Workouts at Orioles minor league camp this spring ended each afternoon at 2 p.m. Most days, that was just the start of Dylan Beavers and Max Wagner’s fun.

There was plenty of sunshine left and fish to catch.

Lake Manatee, about 25 miles from Sarasota, Florida, became the pair’s escape from baseball. Beavers bought a house nearby after being drafted and let Wagner stay with him during spring training. They rented a boat and fished the swampy waters daily. Success often eluded them — Wagner thinks they saw more alligators than fish.

“I don’t think it was the right time of the year,” Beavers said.

That didn’t matter to the young prospects. The lake was more about the escape it offered than anything else.In each other, they had an invaluable companion, a friend who understood the sport’s daily grind and how to break away from it, even for just a few hours every evening. Beavers and Wagner have been side by side across their rise through the Orioles’ minor league system, but their eerily similar paths have taken divergent twists in 2024. They might take even sharper turns in the coming weeks.

Beavers is excelling with Double-A Bowie and pushing for another promotion. Wagner has yet to rekindle last season’s success and is on the Baysox’s injured list. If those differences don’t pull them apart, the MLB trade deadline could.

The Orioles will be buyers in the coming weeks. They have a bevy of prospects in the upper minors to deal with. Young players being pulled apart from teammates who’ve grown close is commonplace during the peak of trade season. Beavers and Wagner know better than anyone they aren’t excluded from that possibility.

“You get really close to these guys,” Beavers said. “Unfortunately in baseball, most likely we’ll end up on different teams, apart. But it’s nice to build those bonds that will probably last for a really long time.”

The Orioles are in need of pitching. Four hurlers underwent elbow surgeries in June, three of them season-ending, and other arms have shown cracks that could doom the Orioles’ World Series aspirations.

July 30 will mark the second trade deadline that the Orioles will likely use their prospect capital for major league help. Last year, they dealt Triple-A infielder César Prieto and left-hander Drew Rom and Low-A right-hander Zack Showalter, at the time the organization’s Nos. 13, 15 and 16 prospects, respectively, according to Baseball America, for starting pitcher Jack Flaherty. The right-hander had a 6.75 ERA in nine games over the Orioles’ final stretch and made just one appearance in the postseason.

Executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said earlier this season the Orioles are “in contact with other teams” regarding pitching help. In June, he added what he’ll ultimately do is “driven so much by who’s selling and which players are available and what are they asking for.”

Baltimore, a World Series contender with perhaps the league’s best crop of prospects and clear roster holes, will power that market. Beavers and Wagner, the club’s 10th- and 14th-ranked prospects, respectively, could be parts of a package to make such a move.

They’ve been together almost exactly every step of the way in their rise through the minor leagues. They were chosen within 10 spots of each other in the 2022 draft, Baltimore’s second and third selections behind Jackson Holliday. They were added to Low-A Delmarva’s roster and promoted to High-A Aberdeen on the same days later that year, then moved to Bowie within the same week in August.

That shared journey brought Beavers, an outfielder from California, and Wagner, an infielder from Wisconsin, together.

“We go through the same stuff. We understand if I’m going good and he’s struggling, I know what it’s like and vice versa,” Beavers said. “It’s nice to have somebody you can bounce ideas off of and see it from a different set of eyes. Most of the time when we’re away from the field, we’re not really talking about baseball. So it’s also nice to get away from that and do other stuff.”

This season, however, hasn’t unfolded like the last two.

Beavers entered 2024 looking to add more power to his approach. He has a target OPS to maintain — between .850 and .900 — and emphasizes slugging percentage rather than on-base rate to achieve that.

He worked on staying more balanced in his swing. Before, the outfielder kept too much weight on his back leg. Now, Beavers distributes it evenly and explodes forward with his front side. The 22-year-old had 11 home runs in 119 games last season. He’s already hit nine in 65 games this year.

Wagner spent his offseason not making mechanical adjustments, but working back from offseason surgery to repair a fractured hand. The 22-year-old is hitting just .109 with a .365 OPS in 19 games for Bowie this season. The infielder’s hand is no longer a hindrance, he said, but he’s now on the Baysox’s injured list with a lower back injury.

“Baseball’s not a very easy game,” Wagner said. “It’s not going to come back to you just like that. It’s going to take some time. I think that’s one thing I’ve had to realize. Even though I’ve played this game my whole life, it’s going to take some time to get back comfortable.”

Beavers and Wagner’s once-conjoined careers are splitting. They’re aware it’s unlikely they’ll play together for much longer, an unfortunate reminder that journeys for minor league players are rarely straightforward.

One could continue his rise to the majors while the other stumbles and never makes it. Or a deadline move could rip them apart. They’re prepared for either outcome. Afternoons on Lake Manatee provided ample time to begin a bond no transaction can erase.