The World Series is over. Baseball is kaput until next April. All that we will have for the next five months or so is the meager sustenance that the hot stove season and eventually spring training can offer. Every little rumor gets dissected, not so much because anyone believes or wants it to be true, but because there's just nothing else to talk about.
In that sense it's entirely fitting that, on the first full day of the offseason, we have a little tidbit from Jon Heyman of CBS Sports concerning the Orioles and their chances of retaining Chris Davis:
Owner Peter Angelos has taken an interest in trying to get slugger Chris Davis signed, and the Orioles are making an early effort. Hard to imagine he foregoes free agency, however.
What makes this a slightly more interesting comment is Heyman's reputation as a leak dump for agent Scott Boras, who represents Davis. It's not unreasonable to surmise from the above that Boras was responsible for this tidbit being passed to Heyman.
There's not really any change to the status quo there, of course. There's some small interest in knowing that Angelos himself is apparently leading the Orioles interest in retaining Davis, if only because the expenditure is going to be so large that he'll have to get involved at some point. Better sooner than later. But, that will be more a question of whether he'll exceed some other team's bid for Davis, and we'll only know that when the time comes.
You may remember that in the waning days of the season, Davis expressed some frustration to reporters that the team hadn't approached him about a contract extension. That much at least seems to have changed. It's tough to imagine any hurt feelings would keep Davis from returning. Whoever has the biggest dump truck full of money is likely to land Davis. Money talks.
If you're looking for a completely wild reason to be hopeful based on the two sentences Heyman wrote, you might seize on the involvement of Angelos as an indication that he might be willing to make an extra payroll expenditure in order to keep Davis in Birdland.
Currently, the biggest reason to be anxious about the Orioles potentially retaining Davis is that he's likely going to soak up half of the available payroll for next season. I'm not breaking any news in saying the Orioles have plenty of other holes to fill. So maybe, if Angelos sees keeping Davis as a priority, he'll be willing to have the O's payroll go a bit beyond what was originally planned for the sake of keeping Davis. That could be one way for the O's to get Davis and address some other issues.
But all of that is conjuring up a bunch of ifs, mights, and maybes from two sentences that don't really tell us anything we didn't already know anyway. That's hot stove season for you. What's certain is that the Orioles extend Davis the qualifying offer, he'll decline it, and then things will develop from there. Stay tuned!