Jon Meoli: The Orioles’ rotation is emerging as a strength as the first half ends. That shouldn’t change.

It’s not the starting pitching.

When it comes to the Orioles, that’s a hard thing to accept. But right now, it’s true.

The Orioles are still trying to consistently play like the playoff team they want to be, but the only reason they’re even occasionally doing so is because their rotation is giving them a chance to win every night. Whether the position players’ efforts with their bats and gloves support that or undermine it in each game determines whether they win.

But we’re about a month into the kind of run the Orioles were expecting this rotation to be able to put together when the front office assembled it this winter. For most of April and early May, they fairly shouldered a lot of responsibility for what was undermining this team.

The success now looks a lot different than we would have thought, with Brandon Young and Trey Gibson playing key roles. That doesn’t matter.

For months, it’s been an open question as to what this team’s strength would be. The rotation has been the first part of the clubhouse to stand up and be counted as one.

It needs to be that way the whole second half for the team to play meaningful baseball in September.

Since the Orioles returned home from the demoralizing sweep at Tampa Bay on May 22, their rotation has been among the best in baseball. Their 3.27 ERA is second in the majors, with a 3.88 FIP (fielding independent pitching, which approximates an ERA based on factors pitchers can control, such as strikeouts, walks and home runs) that ranks seventh.

If you want to say there’s some overperformance of their peripherals in there — considering the relative paucity of strikeouts and the expected stats that would put them middle of the pack — you certainly can.

But what matters is how consistent the group has been. The Orioles have played 30 games in that span. It began with Keegan Akin opening for Chris Bassitt on May 22, but including Bassitt’s contribution in bulk relief that day (three runs in 4 1/3 innings), the Orioles’ starters have allowed three or fewer earned runs 26 times. The Orioles’ starter has completed at least five innings in 23 of them.

It should come as no surprise that the Orioles have won 15 of the 22 games in which both of those things happened — and that accounts for all but two of their wins over the last month. Only the Dodgers have more such starts over the last month than the Orioles. For the season, they’re 31-17 (.638) in such games.

Young and Shane Baz lead the team with 10 of those starts. Young has been invaluable to the group given injuries to Zach Eflin, Dean Kremer and Bassitt. Baz has five straight starts that meet that criteria, representing much more the output that the Orioles expected when they traded four prospects and a draft pick for him this winter then extended his contract before he even threw a pitch for the team.

He wasn’t the only one that needed to be better than he was early on. Kyle Bradish has been inconsistent but still has a 3.64 ERA in 16 starts. Trevor Rogers started well before a dip through May, but he’s rebounded with a 2.22 ERA in June.

While Bassitt has been ably replaced by Gibson since the veteran right-hander went on the injured list with a lower back issue, the Orioles will probably still welcome Kremer’s return to add some stability to that spot in the rotation.

This year’s Orioles, who began the year with Kremer in the minors due to an abundance of rotation options, have already been burned by the comfort that comes with believing there’s enough depth on the mound. They won’t feel safe for long, because you can’t.

But Young’s emergence and the parallel arrow-up performances from the trio that was meant to lead the starters — Bradish, Rogers and Baz — mean there’s a foundation intact for this team to build on its starting pitching as a strength and put together a few more wins.

After all, that’s what they need more than anything else. So much of this season has been about the Orioles trying to find their way in pretty much every aspect — on the mound, at the plate and in the field — and enduring some serious volatility in doing so. The result is that even as they’ve started to turn things around, they’re 38-42 near the halfway point of the season.

They were 21-29 returning from Tampa Bay. That they’re 17-13 over the last month despite the rotation pitching this well speaks to how difficult turning this ship around is proving to be.

The rotation was part of getting them in that hole. But as we talk about how they can emerge from it, no one has done more — or will do more — to make that happen than the Orioles’ starters.