavers, the 33rd overall pick in 2022, knew that was going to be the case with him even as he starred at Cal and was one of the best players in the Pac-12. He told teams at the MLB scouting combine that he knew how much work his swing needed, but there was all kinds of talent — plate discipline, bat-to-ball skills, speed and the potential for power — to dream on.

I remember that draft night, reading the reports as the Orioles’ second pick got closer and feeling like he was an obvious candidate, given their success in helping players get better at the plate. He spent his first full season in the organization working on his swing, had an uneven year at Double-A Bowie last year, then broke out this year as he ironed out a timing issue related to his first move as he swung and started to crush fastballs, allowing him to dominate Triple-A.

Orioles farm director Anthony Villa referred to it as “the normal accelerated rate” of player development, with Beavers performing well in Triple-A and forcing his way into the major league conversation as he became eligible for this winter’s Rule 5 draft. But the super-accelerated path, the one taken by his fellow 2022 draftee Holliday, who climbed four minor league levels in one season, isn’t necessary anymore for the Orioles.

They can take a more deliberate approach to developing players, mainly because there’s not the abundant need for talent at the major league level that there was before the team became good. And, because we’re talking about top picks who have all kinds of viable talents but also need work (such as Enrique Bradfield Jr. and Vance Honeycutt, who have top-tier speed and defensive skills but needed to improve at the plate), the ability to make those improvements without rushing players is important.

Sometimes, of course, players rush themselves. That’s what the 21-year-old Basallo did. The Orioles hired Koby Perez to head their international program in January 2019, but given top players in Latin America agree to deals sometimes years before they’re eligible to sign at age 16, it wasn’t as if he or his group could make an immediate impact.

Basallo was a headliner of the 2021 signing class. By the time he reached affiliated ball at Low-A Delmarva to start 2023, there weren’t many examples of international signees who had taken to the level well. The Orioles were cautiously optimistic Basallo would, and he did. After slugging through the low minors, Basallo ended that season at Double-A Bowie with a .953 OPS, 20 homers and top prospect status, all in his age-18 season.

He was back in Bowie last year, refining his swing decisions and dealing with challenges from older pitchers (and still had an .820 OPS there), before overwhelming Triple-A Norfolk this year at age 20.

Basallo is supremely talented, among the most motivated young players I’ve ever come across, and is extremely young with a lot of growth ahead of him. But for the Orioles to have their first homegrown international player debut since Jonathan Schoop (Félix Bautista was originally signed by the Marlins) is notable, considering there are just as many talented young hitters signed from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela in the system as there are those who came from the draft.

It’s no longer unprecedented for a hitter the Orioles signed internationally to become good. They can all look at Basallo. And you have to look only as far as Beavers to see this is an organization that’s capable of doing one of the two main things they do in the draft with hitters — take players with elite contact skills and add thump.

Yes, the Orioles will have a higher pick than they planned in 2026. But there’s a system full of players who fell beyond the top few picks in the first round because they need work. And there’s an academy full of international signees, plus a farm system full of its products, that have the example they need to push forward.

In one weekend, the Orioles showed they’re up for the next phase of their player development challenge. A lot needs to happen for them to be back in the playoffs next year. But they also need their strengths to stay their strengths. Getting Beavers and Basallo to the big leagues shows that’s the case.