Not many things would show the difference between the current Orioles ownership and the previous group than the team opening up its bank vault to pay a top-end free agent starting pitcher.

Corbin Burnes, acquired in February with the knowledge that he would test free agency after one year, pitched like an ace for most of the 2024 season and he’s out there looking to get paid like one.

Is this actually a risk that Orioles GM Mike Elias will seriously consider taking? Based on his behavior up to this point, it’s hard to imagine, but the signs are there that the team is going farther than I’d already have thought. The latest is this from New York Post/MLB Network baseball guy Jon Heyman:

Heyman is a guy who is generally well-informed when it comes to clients of agent Scott Boras, who represents Burnes. It’s a good guess that this list of teams is one coming direct from the agent. What constitutes being a “main player” is left for the reader to figure out; that’s always the challenge with baseball rumors. Even if this is absolutely true, what is it even worth? Fans don’t care if the Orioles have been a main player for Burnes. They only care if the Orioles will get Burnes.

Contract predictions for Burnes’s next deal have generally been in the range of a seven year contract with about $200 million guaranteed.

That’s a lot of money and a lot of years for a guy who just turned 30 years old. How much longer will he be able to pitch at a high level that would be worth that salary, or even at an acceptable level that would be worth any place in a rotation at all?

How long will the durability that he’s had over the last four seasons hold up?

Any team has to be pretty confident in some good outcomes there to be willing to shell out $28-30 million per year for that long. That’s the price that you have to pay if you want a pitcher that’s got that ace potential. This will be no different for Max Fried, who’s also a free agent expected to get a large contract.

It would be unlike anything else we’ve seen from Elias to this point. He’s going to surprise us eventually and outbidding the Yankees and Red Sox to lure back Burnes would be about as big of a surprise as there could be.

Burnes’s lone season (for now?) went about as well as anyone could have hoped when they traded for him back in February. He made 32 starts, he had an ERA under 3, a WHIP of just slightly over 1.

His strikeout rate continued a decline that it’s been having ever since his Cy campaign with the Brewers in 2021, but this didn’t seem to affect him being able to pitch like an ace.

Only a bad month of August kept him out of being in contention to get a second Cy Young, and he finished in the top five even with that month of struggle.

With everything that ended up transpiring in the rotation over the course of 2024, the Orioles probably would have had a real disaster without Burnes around.

Looking at the 2025 rotation without him or someone close to him at the top is not a pretty thought either.

Will that be enough to get Elias to do something un-Elias-like? For now at least, he’s reportedly in the running, which is farther than I thought the Orioles would be.

None of this main player stuff will mean anything if the O’s aren’t the team to pull off the signing in the end.