Cup of jO's: Expecting a Sleepy Thanksgiving Weekend

Front offices never rest, but the gears of player acquisition certainly slow down during the holidays.  Clubs tend to be working with reduced staffs.  Players often do not want to deal with the intricacies of contract negotiations.  Agents have difficulty at times reaching either side at a level of interest to complete a move.  Transactions likely will occur, but probably nothing of note once this evening arrives.

This leaves us with a few rumors to gnaw on while we do anything to avoid discussing politics with our extended families this weekend.  The one of the forefront of media is the availability of free agent starting pitching.  The Orioles will need to acquire a couple arms and they appear to be kicking the tires on several second and third tier starters.  The focus appears to be settling on Jason Vargas, Tyler Chatwood, Alex Cobb, and Lance Lynn.

Vargas is your journeyman whose two attributes are that he uses his left arm to throw a ball and the first half of 2017 he was a bit dominant.  However, he will be 35 next year and has never been shown to be all that decent of a pitcher, including the second half of last season.

Chatwood is one of those pitchers to dream on.  He throws hard and was once touted as having an absolutely brilliant hammer curve.  He will be moving away from Coors where his pitches work better and are easier to sequence.  However, the only thing that has really made him see success is his uncanny knack to generate absolutely terrible contact.  One wonders if that is sustainable.  Also, he is not exactly a workhorse and has had two Tommy John operations in his career.

Cobb is everyone's second favorite pitcher.  At times, has been brilliant.  He has shown an ability to hang in the AL East.  However, he depends heavily on a two seamer, which MLB teams are beginning to adapt to.  Plus, he too has never been a picture of health.  Lynn is good when healthy, but he too has gone under the knife.  He also profiles as a likely candidate to suffer another injury because he relies so heavily on his fastball.

Another rumor percolating is a potential Zach Britton trade.  The idea behind that would be that the club could get a piece for the future while finding a less expensive reliever on the market.  The way this would work would be this: the Orioles would deal Britton for a potential future piece.  Let's say the piece would be someone like the Cubs' center fielder Albert Almora who is also Manny Machado's cousin.  In turn, the club takes off the 12 MM in Britton's expected contract and puts it into Mike Minor, another lefty, at 3/27.  The play would be that Minor provides the club an excellent left handed reliever to replace Britton while the Cubs would get someone with a much higher ceiling than Minor.  I am not saying that would work, but that would be the idea.  Not investing Britton's contract into another reliever would seem somewhat short-sighted as this club no longer employs an elite pen and needs every solid arm it can muster if it wishes to be competitive.

What should also be a rumor, but something I have heard nothing much about, is targeting a left handed starting outfielder. Yes, the club just acquired Jaycob Brugman for not much.  He is an adequate center fielder defensively who has some gap power. He is also an extreme platoon hitter who gets eaten up by left handed pitchers, so maybe he gets into a platoon with Rickard if an unfortunate solution to center field is required.  Regardless, you should expect Brugman in Norfolk to begin the year.

More fully fledged solutions would be someone like Jarrod Dyson, who was stunning in the outfield and against right handers.  Or maybe Curtis Granderson if you believe the cliff he fell off of last summer could be scaled again.  Regarding the previous rumor, Almora is a right handed bat, so that would not solve that particular expressed need.

So...here we are.  Waiting. Wondering. Do you all have any thoughts that I would find interesting?