At MLBtraderumors.com, Tim Dierkes goes over the list of Orioles eligible for arbitration and offers his take on how things might break down.

It’s a large group — 15 players. The Orioles have a history of avoiding arbitration, so we have to wonder whether any of these will ever make it to a hearing. Here are the arbitration-eligible Orioles, according to the site:

Robert Andino,  Chris Davis, Lew Ford, Jason Hammel, Tommy Hunter, Jim Johnson, Brian Matusz, Darren O'Day, Troy Patton, Steve Pearce, Omar Quintanilla, Nolan Reimold, Mark Reynolds, Taylor Teagarden and Matt Wieters.

Some are obviously non-tenders — Ford, Pearce and Quintanilla. But then things get more interesting.

Dierkes writes of Reynolds: “Reynolds … would be arbitration eligible in the likely event the team chooses a [$500,000] buyout over his [$11 million] club option. Our projections suggest they could sign him for less than [$9 million] through the arbitration process, but that's still probably too hefty.”

It’s hard to disagree that $11 million is a high price for a high-strikeout, streaky power hitter, though Reynolds did develop into a deft first baseman. And $9 million still sounds high, too. It may come down to how much Reynolds wants to remain in Baltimore for whatever has become his true market value.

Dierkes projects the Orioles will keep the following from the eligible group: Johnson, Hammel, Wieters, Davis, O'Day, Hunter, Reimold, Matusz and Patton. According to MLBtraderumors’ estimates, the most expensive of the group would Johnson at $6.9 million, Hammel at $6.5 million and Wieters at $4.6 million.

Of course, we have a long way to go in an off-season that hasn’t even really begun. And that’s just one guess on how things will work out.