SARASOTA, Fla. — For all the sentences Orioles CEO and Chairman John Angelos said in a 37-minute interview with reporters Sunday, one he didn’t finish stood out.

He praised the impacts of the organization’s rebuild, a process he, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias, and manager Brandon Hyde have all declared complete. He pointed to the changes in technology, scouting and development that have taken Baltimore from one of the majors’ worst farm systems to arguably its best. He noted the 31-game improvement the team enjoyed last year, going from the sport’s worst record to the best of any American League club that came short of the playoff.

“Now, we all know this year could …” Angelos said before cutting himself off. “Who knows what’ll happen this year? And that’s fine, but we’ve done what we’ve done.”

Angelos didn’t complete the thought, but it was clearly an acknowledgment of possible regression after the Orioles, as Angelos himself put it, “overachieved and overperformed” in 2022. Any internal belief that last year’s breakout was a mirage would help to explain a team projected to begin 2023 with the majors’ second-lowest payroll at nearly $65 million despite its expressed desire to reach the playoffs.

Elias said last week that public projections of the Orioles’ 2023 performance have undershot what the team believes internally; the projection systems PECOTA and ZiPS, as well as numerous sportsbooks, expect Baltimore to follow its 83-79 campaign with a losing record. But it was also a poorly kept secret that the team’s improvement last season, on the back of its budding young core, was ahead of the organization’s schedule, evidenced by the club trading away fan favorite Trey Mancini and All-Star Jorge López and Elias’ related comments about the team’s low likelihood of reaching the postseason.

Trying to walk those back, Baltimore’s general manager soon after declared “it’s liftoff from here,” though that referred to the state of the organization at large and not specifically its payroll.

Liftoff in that area could come in time, Angelos said, but he suggested last year’s record wasn’t enough to justify a spike closer to even league average.

“Could payroll be double or triple what it is?” Angelos said. “Or could it be over 100 million? Yeah. We’re not there yet. We have a very young team that’s overachieved and overperformed because of the great work of our baseball folks.”

Angelos, who said last month his family owns 70% of the team, said Sunday it’s “not my job to predict payroll,” instead listing his priorities, in order, as bringing concerts to Camden Yards, the public-private partnership between the city and the team, then the team itself, saying he wants to trust Elias, Hyde and others he’s hired to do their jobs.

“I’m more like, if I see a rusted-out trash can, I want to make sure we throw it away,” Angelos said. “And if I’m into [baseball operations], we’re in trouble.

“There’s a range there that Mike and his team have to determine. Do I have a role in that? Really only to make sure that their recommendations are being properly funded.”

Doubling the Orioles’ payroll would still leave it in the bottom half of the majors’ 30 teams. They are investing more than $110 million less in their roster than three of the other four teams in the AL East.

Two of them, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, are operating at levels Angelos said the Orioles will “probably” never reach; Boston’s projected $175.8 million payroll, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, is its lowest for a full season in almost a decade but more than $11 million above Baltimore’s franchise high mark, set in 2017. Instead, Angelos pointed to the only other team in the division with a nine-figure payroll, the Tampa Bay Rays, as well as the Milwaukee Brewers and Cleveland Guardians, as the type of operation the Orioles look to as models.

Although that trio has made frequent playoff appearances in recent years, the Rays and Brewers have never won a World Series, though Tampa Bay made it there in 2008 and 2020, while Cleveland was last champions in 1948, most recently making the World Series again in 2016. In the past decade, those teams have ranked in the top half of the majors in season-opening payroll only once, when Cleveland barely made the cut at 15th in 2018.

This year, the Brewers, Guardians and Rays have projected payrolls ranked 20th, 24th and 28th, respectively. Since 2002, Tampa Bay has ranked outside of the bottom six in opening-day payroll only once.

Asked what those teams’ lack of titles and below-average payrolls says about what the Orioles are aiming for, Angelos responded, “We’re aiming for sustained success.”

“I would be disappointed if we’re not the next Tampa, which means being sustainably competitive and relevant,” he said. “We’re fortunate to have a great venue. Right now, they don’t have that. Hopefully, they will, but I’d like to be thought of as competent and capable and professional, as I think all of us view an organization like Tampa — I mean, that’s an aspiration, and I think we’re gonna get there.”

He clarified he didn’t mean that in a financial sense, saying, “I don’t expect payroll to model any particular team.” He noted Milwaukee as a point of comparison because, like Baltimore to Washington, it’s in the shadow of a larger market in Chicago. He didn’t mention another similar pairing: San Diego and Los Angeles. Although the Padres play in the 27th-largest media market in the country, they have the majors’ third-largest projected payroll at almost $250 million. Baltimore is the No. 28 market.

“We’ll see where the payroll goes,” Angelos said. “If you’re asking me if we have the resources, we absolutely have the resources, and we plan to keep moving the payroll up.”