Baltimore Orioles Top 50 Prospects

Basallo is a power-hitting kaiju catching prospect who looks like a gear-wearing Rafael Devers. His swing looks a lot like Devers’, and he too has plus-plus power projection, a penchant for expanding the zone, plus arm strength, and some profound defensive flaws. Basallo became one of baseball’s best prospects in 2023, when the then-18 year-old hit .313/.402/.551 with 53 extra-base hits in 114 games and smooched Double-A. A stress fracture in Basallo’s right elbow, which was discovered just before 2024 spring training, kept him from catching until May and limited his action behind the dish throughout the entire season. He caught in just 56 games and donned the tools of ignorance on consecutive days only eight times, splitting his remaining games nearly equally between first base and DH. He hit .289/.355/.465 as a 19-year-old at Double-A Bowie, then was called up to Norfolk for the final month of play. Basallo broke 2025 camp at Norfolk as the youngest player at Triple-A, but he is dealing with elbow inflammation again this spring and won’t catch to start the season.

The elbow issue may have had a temporary impact on Basallo’s game last year, especially his throwing, which was a plus-plus attribute in 2023 but was more above-average in 2024. Basallo was popping closer to 1.95 on average rather than being in the 1.8s like he was in 2023, and his footwork remains kind of sloppy and immature. As is true of a lot of catchers his age (let alone his size), Basallo could stand to be more accurate and consistent coming out of his crouch, but he easily has the raw arm strength to catch, and if his peak form returns, he’s just some technical polish away from being a run-stopping weapon. His receiving isn’t good yet, but it isn’t so terrible that it damns Basallo permanently to first base. His ball blocking might, though. It’s this area of Basallo’s game that most needs to improve, especially when it comes to backhanding balls in the dirt. His size and mobility (especially when he’s moving to his left) are impressive, and commensurate with the traits of a primary catcher, but if Basallo were promoted tomorrow, he’d probably be a ball-blocking liability.

Though his offensive numbers have been incredible (he’s a career .285/.363/.479 hitter and has always been young for his level), Basallo has some growing to do at the plate as well. He’s very chase-prone, including much more often against fastballs than is typical, but Basallo already has ridiculous left-handed power at age 20 and is going to grow into more. Ludicrously listed at just 180 pounds (c’mon, Orioles), he’s actually more like 240 and is built like a sophomore edge rusher. Basallo is an unbelievably explosive rotator for an athlete his size, and his peak exit velocities are already one or two standard deviations better than the big league average, depending on the metric. The players who make a huge big league impact despite elevated chase and a contact rate hovering around 70% (like Basallo’s) all have this kind of power, hitters like Salvador Perez, Teoscar Hernández, and Bryce Harper. Basallo’s power is absolutely going to be at the level of those guys and other sub-70% contact sluggers, and if he can refine his approach as he matures, he’s going to become one of the best hitting catchers in baseball in his prime.

Basallo’s chalk 40-man platform year is 2025. He’s been promoted ahead of that pace so far, but it’s pretty rare for catchers with his particular issues to be in the express lane to the big leagues. If the Orioles just want access to Basallo’s bat and decide to fast track him as a DH, or proactively move him to first base knowing Adley Rutschman is in place as the franchise catcher for a while, then a late 2025 debut feels possible. If the Orioles want to give Basallo the best chance of having immediate success as a big league catcher, then he’s more likely on a late 2026 or spring 2027 trajectory. There are few other prospects in the minors who have this kind of offensive ceiling and a chance to play a premium position.

Mayo had a five-year track record of mashing dating back to high school before elevated strikeouts began to creep into his profile once he was promoted to Double-A. Since arriving in Bowie and then Norfolk, his K% has hovered around 25%, while Mayo’s underlying contact rate has slowly dipped into a problematic range, from 75% to 73% to 70%, as he’s progressed up the minor league ladder the last three years. Mayo’s funky, pull-heavy swing generates enormous pull-side power and loft, and he’s on time to destroy fastballs (his splits against plus velocity are great) even though he’s a massive, long-levered 6-foot-4 guy. His tendency to pull off toward the third base side has left him very vulnerable to sliders on the outer half, and as Mayo has faced more sentient pitching at the upper levels, this has been more consistently exploited.

In spite of this, Mayo crushed Triple-A (.287/.364/.562) at age 22, including after he returned from a month-long IL stint due to a fractured rib. He looked positively lost during his 17-game, late-season big league call-up to Baltimore, during which he K’d in nearly half of his plate appearances, and a measure of that has continued in the early going of 2025, both during spring training and at the start of the International League schedule. Mayo is starting to have a more polarized power-over-hit offensive profile, where his projected output looks more like Chris Carter and Luke Voit. Even as he has struggled, his contact rate (70%) has still been a shade better than those guys, and Mayo’s strength and extreme pull approach should allow him to get to enough of his immense power to profile as a 2-WAR type of first baseman. But Mayo’s swing is really funky looking. It has worked for him his entire career, but there have been scouts that whole time who were skeptical it would work in the big leagues, and what’s happening with Mayo right now is what it would look like if they’re right.

