BALTIMORE -- When the Orioles open the 2020 season at Fenway Park on Friday, they'll be hoping their rebuild will have hit what can be considered its transitional phase. It has been nearly two years since Mike Elias, Brandon Hyde and Co. came over and began revamping the franchise, from the front office to the active roster and beyond. Long-term goals remain a priority, but progress can still be plain to see.

Coming off a fifth-place finish in the American League East, the Orioles enter 2020 without some of the franchise’s more familiar faces of the past few years, but with exciting fresh ones closing in on the big league roster. Gone are Dylan Bundy and Jonathan Villar (traded), Trey Mancini (recovering from colon cancer) and Mark Trumbo (free agency). Front and center? New staff ace John Means, former top picks Austin Hays and Hunter Harvey, slugging designated hitter Renato Núñez and others.

Baltimore signed former All-Star glove man José Iglesias to play shortstop every day, brought in veteran lefties Wade LeBlanc and Tommy Milone to prop up the rotation, and sees its relief corps as brimming with breakout candidates. The club is also hoping for steps forward from returning regulars Hanser Alberto, Rio Ruiz and Pedro Severino, and looking toward its first real wave of prospects to debut in some time, in Ryan Mountcastle, Dean Kremer, Keegan Akin and others.

All could be in Baltimore by season’s end, at which point progress will likely be measured by how much those young players have grown, even in a condensed 60-game season.

What needs to go right?
The Orioles are taking the approach that in a 60-game sprint, anything can happen. That rebuilding teams can catch fire and surprise, especially during a year with so much uncertainty. In their view, there is no reason they can’t at least make a little noise.

For that to happen, improvement will need to come from many corners of a roster the Orioles did not supplement much this winter, and without its best player, Mancini, due to reasons outside their control. It will require more stability from a rotation and bullpen that were among MLB’s most volatile a year ago, and steps forward from several players who broke out in 2019, including still-prospect-eligible Hays and Harvey.

Veterans Iglesias, LeBlanc and Milone, brought in to help tide the rebuild over, will need to lead with production as well, and it wouldn’t hurt for Chris Davis to rebound or Means repeat his breakout 2019 season, or both. The bottom line is: The Orioles will need to surprise. It’s an underdog status they’re relishing.

• Means out for opener; Milone to start instead

Big question: Which prospects will get the chance to debut?
The most important thing about 2020 for the Orioles as an organization will be salvaging enough development time lost to COVID-19 for as many prospects as possible. How much does MLB game action factor into that equation, and for whom? Those are questions the Orioles need to answer, both for the wave of prospects originally set to arrive this year (Mountcastle, Kremer, Akin) and other priority prospects (Adley Rutschman, et al) who weren’t but who now nonetheless face the possibility of not playing competitive games at all this summer.

Prospect to watch: Yusniel Diaz
Diaz is in a bit of a middle ground, someone who would have spent much of the year at Triple-A but remains experience-less there at the moment (see Baumann, Michael), and someone you could argue needs game competition in 2020. He’s less polished than someone like Mountcastle or Akin, but more experienced than Rutschman and other more recent draftees.

So what do you do with him? Will the development he gets at secondary camp suffice? Is there harm in calling him up in September? Is there value in it? It’ll be interesting to see how the Orioles make those decisions.

On the schedule
Opening the year in Boston is notable in a historic context, as the Orioles haven’t done so since 1966. They open at home on July 29 against the Marlins, a rare Interleague opponent, and play two series against the Interleague regional rivals in Washington (Aug. 7-9, Aug. 14-16). The quirkiest thing about the schedule is the 11-game stretch to begin September against exclusively New York teams, four against the Mets and seven opposite the Yankees.

• 2020 60-game schedule

Team MVP will be ...
With Mancini out, the possibilities are wide open. Let’s go with Hays, who is going to get a long look in center field and at the top of the lineup. He was the Orioles' best player last September, and if he can replicate that for even a month this summer -- hey, that’s half the season. The truth is, no one else on the roster brings Hays’ mix of athleticism, power and speed; the question is how he'll adjust to consistent big league pitching in a larger sample.

Team Cy Young will be ...
… coming from the bullpen. Means is a regression candidate almost by virtue of his ascendance last season, and nobody else in the rotation mix has a recent track of dominance. The Orioles do see internal improvement coming from their relief corps, though, whether it's from a full season of a healthy Harvey, bouncebacks from Richard Bleier and/or Mychal Givens, or sleeper breakout candidates Miguel Castro, Tanner Scott and Cody Carroll. It’s hard to predict exactly who, but their most productive arm could easily come from that mix.

Bold prediction: Mountcastle leads the team in homers
We’ve seen it year after year, a highly touted slugger gets promoted and catches fire despite a lack of experience against Major League pitching: Trevor Story in 2016, Rhys Hoskins in 2017, Aristides Aquino in 2019. Why can’t that be Mountcastle this year?

Maybe some of these predictions are a little too bold. The expectation shouldn’t be for Mountcastle to hit 11 homers in 14 games, like Aquino did last season.

But there is no reason he can’t make an outsize impact, especially given the lack of established sluggers on the O’s roster. The only question is whether he’ll be given the chance. The O’s are adamant that Mountcastle will be held back until his defense improves in left field, but the truth is, they really don’t have much reason to hold his bat back any longer. He could be in Baltimore by Aug. 1, by which point service-time rules would allow the Orioles an extra year of club control over him.