Duquette on Davis, extensions and pitching

So what exactly do we know about the Orioles' negotiations with first baseman Chris Davis?

I reported at the Winter Meetings that they made an offer in the neighborhood of $150 million, which included deferred money. The deal covered seven years. It never was adjusted after the initial round of rejections by agent Scott Boras. And there's no opt-out clause, because the Orioles are strictly opposed to it.

Duquette confirmed on Saturday that the offer was off the table, and he replied with a firm "no" when asked yesterday whether he had any updates.

I've been stressing that the door isn't slammed shut, that the Orioles have moved on, but they left a forwarding address. There's still a chance that Davis could be re-signed this winter.

Duquette appeared on MLB Network's "Hot Stove" this morning and admitted that he doesn't know "if we're still in play." However, he added, "There is some dialogue that's ongoing, but we made it clear that we were going to start looking at some other options to fill out our ballclub for next year and beyond."

"We were thrilled that (Darren) O'Day chose to re-sign with us, obviously," Duquette continued. "He had four great years with the club, and given his leadership and the way he can get the key outs in the game, we were glad to have him back.

"Darren pledged to try and prevail upon the merits of helping us re-sign Chris Davis, but I don't know how successful he's going to be. But he pledged that he was going to petition his friend, so we'll see."

Like I said, the door is at least cracked.

Duquette confirmed again that the Orioles attempted to sign third baseman Manny Machado to an extension two years ago and could revisit negotiations at a later date. He also mentioned a few other players, which caught my attention.

"We tried on Manny to sign him up long term a couple years ago after he had a great first year. Not after his 2012 campaign, but after '13, and we didn't quite get that done. We can take a look at those, signing those young players up to longer term deals, and of course, Manny will be one of them," Duquette said.

"We've got a couple good young ballplayers. (Jonathan) Schoop's coming along. He's really come into his own the last couple of years. (Kevin) Gausman, we hope, takes a big step forward. We could consider something like that for him. But the good news is, we still have the core of our club up the middle intact with (Matt) Wieters, (J.J.) Hardy and (Adam) Jones. And some of these younger guys, we can start to look at them as some key pieces of our club for the future."

Fans continue to ask me whether the Orioles have given up on re-signing left-hander Wei-Yin Chen. I know that they're extremely uncomfortable with the rising cost of pitching - they'd rather tie a sirloin around their necks and swim with piranhas - and Chen's price tag keeps moving up. He's going to get five years and mega-dollars from somebody, but it won't be his former club.

Check out Duquette's comment, which confirms what I'm saying here:

"We've been active in the market," he said. "I've been looking at the prices, which are absolutely staggering. Every time I look at the prices, I say to myself, 'We've got to develop some of the guys we've got,' and get the guys that we had in our major league rotation who didn't have very good years last year pitching to the top of game. (Chris) Tillman, (Miguel) Gonzalez, they didn't have great years. But we're going to have to replace Chen's innings, of course."

Of course. He's gone.

Left-hander Scott Kazmir doesn't come attached to draft pick compensation. Yovani Gallardo does, however. Will this make a difference? You be the judge.

"The issue with the draft pick is, we're moving up in the draft this year," Duquette said. "We haven't drafted very high the last couple of years. This year, I think we're going to be around 14 and that's a pretty attractive position to be in the draft to give up the pick.

"We gave up the pick a couple years ago for (Ubaldo) Jimenez and another one for (Nelson) Cruz, but those were later on in the draft. They weren't up in that area where we're going this year, so we have to be really convinced that we're getting a good deal on this major league free agent market to give up the No. 14 pick."

I haven't repeated the shopping list in hours, so here you go:

"We need to add some balance to our lineup," Duquette said. "I'm still looking for left-handed hitters and hopefully we'll add a couple of those between now and when we open up in Sarasota. And then we're going to continue to look at ways to build our pitching staff. So, left-handed hitting and pitching, and probably one of those left-handed hitters needs to be in the outfield."