Mayo’s size makes it hard for him to move around at third base, and he has been speculatively projected to right field here at FanGraphs since before he was drafted because that’s the position that best takes advantage of his plus, max-effort arm strength. The Orioles have shown no inclination to try Mayo out there and began to deploy him at first base semi-frequently starting in 2023; he played about 20 games there each of the last two seasons, and has played first and third fairly evenly at the start of 2025. If Mayo can successfully play a more valuable position than first base, it will take pressure off the need for him to resolve his issues on offense.

McDermott was drafted by Houston in 2021 and then was traded to Baltimore as part of the Trey Mancini multi-team swap a couple of deadlines ago. He has tallied more minor league strikeouts than any other pitcher since 2022, with 456 ponchados in 322 innings. In 2024, McDermott struck out a third of opposing batters at Triple-A Norfolk across 100 innings, a total limited by a scapula stress reaction in his right shoulder that cost him all of August. As players were getting underway in Florida this spring, McDermott suffered a lat strain and opened the season on the shelf. As of list publication, he’s begun throwing live BPs and, per a source, is a couple of weeks from a formal rehab outing.

McDermott has impact stuff, and on any given night he’ll show you four plus pitches, but his arms-and-legs delivery has proven difficult for him to corral, and he has walked 14% of opposing hitters during the three-year span during which he has led the minors in strikeouts. McDermott has a huge wingspan and creates plus extension down the mound, which helps his heater jump on hitters. It also contributes to the inconsistency of his arm swing and is part of why he sprays his fastball all over the place. He sits 94 with flat angle and ride, and has two nasty breaking balls, a 75-78 mph curveball and an 82-85 mph slider. McDermott is such a loose, whippy athlete that even though he’s deep into his mid-20s, I’m still of the mind that starter-level feel for location will come with time. Evidence to that end: His changeup took a big step forward in 2024, and he was busting it out as a right-on-right weapon late in the year. The fact that he’s had multiple issues in a relatively short period of time is a concerning bummer, but when healthy, McDermott should be a five-and-dive type of mid-rotation starter.

Overn was a notable but frustrating prospect at USC. He was also (kind of) a wide receiver on the football team, though he never got any real playing time there. That might have been in part because Overn stayed pretty small all throughout college, listed at 6 feet and 170 pounds on his initial football bio page and 175 upon his entry to pro ball. Part of what made Overn frustrating in college was the decline in his performance as a draft-eligible sophomore. He doubled his home run total but was worse in every other hitting stat, and only had a 91 wRC+ in the Pac-12’s final baseball season. That said, Overn was still running really well — he was second in the PAC in steals and has the speed to play center field.

In less than a year since turning pro, Overn has begun to add meaningful strength and his swing has undergone an overhaul. It’s much more athletic than in 2024, and features bigger movements up and down his entire body as he unwinds. His chances of getting to meaningful power seem much better now with his new swing and improving physique. The added strength hasn’t cost Overn any speed, and he’s still a long-term center field fit. Remember that this guy was an eligible soph and has played a year less of high-level baseball than most prospects his age, so there’s some late-arriving skill projection here too. This is an early arrow-up guy from the 2025 season and I think the changes he has made give Overn a good shot to be a well-rounded player.

Garcia has the most exciting offensive skill set and projection of the Orioles’ many 2025 DSL prospects. He’s a projectable switch-hitting infielder who has already begun to get much, much stronger than when he signed for $500,000 in January of 2024. Though he’s still listed on his player page as being 165 pounds, Garcia looks closer to two bills on the Sarasota backfields right now, and he’s been hitting absurd opposite field tanks in live BP and during minor league spring games. Garcia’s swings are aggressively geared for power, but so far that hasn’t had a detrimental impact on his contact ability, which was a steady 79% in last year’s DSL, though we can’t really tell if that’s true for righty-hitting Elvin, as he’s only had a handful of plate appearances against lefties so far. When Garcia strides, he occupies almost the entire batter’s box, and his swing has dangerous loft throughout the entire strike zone. It looks a lot like Samuel Basallo’s swing did as he started to break out. Garcia’s burgeoning physicality will likely relegate him to third base, and probably soon. He played a mix of shortstop and third in 2024, but at the rate he’s adding strength, shortstop is a longshot. That’s going to be okay. This is a high-upside prospect who has begun to separate himself from the rest of Baltimore’s complex group, a potential impact player who resembles the sort of domestic high schooler who would go inside the top 10 picks of a draft.

Young has straddled the 45 and 50 FV tiers over the last year depending on his workload and velocity, which have each been a little inconsistent since he returned from Tommy John in the middle of 2023. At his best, which he seems to be at the start of the 2025 season, Young’s ability to command his riding low-90s fastball is enough to make it a plus pitch despite below-average velocity. He was throwing harder than that early in 2024, but he was limited to between two and four innings for many of his outings, and only worked six innings in a start two times all year. Two starts into 2025, Young has nearly matched that.

