This week's winter meetings in Las Vegas mark the beginning of the baseball calendar in earnest, and provide an idea of why the Orioles will be content carrying on their managerial and front-office interviews while letting the whir of 2019 roster-building go on around them.
The latest edition of FanGraphs’ 2019 projections, which take into account the beginning of free agency and last month's non-tenders, have the Orioles projected as the worst team in the major leagues at 63-99, four games worse than the next-worst team, the Miami Marlins.
While that would represent a 16-game improvement from their 115-loss 2018 season, the Orioles' stated plans of building an "elite talent pipeline" under new general manager and executive vice president Mike Elias includes a lot more infrastructure work at this juncture than adding to the major league roster.