Dan Duquette hasn't revealed a whole lot about the backroom machinations that are taking place during his first winter meetings as the Orioles' new baseball operations guru, but it's fairly obvious that he wants to make something happen before his front office contingent heads back to Baltimore on Thursday.
The big question is whether he has enough inventory to acquire a significant player or two without putting a big dent in the team's youth movement.
"I think we have the wherewithal to make a couple of deals," Duquette said during his news briefing Tuesday evening.
That remains to be seen, of course, but the first two days of baseball's annual tradefest have barely produced a solid rumor involving the Orioles. There was speculation Tuesday that the Chicago White Sox might be willing to move slugger Carlos Quentin — and Duquette conceded that Quentin was "an interesting name" — but it wasn't specific to the Orioles and it seems unlikely they would deal any of their cornerstone players for a guy who can become a free agent after just one season in their lineup.
Therein lies the difference between the early impression Duquette might be able to make on Orioles fans and the splash Andy MacPhail made during his first offseason after becoming head of baseball operations in 2007.
MacPhail was looking to broaden the organization's talent base and had a couple of valuable players burning a hole in his pocket. The Orioles weren't anywhere close to being competitive, so he traded left-handed starter Erik Bedard and All-Star shortstop Miguel Tejada for 10 players, including center fielder Adam Jones, highly regarded pitching prospect Chris Tillman, closer George Sherrill and outfielder-designated hitter Luke Scott.
The repopulation of the club's major and minor league rosters was supposed to put the Orioles on the road to a new era of competitive baseball, but MacPhail's long-range rebuilding plan failed to return the franchise to respectability.
Now, Duquette has been placed in a very different position. He must try to conserve the young talent that was acquired and developed during MacPhail's tenure and augment it enough to achieve a significant increase in the team's win total this season.
Mind you, he's putting that pressure on himself. MacPhail was under no pressure to win during his first three full seasons in the front office. Duquette said Tuesday that he intends to put a winning team on the field in his first season.
"We want to be .500 or better," he said. "We want to build [for the future], but we want to be over .500."
That's quite an ambitious goal, especially when you consider that the Orioles haven't won more than 70 games since 2005 and haven't had a winning season since they finished 20 games ahead of Duquette's fourth-place Red Sox on the way to their last division title in 1997.
It will take some real developmental progress by young pitchers Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta and Zach Britton, combined with key additions to the pitching staff and the batting order. Quentin would be an electric acquisition that would generate a lot of excitement in Baltimore, but it's hard to imagine the Orioles' making a successful bid for him — or homegrown pitcher Gavin Floyd — without dealing at least one of the players Duquette has said he intends to keep.
The Orioles have met with the White Sox several times this week, but they obviously have not made a major play for Quentin or Floyd because Chicago general manager Kenny Williams said Tuesday that he was leaning toward holding on to his attractive veteran players for lack of any satisfactory offers.
Maybe that's all part of the dance and Duquette and Williams will find common ground in the next couple of days, but don't get too excited. Duquette isn't exactly working from a position of strength.
He's doing what he can to make the most of the hand that was dealt to him when he replaced MacPhail, but he doesn't appear to be holding enough cards to make a dynamic play.
Listen to Peter Schmuck when he hosts "The Week in Review" at noon Fridays on WBAL (1090 AM) and wbal.com.