Young’s profile isn’t sexy, but it is polished and stable. In addition to his sneaky heater, he has a plus curveball that he deploys judiciously, and his above-average changeup has tumble and fade; he uses it against both lefty and righty hitters. Add in a cutter, and Young has stuff that finishes in all four quadrants of the strike zone, and his plus command seasons each pitch’s effectiveness. His delivery is graceful and consistent, and the poise and pace with which he conducts himself on the mound is mature and ready for prime time. Starters with plus command of a good fastball can live off of that in a back-of-the-rotation capacity, but the improvement to Young’s changeup (which is three ticks harder in 2025 than last year) and the quality of his curveball (which has plus spin and depth) give him two other good options. He also came close to checking the “innings load durability” box in 2024 when he threw 111 frames, though again, his per-start deployment was conservative. Young isn’t a monster top-of-the-rotation guy, but he’s a big league-ready no. 4/5 starter on a contender, and is likely to contribute to Baltimore’s cause in 2025.

Bradfield is a plus-plus runner with the skill set of an old school, top-of-the-order catalyst; he’s also a plus center field glove. A force of nature on the bases in high school, scouts wanted to see Bradfield become stronger in college. He did enough of that at Vanderbilt to slash .311/.426/.447 there (with a little dip in production as a junior) and go in the 2023 first round, but it’s probably not enough to do much damage in pro ball.

Angular and skinny, Bradfield’s .272/.358/.371 line from 2024 is emblematic of his tools on offense, with his profile driven by his terrific swing decisions and contact ability, but lacking much power. He hunts fastballs and is adept at parsing them from breaking stuff, which he rarely offers at. This is in part because Bradfield lacks the strength to do much with softer stuff, and his downward-cutting swing tends to drive it into the ground. Against heaters, Bradfield is an all-fields singles hitter who can occasionally inside-out a fastball down the left field line for a double. He is very difficult to make whiff inside the strike zone (90% in-zone contact rate in 2024) and will beat out a ton of infield choppers and grounders thanks to his speed (Bradfield tends to run in the 4.1s, at times faster with a jailbreak swing). Still, the contact and on-base aspects of Bradfield’s game might play down a bit due to the quality of his contact.

If we look at all of the center fielders across the last half decade or so, you don’t really see players who slug under .400 end up north of the average everyday player line. That doesn’t mean Bradfield is bad, it just means he’s more likely to land somewhere closer to the 20th-30th range among big league center fielders. He’s a winning player who impacts the game in a myriad of ways and has a long track record of performing in this relatively slugless style. The day before list publication, Bradfield left his game with left hamstring discomfort after a feet-first slide into third base on a triple. He walked off under his own power, which is a good sign, but if for some reason he’s going to miss an extended amount of time, I’ll come back and update this blurb.

O’Ferrall only hit eight career home runs at Virginia, which is kind of damning given the offensive environment in this era of college baseball; somehow during a junior season in which he barely struck out, his batting line (.324/.367/.454, 79 wRC+) was below the ACC average. But O’Ferrall’s bat-to-ball skill and shortstop defense made him the 49th ranked prospect on the 2024 draft board, and he was picked 32nd overall. O’Ferrall is a Baryshnikov type at shortstop. He’s not especially physical or toolsy, with his creative actions and elegant, balletic footwork and body control driving his fit there. Hands and arm accuracy were issues for him as a sophomore, but he improved in those areas as a junior. A lightning fast exchange helps bolster his arm strength enough for him to be a cozy shortstop fit.

O’Ferrall was also perhaps the toughest player to make whiff in the entire 2024 draft, as he had a 96% in-zone contact rate that year. He is geared for opposite field contact a lot of the time, but unlike a lot of inside-out hitters, he can pull a decent subset of inside pitches and has great plate coverage in the up-and-away part of the zone. He has rhythmic hitting hands, and his wrists are quick through the zone.

The key developmental variable for Griff in pro ball is his power. He basically had none in college, with his only doubles hooked down the left field line; this guy wasn’t pounding balls into the gap or anything. But count O’Ferrall among the Orioles’ 2024 draft picks who spent the offseason in the weight room; he is noticeably stronger at the start of the 2025 season. It’s probably too much to say that he’s a lock for a power breakout; it’s more that he’s in position to prove that he has cleared a bar of physical viability that it wasn’t certain he could in college. It has raised O’Ferrall’s floor as a player; this kind of defense and contact combination plays as a good utility guy or low-end shortstop regular. If the power keeps coming over the next couple of season, O’Ferrall might have even more ceiling than that.

Honeycutt is a power/speed center field prospect with two-fold hit tool risk, some of which is created by his swing, but the bulk of which is a result of his extreme tendency to chase. At North Carolina, he posted a .293/.412/.638 career line with a 27% K% (which is a red flag rate in college) as a junior. There were real offensive question marks surrounding Honeycutt when he was drafted. The stiff, deep, low load of his hands made it tough for him to catch up to decent fastballs. Baltimore has already changed the way his hands set up, both in their placement and the angle of his bat. Now we wait to see how much more of the upper part of the zone Honeycutt can cover as the 2025 minor league season gets underway. There are also breaking ball recognition issues here; Honeycutt had a 56% contact rate and 35% chase rate against sliders in 2024. Early on in 2025, that still looks like an issue.

