Maybe this trade deadline wheeling and dealing isn’t so complicated after all.

It might feel as if the Orioles are trying to thread a needle, supplementing a team with a championship-caliber young core without impacting their ability to add to it from within down the line. Through a pair of opportunistic trades Friday — acquiring reliever Seranthony Domínguez and outfielder Cristian Pache from the Philadelphia Phillies for Austin Hays and starter Zach Eflin from the Tampa Bay Rays for three promising but ultimately midlevel prospects — they’ve done so before this month’s trade market really heated up.

They probably couldn’t have drawn up a more ideal set of trades if they tried, and for an organization whose value-based process doesn’t always find the in-season trade market to be rational, they found two that make all the sense in the world.

Moving on from Hays is tricky business. The Orioles are a winning team now in no small part because of him, and any winning team could use a player like him: tough as they come, consistent at the plate, excellent on defense and with a perspective that only someone who has been through tough times can bring. His .872 OPS since returning from the injured list wasn’t enough to overcome the harm done to his standing by his bad start to the season, but it clearly made him valuable to suitors looking for right-handed-hitting outfield help.

The Phillies, in president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski’s telling, have been after Hays for the last two years. Clearly, the Orioles remembered that, and they used their interest and Hays’ resurgence since May to help solve a handful of problems.

One was their pursuit of proven bullpen help in Domínguez, a 29-year-old with an option worth $8 million with a $500,00 buyout for next year. He has been a reliable bullpen piece with good actual numbers throughout his career, some stats under the hood that suggest he’s been better than the results in 2024, and the ability to slot into the back end of the Orioles’ bullpen immediately — as he did Friday.

The addition of Pache into the deal is a low-risk, high-reward aspect that makes sense in a few ways. If Hays was overly qualified to be the team’s right-handed-hitting fourth outfielder, which is the role he came to inhabit (and Jorge Mateo’s elbow injury prevents him from taking over if that’s still a thing), then Pache’s speed and high-level defense will be appropriate for that role. They don’t really have that profile elsewhere in the organization, and though it’s a steep ask for Ryan Fuller, Matt Borgschulte and Cody Asche on the Orioles’ hitting side to get him going at the plate, there’s some demonstrated plate discipline and hard contact ability to potentially harness.

It might be worth dreaming on, but even the reality of what he does well is worth having around with Hays gone and Mateo on the shelf. Trading Hays also has the knock-on impact of creating more plate appearances for Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad, the latter of whom manager Brandon Hyde was noncommittal about giving more chances against righties but who in a limited sample so far seems worthy of an expanded role. Connor Norby could also see more playing time if Hyde wants to see him in a corner outfield spot at this level.

All that said, the move was a weird opening salvo to the Orioles’ deadline activity. Trading a long-tenured veteran for middle relief help wasn’t exactly the kind of impactful move anyone anticipated. Instead, it was the kind that many locally and around the game withheld judgment on until the full scope of the team’s activities was there to assess.

Turned out it didn’t take long. The Rays, with three top starters returning from elbow injuries, had starting pitching to spare and used Eflin — whom they signed ahead of the market shortly after the 2022 season ended — to secure three prospects from the Orioles: right-hander Jackson Baumeister, infielder Mac Horvath and outfielder Matthew Etzel.

Eflin relies on elite command of a six-pitch arsenal to keep hitters off balance, working off his sinker and cutter to generate weak contact and limit damage. Like Domínguez, he’s been effective at limiting traffic and his underlying numbers suggest he’s been better than the surface ones show this year. But he adds a few things to the Orioles rotation — all of which they have been seeking since the front office put its draft responsibilities aside last week and started focusing on the trade deadline.

One is reliability. Beyond Corbin Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez, there are a lot of question marks in the Orioles’ rotation. Eflin has pitched at least five innings and allowed four earned runs or fewer in 14 of his 19 starts. In six of those, he allowed one or zero runs over six or more innings. He also adds a bit of long-term clarity to the rotation, given he’s under contract for $18 million next year.

This is much more about now, though. There are a handful of pitchers who could be available who would push Rodriguez out of Game 2 of a playoff series, and the cost for them would be exorbitant. The Orioles could still get one, and committing to over $20 million for Eflin means they could be willing to absorb more salary to do so.

But the true cost of deals this time of year is ultimately young talent. The Orioles gave up some here. Let’s be clear about that. But if their goal was to keep the top of their farm system intact and trim in some areas of strength, they did just that.

Baumeister was the 63rd overall pick last year — the highest draft pick general manager Mike Elias has used on a pitcher in Baltimore — and had 91 strikeouts in 70 2/3 innings at High-A Aberdeen. He was working to expand his pitch mix with the Ironbirds but even so had the bat-missing ability to be among the top handful of pitching prospects in the organization.

Horvath, last year’s 53rd overall pick, had a .745 OPS and nine home runs at Aberdeen, while Etzel — a 10th-round pick — had an .808 OPS at Aberdeen and Double-A Bowie. They both do a lot of things well, so it makes sense that the Rays want them. They’re exactly the caliber of players the Orioles won’t flinch at dealing, if it comes to it.

Taken together, the deals might be sufficient as deadline upgrades for an Orioles team that has spent much of this season playing like a very, very good team but hasn’t done so consistently of late. A lot can happen between now and Tuesday.

If nothing else does, the Orioles will have at least hit the baseline expectation for their trading window: adding to the rotation and bullpen while keeping the high-level talent base intact, with the bonus of clearing up the outfield logjam.