SARASOTA, Fla. — Tyler O’Neill is the son of a world-class bodybuilder, and it shows. If O’Neill could play without sleeves, Ted Kluszewski-style, it’s fair to guess that he would. He’s an everyday player who excels on the bench.

Yet even for baseball’s most musclebound man, the left-field wall at Camden Yards was simply too far away.

“Obviously, that wall was crazy,” said O’Neill, a right-handed slugger who has never homered in Baltimore. “They got the message it was a little too severe, specifically for guys like me. When I read something in the news that they were bringing the fences in, I thought: ‘That’s interesting.’ We started talking a couple days later and things took off from there.”

The Orioles announced in November that they were pulling in the left-field wall, which for three years had been located roughly at the Mason-Dixon Line. Within weeks, O’Neill responded by signing a three-year, $49.5 million contract to leave the Boston Red Sox for Baltimore.

A two-time Gold Glove outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, O’Neill led the Red Sox in homers last season with 31. His .511 slugging percentage was even better than that of Anthony Santander, who slammed 44 homers for the Orioles.

But Santander — “One of my favorite players I’ve ever been around,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said — did not return to Baltimore. He got a five-year, $92.5 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays, who fell to the Orioles 8-2 at Ed Smith Stadium on Tuesday night. The fans gave him a nice ovation.

It was a quiet offseason for the Orioles, construction projects aside. Besides Santander, they lost ace starter Corbin Burnes to a six-year, $210 million contract with his hometown team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. In Burnes’ place are the redoubtable Charlie Morton and the longtime Yomiuri Giants star Tomoyuki Sugano, veterans with about 4,000 combined innings who both signed one-year deals.

In some order, those two and Dean Kremer will follow the Opening Day starter, Zach Eflin, in the Orioles’ rotation. Barring an outside acquisition — former Oriole Kyle Gibson remains unsigned — Albert Suárez or Cade Povich will take the fifth spot, with Grayson Rodriguez (elbow) and Trevor Rogers (knee) on the injured list.

“I don’t like to talk about it out loud because the baseball gods are always listening, but these guys have been pretty durable in their careers,” general manager Mike Elias said. “They’ve thrown innings; a lot of workhorses, tough guys. There’s a lot of pitchability in our rotation right now. That’s what I like about this group.”

Citing pitchability is a polite way to compliment savvy without demeaning stuff. Morton generates strikeouts, but he is 41 years old. Rodriguez does, too, but he had a cortisone shot in his elbow on March 9 and started playing catch again Tuesday.

Could the Orioles have done more this winter? Should they have? They are coming off consecutive playoff appearances, yet O’Neill is the only player on the roster signed beyond this season. His deal is the richest Elias has given in six years as GM.

Elias inherited a 115-loss team, flooded it with talent, revamped the infrastructure and turned it into a force. But by now, it is fair to ask if he has a philosophical aversion to lucrative long-term contracts.

“No, no aversion,” Elias said. “I think we handle everything on a case-by-case basis. I think our offseasons are going to look different every year, our deadlines. Everything that we do, I don’t think it’s like a cookie-cutter mindset. We’re looking for the right moves for the right reasons at the right times. And you’ve got to be able to find deals that come to fruition, too.”

Most teams — even the Athletics and Pittsburgh Pirates — have at least one or two core players signed to long-term deals. Yet in nearly a year under new owner David Rubenstein, the Orioles still have not locked up any of their prized young talent.

It’s not a major issue now, with Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Jackson Holliday all at least three seasons away from free agency. But most of those players seem worthy of long-term investment.

“There’s clearly players that you look at on our roster and their current contractual status and you go, ‘Boy, I wish we had them longer than that,'” Elias said. “So we’re not blind to that. We put a lot of thought into it, put a lot of work into it. I try to keep it in the background.

“We’ve had a lot going on in this organization — a protracted ownership change, a protracted rebuild — and we’re on the other side of all that now and it’s kind of a fresh platform. We’re going to do everything in our power to keep the organization long-term competitive, healthy and formidable in the American League East, which isn’t easy.”

Indeed, the AL East is the only division in which every team should expect to contend. Four teams won at least 80 games last season, and the one that didn’t — the Blue Jays — has MLB’s fifth-highest payroll. Yet every roster has flaws, and none seems especially overpowering.

“You can see where a lot of us are kind of projected for a similar amount of wins,” Toronto manager John Schneider said. “But the important part is what are you doing to try to win the extra five or six games, as opposed to lose those?”

To Schneider, that means attention to detail and winning on the margins. But the division might swing on health, in-season upgrades or improvement from players just entering their primes. That is the Orioles’ biggest edge.

“We’re not young anymore, but we still have guys that still haven’t reached their upside for me,” Hyde said. “Jackson only has a couple months in the big leagues, and Gunnar doing what he did last year — they’re some really talented guys that are going to continue to get better.”

In each of the last three seasons, the Orioles have had the winner or runner-up for the AL Rookie of the Year Award: Rutschman (second in 2022), Henderson (first in 2023) and Cowser (second in 2024). Westburg was an All-Star last season, and Holliday, 21, could be ready for stardom after struggling in his cameo last season.

“It’s definitely fun to think about — so many guys on the team have so much potential,” said Holliday, who stole two bases Tuesday and is hitting .308 this spring. “Still got Gunnar and Adley doing their things, and Cowser last year. A lot of guys are still navigating their way through the big leagues, and I’m excited for everyone to really figure it out. There will be a time when that comes, and it’ll be truly special.”