While this creates risk on the offensive side of Honeycutt’s profile and might make it tough for him to get to his power, his profile’s floor is still pretty high because of what he can do on defense. Honeycutt comfortably has the speed for center, and looked more comfortable going into the gaps and at the catch point in 2024. He has plus projection in center and should at least be a viable bench option as a runner and defensive replacement based on this alone. There’s a chance Honeycutt will mash lefties enough to play a more substantial complementary role.

Gibson’s fastball has added four ticks of velocity since he last pitched at Liberty. He ripped 92-95 mph heaters past A-ball hitters in 2024, punching out 13 per 9 IP at Low-A before a mid-July promotion to High-A. He is a chiseled 6-foot-5 and powers way down the mound throughout his delivery, generating seven feet of extension. Gibson has successfully added a second breaking ball to his repertoire in the form of an upper-80s cutter, which he backdoors into the zone consistently. His best secondary is a knuckle curveball with big depth, and he can turn over a tailing changeup, which he uses against hitters of either handedness. Aside from a stab-y, relatively long and stiff arm action, Gibson looks the part of a big league starter athletically and mechanically, and he has four good pitches that all finish in different directions. In 2024, he threw starter-quality strikes, got an above-average rate of groundballs (59%), and sustained his stuff across just shy of 100 innings. He looks like a good roster’s no. 4/5 starter right now, but if the improvement Gibson showed in 2024 was the start of a continuous trend in his stuff, he’ll be more of an impact mid-rotation type.

Fruit endured fairly rotten results in college at Eastern Michigan and Troy, and had a career collegiate ERA approaching 7.00. But the Orioles considered him ripe for development and picked him in the ninth round of the 2023 draft. He’s made successful changes in pro ball, adding velocity and reworking his breaking stuff. In his 2024 pro debut season, Fruit had a 3.03 ERA across 107 High-A innings, with a 25.1% strikeout rate and 12.2% walk rate. He was already throwing hard in college, but his velo has trended up in pro ball, with fastballs in the 96-99 mph range early on in 2025. Fruit’s cross-bodied, high-slot delivery generates over seven feet of extension, and some of his heaters have natural cut. Like Dutch farmers in the 16th century, the Orioles augmented Fruit to their liking, as he now works with a cutter and slider rather than a slider and curveball. The inconsistent quality and location of his secondary stuff causes it to play down a bit, but at its best, Fruit’s 82-85 mph slider and 89-92 mph cutter flash plus. Ideally the Orioles can next seed his repertoire with something that has arm-side movement to give him a weapon versus lefties. Fruit’s arm strength and relatively new breaking pitches put him on an exciting trajectory as a potential no. 4/5 starter.

De León is a high-ceiling’d 21-year-old lefty with a very projectable 6-foot-3 frame. He was sitting in the mid-90s throughout a 2024 season in which he worked 87.2 innings in a piggyback role, and struggled with walks after an early-season promotion to High-A (14.6% BB%). De León has a lightning fast arm and was sitting in the 95-97 mph range during the spring of 2025 before he was shut down at the start of the season with an elbow impingement. His fastball has uphill angle and tail, but De León has very little feel for locating it. The good news is that with its angle, so long as he’s elevating it consistently, it should be fine. He was not doing that in 2024, and his heater missed shockingly few bats. De León’s slider, on the other hand, played like a plus-plus pitch. It has variable movement depending on its location, sometimes spinning out with purely horizontal action. It’s an 84-88 mph wild card that probably wouldn’t play as well as it did last year against big league bats.

While De León lacks fastball and slider command, he regularly dots his changeup on the arm side of the plate. He turns over a pretty good one, and that pitch projects to plus even though he’s barely using it right now. Though he has a ton of relief risk, in part because his arm stroke is so long, the way De León is built and moves is indicative of a starting pitcher. He’s probably going to take another three years of polish to be ready for prime time, which means spending his first option year entirely in the minors. The light at the end of the tunnel here is a potential mid-rotation arm with rare lefty starter velo and two plus secondaries, the floor looks like Genesis Cabrera.

Anderson is a contact-oriented switch-hitting catcher who might need to move to a different position. He slashed .341/.441/.560 during his UVA career and .288/.361/.438 after the draft. Though he’s quiet at the catch point and a strong edge-of-the-zone receiver, Anderson’s arm is substandard. He’s slow out of his crouch and lots of his pop times are north of two seconds. The emerging good news is that Anderson is a talented first base defender with plus hands. There are recent examples — Guardians prospect Cooper Ingle is one — of a catcher’s throwing improving with dev focus on exchange pace and accuracy, but if that doesn’t happen for Anderson, he can still make an impact on defense at first.

Anderson was a big time contact performer in college (86% contact rate, 92% in-zone) and has plus feel for the strike zone. His lefty swing is more dynamic and has natural loft, though sometimes Anderson is apt to over-swing against changeups. Right-handed, Anderson swung and missed only about 20 times during his entire junior year, but he’s not as dangerous from that side. The broad strokes of Anderson’s profile are similar to Victor Caratini’s.

