SARASOTA, Fla. - Zach Britton is scheduled to throw off flat ground Thursday and Friday. According to the left-hander, he'll rest on Saturday and long-toss again Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, though that schedule is subject to change. Britton is hoping to throw off a mound no later than next weekend. The Orioles will increase the number of Britton's throws to 100 and more to raise his "pitch count." He'll mix in other pitches on Monday, including his changeup and sinker. Dylan Bundy had a...

Baseball America has released their annual Top 100 prospect list and the Nationals' No. 1 prospect is also their No. 1 again, outfielder Bryce Harper. It is an impressive list again, with Harper just ahead of top prospects Rays' left-handed pitcher Matt Moore and Angels' outfielder Mike Trout. Baseball America executive editor Jim Callis said he spoke with 11 player personnel experts for another magazine feature, and they had Harper just ahead of Moore and Trout. The main reason:...

The Orioles today announced the schedules for their minor league spring training squads. The clubs will play 16 spring training contests. Minor league pitchers and catchers will report to camp on Sunday, March 4, while position players will report on Thursday, March 8. The Buck O'Neil Baseball Complex at Twin Lakes Park is located at 6700 Clark Road in Sarasota . The games are open to the public at no charge. Game times and locations are subject to change. The complete schedule of minor...

SARASOTA, Fla. - Matt Wieters caught Tsuyoshi Wada's bullpen session yesterday, so I decided to get a quick scouting report on the Japanese left-hander before today's early workout. "I think he's going to be a good pitcher," Wieters said. "He's going to be a mix-it-up guy. It was just a bullpen session, but he was throwing all four pitches on both sides of the plate, and that sort of lets you know that he has confidence in all his pitches and we're not just going to have to throw...

I've heard this question a lot recently: Who will start for the Orioles on opening day? To me, who cares? The bigger issue is who will start and what will happen the other 161 days. For some reason there is a bit of an obsession with the opening day assignment as if the club would have been a contender if Jeremy Guthrie was still here and everyone could pen him in now for that outing. The Orioles don't have a clear candidate right now for that start but they also don't have a clear...

SARASOTA, Fla. - Dana Eveland isn't known for bringing the heat, so he might want to join a different group when throwing a bullpen session in spring training. Eveland stood next to reliever Matt Lindstrom earlier today. Lindstrom almost knocked the mitt off catcher

VIERA, Fla. - Go ahead, call the Nationals' Davey Johnson a players' manager. Some major league skippers might bristle at that moniker, which to some indicates that they mollycoddle millionaires and refuse to exert their managerial authority. Not Johnson, who values the relationship he culls with his players, figuring the more intimate the understanding of his charges, the better he's able to perform his job. "I always try and put a guy in a situation that's conducive for him to succeed....

VIERA, Fla. - For the first workout of the spring for Nationals pitchers and catchers, the first time he's kicked off a major league camp since 2000 in Dodgertown at the now-vacatedVero Beach, Fla., facility, manager Davey Johnson took a page from the past in his instructions to a vastly improved mound staff. Fastballs and change-ups were allowed in the first side sessions. Breaking balls were not. When you're 69 and the oldest manager in the majors, you have a perspective some of the...

He's moving out of the cave and into the yard. The Orioles announced the hiring today of Ryan Wagner as the new public address announcer at Camden Yards. Here is the press release from the club: The Orioles today announced that Ryan Wagner has been selected as the new Voice of Oriole Park. Wagner was chosen to be the club's new public address announcer out of a field of 670 applicants. An Orioles fan originally from Baltimore, Wagner spent last season as a resident of Major League...

VIERA, Fla. - The ink on the inside of his left forearm, only a week old, speaks to the happy resolution Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos prefers not to speak of. In black script among a bevy of sky-blue highlights are the words, "Todo lo puedo en Cristo, que me fortalice" - "I put everything in Jesus, because he's got my back," Ramos said by way of translation - along with the Bible verse, Philippians 4:13, where the saying originated and the date "11-11-11." Last Nov. 11 will forever...