The Orioles and the Winter Meetings

MLB's annual winter meetings are coming up next week, December 6th-9th, in Lake Buena Vista, FL. There are some rumblings out there that the Orioles will be pretty active... at the risk of stating the obvious, here are probably some of their priorities (duh!):

• Starting Shortstop - this has to be #1 in my mind, as they have ZERO organizational depth at short, with Robert Andino (.592 lifetime OPS) being the only player under contract that's had significant major league experience. Behind him, the cupboard is pretty bare. Of the players they're looking at, the ones I've heard the most are Jason Bartlett (TBR), JJ Hardy (MIN), and Ryan Theriot (LAD). None are free-agents; all would have to be acquired by trade, or potentially picked up after being non-tendered by their current clubs. David Hernandez is supposedly the chip that most teams are interested in, but the club would rather deal Felix Pie; not sure there's a lot of demand there, though. I guess they could always re-sign Izturis (ackkk...).
• Starting Third Baseman - Like most fans, I don't think it would be the worst move to re-sign Ty Wigginton or bite the bullet and start Josh Bell, then spend the money on another need, especially since there are so few quality third basemen out there in free agency... Adrian Beltre is the prize of the class (and he's stated publicly in past seasons that he's not coming here, so please don't get your hopes up), but it gets thin behind him. At that point, you mostly have infield-tweener guys like Nick Punto or Miguel Cairo, or possible reclamation projects like Hank Blalock, Erik Chavez, or Bobby Crosby. The best non-Beltre free-agent option might be Felipe Lopez, who struggled last season (.233/.311/.345), but was productive as recently as 2009 (.310, 38 doubles, .810 OPS). Lopez doesn't turn 31 until May, so he may be willing to sign a a 1 year incentive-laden deal to boost his value.
• Starting First Baseman - This is the deepest part of the free-agent class, and I think every Oriole fan is hoping they can attract one of the top bats (Konerko, Dunn), or maybe just a 2nd tier bat (Cantu, LaRoche, Pena, Lee, Berkman, etc..) or possibly a 3rd tier guy (Nick Johnson, Russell Branyan, Troy Glaus, Lyle Overbay, etc.. HAVE I NAMED ENOUGH NAMES YET?) but I'm not extremely hopeful on this one... But in the worst-case scenario, given a failure to acquire via free agency, they have guys like Brandon Snyder, Rhyne Hughes, and Joel Guzman in the minors.
• Veteran Starting Pitcher - In theory, I like the idea of acquiring an "innings-eater" type starting pitcher via free-agency; but didn't we go through this with Kevin Millwood last year? This is tricky, as even guys like Jon Garland, who I think that the Dodgers got for relatively cheap last week, are earning $13MM over two years. But there are definitely guys out there, like Jeremy Bonderman, Aaron Harang, Vincente Padilla, Brandon Webb, Jeff Francis, Kevin Correia, etc... the trick is picking the right one. This is where a solid scouting investment really makes a big difference, because it's hard to tell from the numbers. You guess, wrong, and you end up like the A's last season, paying $10MM for Ben Sheets and his 4.53 ERA in 20 starts.
• Utility Infielder - Theriot or Lopez would be excellent additions here, as both can play multiple positions well, and get on base, and start in case of injury. Again, re-signing Ty Wigginton would also make a lot of sense. But there are a bunch of utility options out there (there are a million Miguel Cairo/David Eckstein/Adam Kennedy clones on the market, available for a dime a dozen) so this obviously shouldn't be a key focus. But last year proved that they need some depth.