Weston was already a low-slot slinger at Michigan, but the Orioles lowered his arm slot even more and he’s had success through the mid-minors, posting a 2.97 ERA, 28.9% strikeout rate and 7.3% walk rate across High- and Double-A in 2024. Weston has also added some pitches since turning pro. Most notably, he’s now throwing both a changeup and a splitter, and he’s added a cutter. Weston’s ability to attack all four quadrants of the zone with starter-quality control makes him a high-floored pitching prospect with a swingman/long relief floor. His deceptive sidearm look helps his sinking low-90s fastball play up (he’s sitting 92-94 early in 2025, which is a couple ticks above where his velo was when he was drafted), and his two different offspeed pitches (his changeup tails, while his splitter finishes with sink in all kinds of different directions) give Weston an added element of unpredictability. Though his pitches generated slightly above-average miss across the board in 2024, Weston’s raw stuff is closer to 45- and 50-grade, but it’s seasoned favorably by the depth of his repertoire and his sequencing. He might downshift into a long relief role on a deep enough pitching staff (this guy isn’t starting for the Phillies, for example), but on a lesser team, he’s in the rotation.

Nuñez came to the O’s in the 2022 trade that sent Jorge López to Minnesota. He made his full-season debut in 2023, throwing just over 100 innings, and he was off to a great start in 2024 when he was shut down for the season in May with a shoulder injury. Though he had pitched in just 20 games above Low-A, the Padres still saw fit to use their Rule 5 pick on him. He didn’t make their club and was sent back to the Orioles just before the start of the 2025 season.

Nuñez was sitting 92-95 and touching 97 before he got hurt, and he has rare fastball spin, averaging around 2,500 rpm. Still, it’s an average fastball that played down due to Nuñez’s lack of command, and he wasn’t throwing quite so hard during 2025 spring training with San Diego. Nuñez’s secondary stuff is awesome. His best sliders have sharp, two-plane shape with late break, and they’re nasty enough to freeze hitters or get them to chase. Because of his fastball’s in-zone vulnerability, Nuñez often uses his breaking ball as a way to get ahead in the count. His least used pitch is a firm changeup at 85-88 mph that will flash late, unhittable diving action. It’s thrown with the same arm speed as his fastball and falls off the table when Nuñez releases it right. Too often, however, he’ll throw changeups that are easily identifiable as balls out of the hand. The pitch mix to start is here, and despite being listed at 5-foot-11, Nuñez has a very sturdy, muscular build and a gorgeous arm action that quell concerns about him needing to work in relief due to a lack of size. He’s a plus athlete who explodes off the mound when he has to field his position (though he badly needs to improve as a defender). Though he’s 24, Nuñez is a developmental project whose floor is that of a slider-heavy reliever, but he has the pitch mix of a potential no. 4 starter.

Bragg has become a relevant starting pitching prospect pretty quickly after going in the eighth round of the 2023 draft. In 2024, he worked 96.1 innings across 24 outings and carried a 3.36 ERA, a 30.1% strikeout rate, and a 5.4% walk rate at Low-A Delmarva. Bragg’s low release height creates uphill angle on his 92-95 mph rise/run fastball, which allowed it to miss bats at a plus rate, as did his low-80s lateral-action slider. He can manipulate the shape of his breaker to be more like a cutter at times, and his command of it is plus. The sink on his changeup is analytically exciting, and if Bragg can more consistently get that pitch to finish below the zone rather than in it, it’s going to be a plus weapon. Bragg is tracking like a post-2026 season 40-man add and a 2027 contributor toward the back of Baltimore’s rotation.

German’s velocity climbed from being in the mid-70s at his West Seattle high school to the mid-90s during his junior year at Seattle U, where he was sitting 92-93 and working 95% of the time with his fastball/slider combo as a starter. In his first pro season, he enjoyed a velo bump and sat more 93-95, added a second breaking ball to his mix, and increased his split/change usage compared to college. Each of those new weapons generated its own plus miss rate in 2024, and across 21 piggyback outings (73.2 innings) German was dominant, posting a 1.59 ERA and 11-to-2 K-to-BB ratio. That splitter might have another gear, as German was using it more and more toward the end of the 2024 season, including against righties.

His delivery is a little stiff, and German is fairly tightly wound as an athlete, but he has a prototypical starter’s size and build at a strapping 6-foot-3, and he has four distinct pitches. Holding something approaching his 2024 level of strike-throwing and avoiding a regression to his below-average college control will be a key for German in 2025. So, too, will be him holding his velo increase across more than just 73 innings. If, by the end of 2025, German has pitched as well again across 100 or so frames, he’ll at least move into the 45 FV tier.

Allsup spent most of his underclass seasons at Auburn in their bullpen before he transitioned into the rotation as a junior. He struggled so badly in the middle of the year that he was shifted back into the ‘pen for parts of the rest of the season, then his velocity exploded late in the calendar and he dominated in late April and May. Allsup would sit 95-97 early in outings and then be back in the 93-96 mph range for the rest of the game. He’s a powerfully built athlete with a whippy arm and high-three-quarters slot. He was sitting 94-97 in his first couple 2025 starts and seems to have changed the gears of his breaking pitches, from a slider/curveball mix in college to a cutter/slider combo in pro ball. His cutters have been 88-90 mph, his gyro slider more 80-82 mph. Avoiding the long ball will be a big part of Allsup’s development; he surrendered 13 of them in just 62.1 innings as a junior. He’s a potentially surface-scratching developmental starter with a pretty cozy relief fallback in the event that he remains homer-prone as a starter, or that this early-season velo can’t be sustained.

