Orioles News, Notes, and Links

• Steve Melewski @ MASN talked about Orioles prospect Matt Hobgood with Dave Schmidt, the Orioles minor league pitching coordinator. Specifically, they talked about a known issue with Hobgood - his velocity.

"We can't sugarcoat it. We haven't seen the fastball velocity or the break on the curveball - no, we haven't seen that. But I have seen other things that lead me to believe that he is going to get that back. That, together with some things I have seen mentally and competitor-wise. I think when he puts that whole package together, we'll see the real guy that we drafted. I'm still in a positive frame of mind about Matt and I'm rooting hard for him."

• According to Jen Royal at MASN, the O's are getting close on Adam LaRoche; somewhere in the neighborhood of $16-$18 million over 3 years. I hope they land him.
• Brittany Ghiroli (from MLB.com) reports that Jason Berken and the O's training staff are both optimistic that he'll be back in time for spring training. Per Berken:

"It's like night and day... Physically, I feel incredible. I'm on track to where I know I'm going to start throwing a good month of long toss and be ready to go for Spring Training."

• Another not-so-juicy rumor: the Orioles aren't interested in Joe Blanton. You know it's the off-season and the winter meetings are already over, because the media is so bored that they've gotten to the stage where they're reporting on who the team isn't interested in. They're probably not interested in Harmon Killebrew, either, but I'm not writing that, am I? "Holy crap, the O's aren't interested in Keith Hernandez! They must hate Mexcians! Fire MacPhail!"
• The team is also supposedly interested in Marcus Thames. I should have guessed that, because this team has an obvious shortage of flawed outfielders with names that aren't pronounced the same way they're spelled.