SARASOTA, Fla. — I walked through the empty ballpark under the rising sun and felt invigorated for the hours and days ahead.

I bopped from field to field to catch the highlights from the first day of workouts for pitchers and catchers at Orioles spring camp — Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo taking batting practice, Trevor Rogers’ bullpen session, Pete Alonso’s hourlong cycle through pitcher fielding practice and then Shane Baz facing hitters.

It was a full day and a fraught one, because for all the moves president of baseball Mike Elias made to reinvigorate the Orioles after the disaster of 2025 — including hiring Craig Albernaz as manager and bringing in Alonso and Baz — the angst back home over not adding a top-tier free agent starter to that mix was so thick it felt inescapable.

It felt like camp was happening in a bubble, almost disconnected from the discontent at home about the team’s rotation pursuits. The Orioles’ signing of veteran Chris Bassitt to a one-year deal didn’t burst it, either; it galvanized that thought and brought into focus every little observation from the first day of workouts.

At this point, he or any other starting pitcher isn’t going to make or break this season. The Orioles inside the spring training bubble are, and that bubble is the entire point.

Wednesday started the process of leaving behind the mess that was 2025, and perhaps so much of the baggage associated with this team and Elias’ tenure. Albernaz, his staff and all the new faces are going to have a lot to do with that, and they have six weeks here, along with the Orioles’ homegrown core, to form a team that has the quality, character and consistency to make what came before Wednesday irrelevant.

It’s incumbent on Albernaz to create an environment where these sparks turn into something more. He must nurture the Orioles’ belief and help it grow so that it’s still intact when the team travels north and the players can demonstrate it to fans who desperately want it to be true.

That belief exists here in this bubble, and it needs to remain over this club for the days and weeks and months to come. It will need to be true come opening day, through the 162-game season and into the playoffs for anyone not in it to fully believe it.

And the banality of Wednesday gave glimpses of both what remains the same and what’s different.

It started on the eve of camp with some virtual MLB media day remarks from Elias and Albernaz that, in a way that neither really had before, drew bolder lines between 2025 and 2026. Elias, in expressing optimism about the 2026 club, said “last year was last year,” as if it wasn’t top of mind anymore. (And he, more than anyone, would want to forget it.) Albernaz made it a point to say he couldn’t speak to 2025 because he wasn’t here and turned the focus forward.

Everyone who was on this team or had a hand in its tumult knows what happened, why and what needs to be different. Spring training is still spring training, though. You show up, eat breakfast, prep your body for a day’s work, stretch on the field, hit, field, play catch and throw bullpen sessions, maybe participate in live batting practice to wrap up the day.

Albernaz wasn’t sweating the newness of his role or the pressure of the first day, because he’s done it all before. That felt like the case for the players as well, and that felt intentional.

And yet plenty is new and different — the layout with the new building, for starters — but also the personnel. Albernaz and many of his coaches are new. Alonso and Baz are new, and the day felt like it revolved around them.

Alonso spent much of the morning working on picks and scoops with infield coach Miguel Cairo and third base coach Buck Britton. He was mostly on his own, but once the pitchers joined him on the turf field for their own fielding practice, there was little respite for him.

It went like this: Minor league pitching coordinator Thomas Eshelman hit choppers to Alonso, and he had to feed them to the pitcher covering first. Three groups of pitchers, 15 minutes apiece.

Cairo or Britton would take a rep occasionally, but it was mostly Alonso, chugging back and forth between the bag and his typical fielding position, offering live commentary as it went. It feels conservative to say he took 100 reps. No one was counting, but everyone saw. He was an animal.

He chastised himself for giving Tyler Wells a bad feed, took a bit of instruction from Cairo, and they nodded to each other when the next rep was crisp. When prospect Luis De León had a smooth rep, Alonso encouraged him in Spanish. Facile, man. Facile.

His energy is going to be a defining aspect of this camp, and his work ethic will undoubtedly drive those around him to match it. He’ll have to hit, of course, for it to matter during the season. But he keeps demonstrating why the Orioles invested $155 million in him in December.

Baz and Dean Kremer faced hitters on the stadium field to wrap up the day. Alonso, who last month said Baz was one of his toughest at-bats of 2025, loudly and profanely described how good Baz’s arsenal was to the gathered teammates and coaches as he waited to face him.

Baz’s stuff is undeniable, and he said in the morning that he’s ready for the challenge to be the top pitcher this club needs him to be. He’s working with the Orioles’ pitching group to enhance his arsenal and get to that level.

Alonso and Baz are here because the Orioles did two things this winter that they’ve not done under Elias — signing a top free agent hitter and trading from the team’s considerable prospect depth for a talented starting pitcher with multiple years of team control.

Those things happened. There’s a lot of focus, understandably, on what they didn’t do, which is add a top starting pitcher to a multi-year deal in free agency.

It’s hard for me to separate the baggage of the team’s history in that space with the actual, present-day needs of this team. All the reasons they haven’t — the risk involved in paying top dollar for post-prime starting pitching — remain intact, and Elias acknowledged as much Wednesday.

He also has over seven years of a track record, both in terms of established philosophy and the moves he’s made, that suggest we’re still finding a balance between something like signing Alonso and trading for Baz and throwing all the long-held beliefs about the present and future, thoughtfully allocating resources and optimizing the team’s ability to compete year in and year out.

That’s how you get an offseason in which the Orioles absolutely accomplished his September goal of showing up Wednesday with an enhanced roster that everyone believed could win this division yet feels like it was incomplete.

That’s also immaterial to those inside this bubble. It needs to be — they are focused on getting better and feel like the front office’s moves and ownership’s investment in the team and infrastructure have platformed the 2026 Orioles for success.

Albernaz, Alonso and all the new faces — plus the familiar ones who so much more is expected from — are responsible for maintaining the energy it takes to move things forward and never look back.

The rest of us don’t have that luxury. The club’s history of disappointing offseasons from this front office and its predecessors and a general distrust of anything working out when it comes to the Orioles’ best-laid pitching plans loom large.

It’s going to take this team being good — and dare I say great — for any of that to disappear in the collective consciousness. And it’s going to take what happens in this bubble to build that foundation.

Wednesday showed that might be the easy part. Winning enough to convince everyone it’s true? That’s another story entirely.