Fabian had a very interesting amateur trajectory, starting with his decision to skip the draft as a high school senior in order to enroll early at Florida. He had a good freshman season, then went to the Cape and raked, which he continued to do during his COVID-shortened sophomore year. His first draft-eligible season, 2021, featured an exorbitant number of strikeouts, but also lots of home runs: Fabian had the second-most strikeouts in Division-I baseball and was eighth in homers. Even though teams no doubt looked at the strikeout issues in the context of Fabian’s age (he was 20 at the time), there was a gap between what teams were willing to do to sign him and what Fabian was willing to take, so even though Boston drafted him in the second round, Fabian didn’t sign and went back to Florida for a fourth season. He did quell his strikeout issues somewhat (his K% dropped from 29.4% to 22.3%), but Fabian didn’t do better bonus-wise. He went 67th overall and signed for just over $1 million.

Fabian has hit at least 20 homers in each of his two full pro seasons, but his strikeouts rate has climbed back up to a scary 32%. In 2024, he slashed .233/.326/.432 at Double-A Bowie and then his output tanked after he was promoted to Norfolk for the final 30 games of the season. Fabian had a 59% contact rate against fastballs last year, missing them at twice the average big league rate. This season, the Orioles have changed Fabian’s swing; his hands are setting up much lower than they have in years past. How this affects Fabian’s contact ability, or the regularity with which he gets to power, we won’t know until he gets a big enough Triple-A sample to study. He was already a 22 degree launch hitter (which is arguably excessive) before the changes, and Fabian gets to power when he makes contact. What will allow him to have a big league role and try various swing iterations until something (hopefully) works is his center field defense, which is above average. Keon Broxton is a fair skill set comp for Fabian, who is tracking like a flawed part-time player who’ll have a narrow window of power production.

Sanchez is a physical, lefty-hitting outfielder who slashed .333/.432/.605 in the 2024 DSL. His gorgeous swing is maybe the best looking cut in the system and generates big pull-side loft. Sanchez knows how to use the ground to generate power, and he’s already doing so with ease and without elaborate mechanics. His hit tool probably won’t be tested until he faces better pitching stateside, and there is some excessive chase lurking in the background of Sanchez’s profile. He has played all three outfield positions but mostly right field, which is where he fits best. For now, he’s a projectable power prospect who’s already wielding pretty impressive pop for his age. He was a little older than most of the other prominent DSL hitting prospects last year, but he has among the most exciting present offensive tools.

Rodríguez is a promising young catching prospect who has a puncher’s chance to be a primary option eventually, mostly thanks to his precocious feel to hit. Rodríguez spent most of 2024 on the Sarasota complex, where he walked more than he struck out and hit .308/.419/.421 en route to an August promotion to Delmarva. Last year’s underlying contact data was really nutty: 4% swinging strike rate, 89% contact rate, 81% out of zone contact. That’s one of the 20 best chase contact rates from the entire 2024 minor league season, way up in Jacob Wilson territory. Quick wrists and great hitter’s timing drive Rodríguez’s ability to make so much contact. He has great feel for matching his footwork to the speed of different pitch types, his hands are quick enough to allow for deep-traveling pitches, and Rodríguez works back through the middle of the field.

The pathway to 400 annual plate appearances is probably going to need to be carved by Rodríguez’s hit tool. He lacks power, and he isn’t an especially projectable athlete, as he’s already a physical guy. But plus contact and defense would be enough for Rodríguez to profile as a primary catcher, and that outcome is in play. Watch Rodríguez play defense with runners on base, and he does some pretty advanced stuff. He’ll transition from a traditional crouch to a one-kneed presentation while the pitch is mid-flight. He benefits from the ball-blocking mobility the crouch affords when he needs to, but he has the option to frame on a knee if he wants. Rodríguez’s average arm plays up a bit thanks to his accuracy. This is a skilled young prospect with a backup catcher’s floor and a shot to trend above that if his hit tool keeps playing to this level as he climbs.

Wells transferred from Texas Tech to Texas State (for my money, the school with the coolest color scheme in NCAA sports) after his freshman season, and had a “stock down” spring as a junior, when he posted a 5.02 ERA. The Orioles deployed him as a piggyback starter in his first pro season (he only worked about three innings per outing) and Wells struggled, posting a 6.71 ERA at Aberdeen. During the spring of 2025, however, Wells looks like a candidate to be fast-tracked in a relief role, potentially of the high-leverage variety. His delivery has been overhauled; its pace has increased and his arm slot has been lowered, which has resulted in a massive velocity spike and a change in the shape of Wells’ slider. He has bumped 100 in Grapefruit League play and now has a really nasty mid-80s sweeper, rather than the below-average bullet-style slider he had in 2024. It’s plausible Wells could still be developed as a starter to see where this goes across a bigger workload; the angle of his sweeper looks like it will play as a back foot weapon against lefties. But it’d be awfully tempting to put Wells in the express lane to Baltimore if he’s going to be parked in the 96-100 mph range as a reliever like he has been this spring.

