Baltimore Orioles GM Mike Elias is preparing to be a seller at the 2025 trade deadline

We got our first hint as to how Baltimore Orioles GM Mike Elias is going to approach the trade deadline on Thursday.

The O’s flipped reliever Bryan Baker to the Tampa Bay Rays for the #37 pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, giving the organization four picks in the first round.

Baker, 30, a five-year MLB veteran, four with Baltimore, is 3-2 with a 3.52 ERA, 1.10 WHIP and 49Ks/9BBs in 38.1 innings in 2025.

With the flip, the Orioles now have the 19th, 30th, 31st and 37th picks in the draft, which begins on Sunday.

The 30th and 31st picks are compensation picks for free agents Corbin Burnes and Anthony Santander.

The 37th pick is the Rays’ competitive-balance choice.

“By and large, we’ve drafted well the last six years. A lot of that is the great players you see out on the field,” Elias said Thursday, ahead of Baltimore’s 3-1 win over the New York Mets in the opener of a day-night doubleheader at Camden Yards.

“All drafts are important, but when you have this amount of picks, it’s more important. There’s no question, we have a big opportunity ahead of us, and the draft is the lifeblood for a franchise like ours,” Elias said.

That the ownership group, headed by local billionaire David Rubenstein, OK’d the trade is a signal, to me, that Elias’s job is safe, which hasn’t exactly been a given the past couple of months, with Baltimore, a preseason playoff favorite, sitting at eight games under .500 at this writing.

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The next three weeks, playing into the July 31 trade deadline, will determine the fate of the 2025 O’s season, for sure.

FanGraphs has the projected American League wild-card cutoff at 85-77, meaning the Orioles would have to finish out, gulp, with a 43-27 record, which sounds, you know, like a lot to ask for.

But hey, they’re 26-16 since the season’s nadir, a 6-5 loss at Boston on May 24 that dropped Baltimore to 16-34.

Doing the math, continue winning at that pace, and that would get the O’s to 85-77, so, what I’m telling you is, there’s a chance.

Baltimore’s last game before the trade deadline is the finale of a three-game set with Toronto on July 30, which, with no rainouts, would be Game #109.

I’m thinking they’ll need to be in the area of .500 to get Elias and Rubenstein to want to move forward with making a push in 2025, which translates to, say, going something like 12-6 or 13-5 over the next 18 on the schedule.

If things don’t work out in that respect, the guys we would see moving would include 2025 AL All-Star Ryan O’Hearn, outfielders Cedric Mullins and Ramón Laureano, starting pitchers Tomoyuki Sugano and Charlie Morton, and relievers Andrew Kittredge, Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto.

The caveat to dumping a bunch of mostly so-so guys at the deadline: you don’t get much back.

I don’t see much in return in terms of long-term value for anybody on this list aside from O’Hearn, 31, a lefty who can fit in at first, outfield or DH and is on pace for a career year, and I wouldn’t expect a haul even for him.

“To whatever degree that we make trades, I hope that we evaluate the talent well and do moves that are positive for the organization for the long term,” Elias said. “This is something that was not our plan, to be trading players off the Major League team in July. But we’re responding to the situation. We’ll see what the next few weeks bring.”