At this point, the rumor that the Orioles were pursuing Matt Holliday has pretty much been put to bed.  The most detailed word is that the Orioles inquired whether Holliday would consider an offer of $75 million, were told that would not be in the same ballpark as what he will receive, and were thanked for asking.  The Orioles, with an outfield/DH glut already with Markakis, Jones, Reimold, Scott and Pie, are prepared to move on.

But should they?

The Orioles are (hopefully) at the beginning of a window where they have a core of young, inexpensive players who should be competitive throughout baseball at many key positions.  Brian Roberts is signed for three more seasons, and is currently one of the premier players in baseball at his position.  Nick Markakis is an established superior right fielder; not an All-Star in all probability, but as good as any right fielder in our division.  And Adam Jones is already the best center fielder in the AL East, although a resurgent BJ Upton or the newly arrived Curtis Granderson could challenge him for that title, Jones has much room to improve as well.  Matt Wieters has the offensive upside to challenge Victor Martinez and the aging Jorge Posada and defense that is already superior to both.

That is a strong, mostly young and inexpensive offensive core, and one which can be competitive with even the Yankees and Red Sox, because it features players at key positions.  Having elite players at catcher, at center field, and in right is difficult to achieve.  The Yankees won the World Series this year starting Javier Molina in two games and Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner in center.  The Red Sox went to the playoffs with Jason Varitek catching.  The Rays contended all season with Dioner Navarro doing the bulk of their catching.  Garrett Atkins may suck, but he will outhit all those players this season.  Or Ty Wigginton, for that matter.

The Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays all make up for these deficiencies by having elite hitters at their infield corners.  Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira, Kevin Youklis, Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena.  The Red Sox lacked two elite infiled corner men but made up for it with David Ortiz and Manny/Jason Bay.  These players have been among the absolute cream of the game, and that we simply don't have.  And outside of Wieters, we are unlikely to see any of our homegrown players emerge as that player.  Jones may hit .300 with 25-30 home runs, but he's unlikely to develop a great batting eye to go with it.  Markakis isn't going to hit 35 home runs either.

We have two question marks - Nolan Reimold and Josh Bell.  Reimold's rookie numbers, if extended to a full season, would be excellent and since he was in his first season and is on the verge of his peak seasonal ages should have room to improve upon them.  Josh Bell currently appears to be one of the top 5 third base prospects in all of baseball, and while that is a shocking return for George Sherrill, Ned Colletti in the Casey Blake trade gave up one of the three best catching prospects in baseball, so there is reason to believe that it may be genuine.  Even so, the ceiling most talent evaluators seem to be giving Bell is that of a solid regular, an above average bat for a third baseman with above average defense to go with it.  That's no match for what A-Rod and Longoria bring to the table.

(For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going with the popular wisdom that Brandon Snyder isn't going to show us things he's never shown before and be a superstar hitter in the big leagues.)

The problem with a young, inexpensive core is that it has a short window.  No one seems to believe we can extend Matt Wieters, giving us three more seasons until he reaches arbitration and at best six more seasons of his services total.  Roberts is with us for only three more seasons.  Jones has four.  Because of this, if we are not competing in the AL East with this team in three seasons, we can expect to be asking ourselves whether we should trade Jones and other stars before they become expensive, and even if we retain them, that core will no longer be cheap.

For these reasons, it seems to me that we need to add an impact offensive player, preferably a right-handed hitter, no later than the 2011 season.  I also believe that in that time frame, the best possible candidate for that role is Matt Holliday.

The philosophy espoused by Andy MacPhail has been to grow the arms and buy the bats.  Due to this philosophy, our minor league system is bereft of impact offensive players.  Our prospects closest to the majors don't have top offensive potential, and the players further behind them don't project as being superior to them offensively.  Our pitching prospect depth in the high minors is needed at the major league level and the prospects further down are not sufficiently elite yet to have high trade value.

Therefore, absent other moves, we are unable to trade for an impact bat.  Those on the market - Prince Fielder and Adrian Gonzalez, have a high cost in prospects that would require players required for us to have a sufficient, low-cost core.  Our main trade chips, Luke Scott and Felix Pie, aren't enough to get us an impact bat like Billy Butler.

The free agent market now offers nothing but Holliday, while the potential free agents for 2011 offer nothing better.  Lance Berkman will be 35 and has an option which is likely to be picked up barring injury; Carlos Pena is a Boras client and left-handed; Jorge Cantu is good but not great; Adam Dunn is Adam Dunn; Scott Rolen is injury-prone and will be 36.  Jason Werth is an attractive option as well, but is too good a fielder for us to DH and would require moving Reimold.

But the two elite right-handed bats which can be "bought" in this time-frame are clearly Werth and Holliday.  Of the two, I believe that we are better off pursuing Holliday.  I believe this is the right move for two reasons: first, because neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees are pursuing Holliday, yet both are quite likely teams that will pursue Werth.  Werth is an elite right fielder defensively, and both the Yankees and Red Sox will be in a position to upgrade over J.D. Drew and Nick Swisher after 2010.  We may have to overpay for Holliday now, but odds are we will have to overpay more for Werth a year from now.  Second, I think that if we are going to have to move Reimold, either in a trade or to first base, the time to do that is now.

Reimold put it together in a big way in 2009.  And, as mentioned before, that may be the start of great things for him, and we may be talking about a .900 OPS from him for six seasons.  But his performance is also quite like that of Ben Grieve, or Marty Cordova, These players were never more valuable than after their rookie season.  We will be missing out on a bargain if Reimold reaches his absolute ceiling.  But that ceiling is, frankly, Matt Holliday.  By trading Reimold at a time when he has great value, we ensure that we will get great value out of him whether or not he regresses, and by adding Holliday we can assure ourselves of Reimold's best possible production in our lineup.  And by adding Holliday and trading Reimold, we give ourselves the opportunity to add more top talent either at the major league level or in high-ceiling prospects.

I like Nolan Reimold, followed him as a prospect, rooted for him and am delighted to see him succeed.  I'd love to see him do that in an Orioles uniform.  My heart doesn't want to see him go.  But the pre-MacPhail years have their price.  St. Louis doesn't have Boston or New York's money and needs to resign Pujols in a year.  The Angels don't seem to be in a big spending mood.  We have players who are close to Holliday and money.  I think that four years at $25 million with an option for a fifth should be affordable to us, expire before Jones and Wieters are free agents, and will give Holliday a second shot at free agency when he is still somewhat young and able to command premium dollars.  I think that Holliday's certainty allows us to cope with the uncertainty of Snyder and Bell.  I think that Reimold is an attractive enough trade chip to net us a premium return that Pie and Scott can't.  And I think we should jump on chances to add talent to our organization.

And that's my case for the Orioles going aggressively after Matt Holliday at the present time.