Mejia didn’t throw quite as hard as fellow DSL laser-slinger Keeler Morfe, but he wasn’t far off, and his size and delivery are much more typical of a big league starter. Mejia is a projectable 6-foot-3 and was sitting 95-98 at the end of the DSL season. He has a smooth, cross-bodied delivery and a long arm stroke that he struggles to repeat, but his athletic grace and fluidity indicate Mejia has a good shot to polish his command. He’ll mix in below-average secondary stuff, mostly a low-90s slider/cutter and changeup. Though he’s a work-in-progress as a craftsman, Mejia is comparable to high school pitchers who go somewhere in the pick 35-50 range of any given draft.

Forret signed for $450,000 in the 2023 14th round. In 2024, he worked just shy of 100 innings with a sub-4.00 ERA, and spent most of the season at High-A (where he’s back to start 2025). That’s incredible for a junior college pitcher in his first year of pro ball. Forret was aided by a velocity spike compared to his 2023 junior college and Cape Cod look, when he more often sat 89-92. Last year with the Orioles, and again at the start of the 2025 season, Forret’s fastball was more often in the 93-95 mph range. It relies on deception and angle to be effective; it doesn’t have great movement and is vulnerable when Forret doesn’t elevate it enough. His cross-bodied delivery helps him hide the ball but also presents an atypical look for a starter, and Forret threw a below-average rate of strikes with his fastball last season.

Forret’s 82-86 mph two-planed slider is his best pitch, and often operates as a means for him to get strikes one and three. This breaking ball is new; he had a good overhand curveball in college and will still occasionally throw it, but he’s working primarily off this new slider. It looks like the grip on Forret’s changeup has also changed to more resemble that of a splitter, a widely applied developmental feature for many pitchers in this system. This pitch missed bats at a better rate than any of Forret’s other pitches in 2024, but its finish is inconsistent. The rate at which Forret has improved and progressed is impressive and exciting. Still, I’m a little bearish on the command projection here because of Forret’s delivery. That, combined with what I think is a fairly vulnerable fastball, funnels him more into a multi-inning relief projection.

Reilly was an effective swingman and long reliever at Vanderbilt, but he was being developed as a starter by Pittsburgh when he was traded to Baltimore for Billy Cook at the 2024 deadline. Reilly’s 2024 line — 119.1 innings, 3.47 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 29.7% K, 12% BB — is more notable when you consider he threw roughly 50 innings a year at Vanderbilt. Even if we count his summer ball innings, Reilly doubled his previous career innings high and had success at Double-A even as the explosion of his fastball dwindled some at the end of the season.

The carry on Reilly’s fastball is the cornerstone of his profile. It helps cover for his 40-grade command, and also sets him up to bend cutters and sliders in at the top of the zone. Though it sits just 93-94, Reilly’s fastball missed bats at a plus-plus rate in 2024. His style of pitching is probably always going to be somewhat inefficient because his fastball plays best when he’s nibbling the top of the zone, but Reilly’s control on its own creates some relief risk. Developing the weapons to deal with lefties will be a key for Reilly across the next two seasons. It looks like he’s transitioned from a circle change to a splitter grip, and that pitch is new enough to have rep-based projection. Reilly can also shape his slider in a way that gives it more of a curveball look, which can act as a means to get ahead of hitters in the count. Reilly has through 2026 to polish that pitch, and his command, en route to a likely 40-man roster spot and 2027 debut at the back of the rotation.

Bright has a great curveball and has demonstrated starter durability, gradually increasing his season-long innings count up to 112 over the last three years, including his draft season at Auburn. He held 92-95 mph fastball velocity all throughout the 2024 season and was still reaching back for the occasional 96-97 dart in September. His curveball is a power upper-70s breaker with knee-buckling depth. It spins in at 3,000 rpm and generated a 50% miss rate in 2024. But Bright has struggled to find a viable third pitch in either his cutter or changeup, and his walk rates have been consistently worse than average in pro ball. Given Bright’s ability to spin his curveball, that he’s been unable to find a second good breaker is surprising. His cutter has utility as a glove-side option, but it isn’t especially nasty yet. If starter-quality command continues to elude Bright, he’s a candidate for a trial move to the bullpen to see if his velo pops in that role. That could happen as soon as this summer, as Bright is in his 40-man platform year and still has some developmental hurdles to clear as a starter.

