Domenic Vadala: Heading into the offseason

Every year at the end of the season (postseason or not), I feel as if a blindfold has been removed from my head. Make no mistake about the fact that baseball season is and always will be No. 1 in my heart. However, from the time when hope springs eternal in March until the end, that's really all I'm able to see and hear. I tend to forget that there's an outside world that's not Orioles-centric.

The season never really ends for me in a sense, as we publish fresh content daily at Birds Watcher. And we all know what the stakes are this offseason for the Orioles. To name a few pending free agents, Darren O'Day, Matt Wieters, Wei-Yin Chen and, of course, Chris Davis - they're all up on the board. Let's be frank: The Orioles don't absolutely have to re-sign any of them to be successful next year. But at the very least they have to be able to replicate their production.

And that's easier said than done, especially with the likes of Davis, whose services will most likely be at a premium this year. One thing the Orioles will want to avoid is basically being used to drive up the price on their own players. Baltimore is still smarting from the Mark Teixeira sweepstakes and how things went down in that situation. How embarrassing would it be to end up being used like that again so as to play a role in someone like Davis signing elsewhere?

But remember what I said above - none of these guys have to be back. Heck, the entire roster could be different and the Birds could very easily remain in contention in 2016. But they need to find a way to equal the production that this year's team put forth, both in the field and at the plate.

To take that a step further, they probably need to add some pieces. One of many complaints this year has been that the Birds never found a way to replace Nick Markakis and Nelson Cruz. That may have been partly addressed in the trade that brought Gerardo Parra to town. From everything that he's said, it seems he would like to stay in Baltimore - that is, if the money is right.

My personal opinion is that Parra is a guy worth keeping. Heck, all of the pending free agents are worth keeping. Needless to say, this roster will look very different next year. It's virtually impossible to keep all of these players. You just have to hope that the players the O's decide bring in and/or re-sign are able to fill in the gaps.

Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the roster was the sole reason this team will be at home in October. Injuries to various players plagued the Orioles all year. Even the reliable Adam Jones has been sidelined of late. But that also ties into the quality of the depth that teams have, and in the Orioles' case, a lot of that depth ended up playing much more often than they had originally been designed to play.

One thing I'll focus on this offseason are Grapefruit League results. Namely, do we put too much stock into them? I'm not talking about wins and losses; but using Jimmy Paredes as an example, he had as good a spring as a player can have. If you recall back to late March, Buck Showalter was desperately trying to figure a way in which Paredes could break camp with the team - and he did. But looking at Paredes' results now that we're almost finished, did he help the team as much as we thought he might based on spring training?

There are a lot of questions surrounding this franchise going into the off season, however they'll be answered in due course. And remember, folks, hope always springs eternal in March. If you're utterly fed up and ready to not pay attention to the Orioles ever again, see how you feel when pitchers and catchers report. To further that, come and talk to me again when the first whiffs of Esskay Oriole franks are hitting the grill next year!

With all of this said, I want to thank MASNsports.com and the great readers it has for bringing me along on this ride. Every team has its struggles each year, but it's baseball - and we all love it. In closing, remember that the Baltimore Orioles will rise again like a Phoenix from the ashes. Because hope springs eternal.

Domenic Vadala blogs about the Orioles at Birds Watcher, and his opinions appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. Follow him on Twitter: @DomenicVadala. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.