NEW YORK — Orioles general manager Mike Elias knew it would be naive to expect all his starting pitchers would stay healthy this year. They went into camp banged up, and got by with Band-Aid fixes for a time before the bad news came in quick succession: Kyle Bradish, John Means and Tyler Wells would all be out for the rest of the season.

Now is the time to find a permanent solution. Because it would be naive of Elias to think he didn’t need to bring in additional arms to make a deep postseason run.

“I’ve got a sense of urgency to win baseball games,” Elias said when asked about the trade deadline. “And, part of that is taking care of the whole organization. The deadline is the deadline even before we had injuries.

“We’re looking at the whole picture when it comes to the trade deadline. Where our team is at, where our health is at, where we can upgrade, what the market looks like. Which teams are selling, what are they asking for. It’s so complicated and it’s hard for me to make sweeping statements about it, especially in June.”

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Where the team is at: needing another high-caliber starter to help in October.

Corbin Burnes has been stellar for the Orioles — pitching to a 2.14 ERA in 15 starts — and would get the ball for Game 1 of a playoff series. Now that Bradish is no longer an option, Grayson Rodriguez would be the choice for Game 2, with Dean Kremer for Game 3 and Cole Irvin for a potential Game 4 or bullpen role.

That set-up leaves the Orioles no better than they were a year ago, when the Rangers scored 13 runs off Bradish, Rodriguez and Kremer as they swept the American League Division Series.

The Orioles could try to get by the rest of the season with the pitching depth they have. Irvin, Cade Povich and Albert Suárez have held down the fort, even exceeded expectations, as manager Brandon Hyde said earlier this week. And Kremer is on his way back from a triceps strain.

Come October, though, it’s not how many arms a team has but the quality of them. Irvin, Povich and Suárez have never pitched in a playoff game, and there is no way to know how they may deal with that pressure. Rodriguez and Kremer both handled important regular season games but succumbed when the stakes got higher.

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This is not just a problem for this year. Bradish had Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery with an internal brace on Wednesday and is out for 12 to 18 months, putting his earliest return at next June, three months into the 2025 season.

Means, who had his second Tommy John surgery in three years earlier this month, has the same timeline as Bradish but is a free agent next season. And Wells, who avoided Tommy John but had to have his ulnar collateral ligament repaired, still faces a recovery that could take around 12 months as well.

Burnes is under contract only through the end of the season, and he has shown no inkling yet that he plans to remain in Baltimore beyond that.

The team’s only healthy starters under contract for opening day 2025 are Rodriguez, Irvin, Kremer and Povich.

The trade deadline is just over a month away. If the Orioles can acquire someone to help for the rest of 2024, great. It would behoove them to try to find someone who can be there next March as well.

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They have the chips necessary to bring in another front-line starter — names like Connor Norby, Kyle Stowers, maybe even 19-year-old Samuel Basallo. The Burnes trade, which saw the Orioles dip into their organizational depth to send prospects Joey Ortiz and DL Hall to Milwaukee, clearly worked.

They can do it again.