NASHVILLE, Tenn. — GM Ben Cherington and the rest of the Red Sox baseball operations staff have packed their bags and are escaping the Gaylord Opryland Hotel on Thursday morning, a somewhat groundbreaking development given that many members of the staff never went outside during the four-day span of the winter meetings. The team’s most notable work occurred early in the meetings, with the agreements (still unofficial, pending physicals) with Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino.

The Sox continue to work to add a starter and one or two bench options (with the team prioritizing a versatile first baseman), but while the team has made some headway in at least one of those areas, Cherington could offer little detail this morning.

“We made progress on one thing but it’s not quite teed up yet,” he said.

Cherington did say nothing was close in the Sox’ effort to acquire a starting pitcher; the team also appears close to announcing a new manager of Triple-A Pawtucket to replace Arnie Beyeler, who was promoted to the big league coaching staff.

While work remains to be done regarding the building of the 2013 roster, Cherington suggested he was pleased with the overall shape that the team is taking, particularly given that he’s found players who addressed areas of need on the roster (first base with Napoli, right field (with center field ability) with Victorino) but without sacrificing either prospects or draft picks, since neither Napoli nor Victorino received one-year qualifying offers.

“We’ve been trying to add to the team without trying to take away from the team and keeping our core young talent in place so hopefully we’ve made some steps toward that,” he said. “We still have some more work to do. Clearly we’ve got to add some more things and we’ll have the rest of the winter to do that. I guess it was productive. We learned a lot and got a couple of things done.”