Rule 5 prep and the Pie video

Now that all Major League teams have set their 40-man rosters, clubs have begun preparations for the Rule 5 draft which comes up December 9 at the Winter Meetings. "Now you simply go through all your reports and most people don't realize that there are more than 10,000 reports on this year's (available) players in virtually every club's system," O's director of player development, John Stockstill said. "In our case, (assistant director of player development) Tripp Norton we be involved, I'll be involved and Lee MacPhail (director, pro scouting) will head that with all our scouts. Tripp will also be involved with some of our arbitration cases. "Lee will use all of our reports available and we'll eventually target several players that we'd like to acquire," he said. When draft time comes, the O's will have ranked the available players. "You rank them several different ways. By position, by team need," Stockstill said. "You are, for the most part, talking about four plus years (of reports). Our development system has reports on opposing players, scouts file reports on opposing players. So it is not uncommon to have four to ten reports on any players you might acquire." Last year, 17 players were taken in the Major League phase of the draft. Over the years, players taken in this draft have included Johan Santana, Jose Bautista, Paul Blair, Josh Hamilton, Dan Uggla and Jay Gibbons by the Orioles in December of 2000. In this article, several players that could go in the Rule 5 draft are mentioned, including Ryan Adams, Pedro Beato and Wynn Pelzer of the Orioles. Meanwhile, the O's Felix Pie recently had to be restrained in a Dominican winter league game after he was picked off first base. Reader Avi M. posted it in the comments section of my blog yesterday. If you have yet to see it, click here for that video. Finally, ESPN's Jason Stark lists several teams that have dollars to spend in free agency this year. He doesn't feature them in the article, but at the end of it, the Orioles and Nationals make the list.