Sometimes, things just make sense.

The Orioles have every reason to want Kyle Bradish to pitch the rest of his prime in Baltimore, and as he stared down a future in which he was set to be a free agent at age 31 in whatever economic landscape MLB and the players land on this winter, he probably found more and more reasons to lock in the massive contract he deserves now.

It just so happens that this contract extension, announced Saturday in the midst of a seven-game winning streak that has pulled the Orioles back to relevance, comes when the team is starting to make sense, too.

I don’t think those two things are related in the slightest. But, in a season when it seems like misfortune has come in quick succession and at times compounded for the Orioles, taking these two things together makes it feel as if they are firmly heading in the right direction.

Any time is a good one to a pitcher as good as Bradish, though.

He debuted for the Orioles in early 2023 and, after a rough 10 starts, landed on the injured list with shoulder soreness. He returned June 3 of that year and has been among the best pitchers in baseball.

Only 101 pitchers have thrown at least 300 innings since then — and Bradish missed over a full season of that due to Tommy John elbow reconstruction — and he ranks seventh among that group in ERA (2.91), 10th in weighted on-base average against (.276) and 13th in fielding-independent pitching (3.21).

If he were reaching free agency with that résumé right now, he’d command closer to twice what he’ll make over this five-year, $90 million extension with the Orioles. Instead, his reality was he had two more years of salary arbitration remaining — a distinction that even with healthy raises would mean he was underpaid — and then would be a free agent on the wrong side of 30.

He might have gotten a longer deal than the three years and $67 million the Orioles are paying to buy out those free-agency years but perhaps not at that value — and a lot can happen to a pitcher in five years. This is the kind of deal that both sides can feel good about — especially considering the Orioles will now reap a decade’s worth of value from a pitcher who has been among the best in baseball over the last four years.

All those things would probably be true if the Orioles were still tripping over their shoelaces and stumbling at the back of the pack in a muddled American League playoff race. I imagine that such sensible contracts to keep their players here — the same that Samuel Basallo and Shane Baz signed over the last year — are something that both player and front office would do in any circumstance.

President of baseball operations Mike Elias was looking for a reason to buy at the trade deadline, and the team is giving him one. (Jerry Jackson/The Banner)

But the last month or so of Orioles baseball, with the team well under .500 but still within touch of a playoff spot, has been almost overwhelmed by the uncertainty those circumstances have wrought. This team was not supposed to be shrouded in questions. The Orioles were supposed to be better than this, and they hadn’t been anywhere close to that until this winning streak began.

It led to questions about not only their best course of action leading into the Aug. 3 trade deadline but whether this front office under Mike Elias was the right one to lead this team. It wasn’t just that the three-plus months to start this season weren’t good enough. It’s been two years, considering the 2024 second-half regression and the early collapse that tanked the 2025 season.

Those were all valid points to raise. Even though wins and losses are really all that matter, it felt like they were overindexed in these discussions. It was easy to think about all the things that have been generally frustrating under Elias when the team wasn’t as good as it was supposed to be.

It was easy to look at the Orioles losing all the time and not see the vision for what it was supposed to be. Now that they’re winning, perhaps it’s OK to zoom out and note that the rotation that’s been among the best in baseball the last two months now has three key cogs in Bradish, Baz and Brandon Young under club control for the rest of the decade.

Now you can see a lineup with the capability of both changing games with a single swing and grinding out at-bats and scoring runs the hard way.

We’ll know a lot more about how Elias and his lieutenants will spend the rest of July after this pending three-game series in Boston against a Red Sox team whose own 13-game winning streak has it in the final wild-card spot. The Orioles quickly lost the momentum from winning 10 of 14 in late May and early June with a couple of blown leads in Toronto, so it remains to be seen how long they’ll sustain this one.

They’re set up to continue it this time. It’s really up to the players. But all eyes are on Elias and the front office.

A few weeks ago, he said he hoped he’d be able to buy. The team is finally playing like one worthy of that. Doing so on a weekend when Bradish’s contract extension signals that the front office is convicted in the team is another indicator that there’s no changing course where this 2026 Orioles team is concerned.

There have been few moments this year when that sentence would have made sense. It does now.