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.

To find out about more about the likely soon-to-be newest Oriole Kevin Millwood, I put in a call to my friend Josh Lewin, former Baltimore radio broadcaster. Josh, one of the top broadcasting talents in the game, is the Texas Rangers' TV play-by-play broadcaster so he knows Millwood well and has seen him pitch often. He provided some excellent insight. Here is what Lewin said about the right hander.

Thursday morning Johnson was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the Major League phase of the Rule 5 draft. The next few hours will certainly be interesting for O's minor league hurler Steve Johnson. Traded by the Dodgers to the O's in July in the George Sherrill deal, Johnson has not been placed on the Orioles' 40-man roster and he could be taken by another team in Thursday's Rule 5 draft at the Winter Meetings. "It's exciting, because if I do get picked I have a chance to stay on...

With the third pick in the Triple-A phase of today's Rule 5 draft the O's selected RHP Jose Duran from the Houston organization. Duran is a 6'1", 205 pounder from the Dominican Republic. He is 16-19, 4.08 in his career in 101 games, 39 starts. Duran is 24 years old. Last year, with Lancaster of the California League, he went 2-5, 8.06 in 27 games, 7 starts. Over 63 2/3 innings, he allowed 89 hits with 29 walks and 43 strikeouts.

Steve Johnson, it turns out, was playing it rather cool today during the Rule 5 Draft. So cool that he was sleeping when his name was called by the San Francisco Giants. His dad, MASN broadcaster and former Oriole Dave Johnson, was listening live to the draft and rushed upstairs to tell his son he'd been taken by a Major League team. "I got up kind of early the last few days, so I was sleeping today and he came in and jumped on the bed and woke me up to tell me. It was confusing when I...

Here are some comments from MASN broadcaster Dave Johnson. This morning Dave's son Steve was selected from the O's organization by the San Francisco Giants in the Rule 5 Draft at the Winter Meetings. Dave says Steve was sleeping at the time. "I didn't want to wake Steve up before the draft because I knew if he didn't get taken he was really going to be bummed. I knew that would make it a depressing day around the Johnson household. I barely slept last night, I was at my desk at 5 a.m....