When the Orioles were consistent winners in the 60's and 70's, they did it with pitching and defense. That's not pitching and homers or pitching and a good on base percentage. That's pitching and defense. If you can standout in those two areas, you will be in a lot of games and probably win your fair share of them.

Dave Trembley mentioned late last season that there was some sentiment in the O's organization and even among the coaching staff, to move Jim Johnson into the starting rotation After all, that was his role throughout his entire time in the minors. But, with spring training now less than three months away, that talk has cooled according to the O's manager.

The Orioles have made their needs pretty clear for this offseason. Now the time to make acquisitions is near with the Winter Meetings starting Monday. O's skipper Dave Trembley expects the Birds to be active in Indianapolis and on into the offseason. "I think the Orioles will be aggressive. But I also think some decisions throughout baseball may go further into the offseason than they have in the past, simply because of the economic situation and [because] the non-tender dates are later...

As baseball's Winter Meetings are set to begin on Monday, some fans are stoked to see what the O's first move will be. There seems to be a segment of fans who just want a move, the bigger the better, to create a little excitement around here. I can understand that, but if the O's make a trade, I hope they don't deal much if any of their young pitching.

As the baseball off season moves on, O's manager Dave Trembley never keeps that legal pad too far away. On it he makes notes about the upcoming season and writes down different possible lineups for his 2010 Orioles. Of course, Trembley is hoping there is player that will be in that lineup that he can add later, a middle of the order type hitter that the club will acquire. The skipper saw rookies Nolan Reimold and Matt Wieters deliver at the plate last year and both should have prominent...

ESPN's Buster Olney recently wrote an article praising the Orioles young base of talent. Baseball America listed Josh Bell as the fifth best prospect in the Arizona Fall League. That same publication listed six Orioles among the best players in their Double-A and Triple-A leagues from 2009. A picture has emerged that some national media think the O's have top young talent to build around. The Orioles are not talking up their own players, others are doing it for them.

There are a mountain of stories you can read on the internet about baseball and each team in the Majors. You can be online all day and still not come close to checking it all out. But the other day, I read an article in the Boston Globe that was very interesting to me. It was written by Sox writer Amalie Benjamin and is filled with quotes from Boston GM Theo Epstein.

We don't know for sure how hot or cool the O's trade talks are for Kevin Millwood. That doesn't stop us from expressing a few opinions and facts about the right hander. One reader suggested (without any documentation I may add) that the pitcher the O's are considering sending to Texas for Millwood is Brandon Erbe. If that is true, no thanks to that deal. Especially after Bowie manager Brad Komminsk told me recently he had Erbe as rated better than Jake Arrieta. If it would be a...

Let me understand this, or try to. The Yankees, who are looking to cut payroll some this year, acquired a player owed $23.75 million over the next three years and gave up three young players earning less than $1 million combined so far. Oh those misers in New York. I know that as an O's fan we might look to criticize anything the Yankees do, but I'm not sweating their Curtis Granderson acquisition.

Chris Ray has now been mentioned as an Oriole that could possibly go to Texas in a deal for Kevin Millwood. But that's news to Ray himself. "I haven't heard anything. I'm not surprised I haven't heard anything. I don't think my agent would know anything about this either," Ray said by phone from Baltimore's ESPNZone where today he took part in the O's annual Christmas party for kids.