No easy options for Orioles to acquire pitching

DALLAS - The Orioles are beating the bushes trying to make a deal for a veteran starting pitcher, but it’s got be be like trying to eat soup with a fork.

Sure, it would be nice to talk the White Sox out of Severna Park’s Gavin Floyd, but what exactly do the O’s have to offer that wouldn’t take a huge chunk out of their not-so-huge nucleus of young talent?

Executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette was pretty clear in saying that Adam Jones, Matt Wieters and Nick Markakis are the players “you want to build around,’’ so he’s left with a lot of players who don’t have enough value -- even in combination -- to convince a possible trade partner to give up a decent starter. That’s assuming, of course, that he’s not shopping Jake Arrieta and Zach Britton.

He wants to be a player in all the talent markets, but at the moment, the number of medium players in the free-agent market actually work against a team that wants to trade for pitching from a limited orgnizational roster, since the teams that are in a position to give it up can probably just buy those kinds of players.

“We have a lot of work to do,’’ Duquette said repeatedly on Monday night.

You should take him at his word on that.