Martinez was connected to the Yankees at one point before he signed, but the Cardinals and Orioles emerged over time, with Baltimore agreeing to a deal for just shy of $1 million in 2024. Like a lot of Orioles signees in the international market, Martinez was one of the youngest players in his class and is still just 17 as he enters his second pro season. In his first, he slashed .278/.417/.466 with a very concerning 30.4% strikeout rate. He is a power-hitting lotto ticket. At a broad-shouldered and explosive 6-foot-4, Martinez already has deadly raw power (he had a 53% hard-hit rate in 2024, which is absurd in the DSL), and he has room for a lot more mass and strength. He is going to have enormous power at peak. Just how scary is the hit tool risk? Martinez had a 67% contact rate, which is toward the bottom of what is acceptable from a big league hitter. If he can sustain even that low rate as he climbs the minors, he’s going to be okay so long as he keeps hitting for this kind of power. If that contact rate dwindles into the low 60s, however, he’s in trouble. Still, it’s easy to forget about the risk here and dream on Martinez’s power when you see him really cut it loose and swing as hard as he can; his bat speed is incredible. He has 30-homer potential even if he ends up with a below-average hit tool, but there’s definitely a chance the bottom falls out of his contact enough for him to bust.

Morfe was a wave-making 2024 DSL prospect, as he was one of the hardest throwers on the circuit, sitting 96 and touching triple digits in his second season there. The Orioles thought enough of his performance down there to promote him for a couple Low-A starts in August and then assign Morfe to full-season ball when camp broke in 2025, even though he’s still 18 for another few months as of list publication.

Morfe’s duality was on display in his first 2025 outing, when he touched 100 but was too wild to get out of the first inning. He’s a sensational little athlete who comes bounding off the rubber and generates nutty velocity for a pitcher his size, albeit at the expense of any kind of command right now. That’s not shocking. Morfe is still 18 and is sitting 96-99; regardless of his size, it’d be unreasonable to expect him to wield his arm speed with precision. Morfe’s relief risk is heightened not only by his wildness, but also by his size. He’s listed at 5-foot-8 (I eyeball him closer to 5-foot-10 at this point) and is very slight of build. The occasional Marcus Stroman or Yordano Ventura will succeed, but they’re the exception. In addition to the velocity, Morfe will flash a plus changeup and slider, but he also throws many that are nowhere near the zone. Despite Baltimore’s aggressive line of promotion here, Morfe looks like a long-term dev project. It’s probably good he’s in full season ball because he likely would have just overwhelmed FCL hitters and posted artificially low walk rates without having had to hone his control at all. Now he gets to be tested, both in terms of his strike-throwing and stamina, on the Eastern Shore. This is a high-variance prospect for whom a reasonably optimistic outcome would be late-inning relief.

Lord is an exciting developmental prospect whose velocity screamed northward throughout college. His pro career hasn’t quite gotten off the ground yet, as Lord pitched in one game after the 2023 draft, and then not at all in 2024 due to an elbow strain and a July Tommy John. Lord’s fastball velo climbed 10 ticks from late high school through his draft year. In between, he transferred from Division III Carleton College to Washington, where he eventually sat 94 and was up to 97, with downhill plane and cut. Lord’s stuff made progress at UW but his results didn’t, and he ran an ERA over 6.00 in his draft spring. He has a prototypical pitcher’s build at a lanky and limber 6-foot-3, and he creates big breaking ball movement despite limited development. The reps lost to the injury funnel Lord’s projection to the bullpen; because of his TJ’s timing, he’s going to miss most or all of the 2025 season, and 2026 is his 40-man platform year. That’s a tight timeline to successfully develop into a starter. The good news is you don’t have to squint especially hard to see a novel, cutter/slider late-inning reliever’s stuff here.

Despite his size and prototypical build, Beavers has struggled to add strength and power since turning pro, and his peak exit velocities remain comfortably below the big league average, especially for a player whose best fit is in an outfield corner. He slashed .242/.342/.408 at (mostly) Bowie last season with roughly average contact and strikeout rates. Beavers’ swing has extreme lift, and he’s averaged 20-22 degrees of launch as a pro, but he doesn’t have the raw juice for that to be meaningful in the way it is for someone like, say, Andy Pages. Beavers also has looming vulnerability against elevated fastballs, which perhaps hasn’t been exposed by mid-minors arms just yet. Beavers is a fringe center field defender with a below-average arm. If his contact ability can hold up against big league arms, then we’re looking at a slightly above-replacement outfield option, which is where Beavers’ ZiPS projections peg him at this point. At his size, there’s always a possibility for meaningful late strength gains, but Beavers’ physicality was most impressive during his days at Cal and hasn’t progressed in pro ball.

It’s a bummer we didn’t get to watch Willems play college baseball at TCU, because his moniker and aesthetic are both in its wheelhouse, with wet, shoulder-length curly hair and a motorcycle cop mustache. Instead, Willems was a $1 million eighth rounder as a power-hitting developmental catcher. There were scouts who thought his bonus was that big simply because the Orioles had the dough to throw around, and that Willems was more like a mid-six-figure prospect, but he’s done pretty well in pro ball and enters 2025 coming off two consecutive 17-homer seasons. In 2024, he slashed .243/.322/.462 at mostly High-A and finished with an .891 OPS in the Arizona Fall League. He has loose, explosive hands that generate pole-to-pole power and extreme launch. Though Willems is going to strike out at a fair clip because he struggles to cover the outer third of the zone, he’s going to get to enough power to be a relevant role player so long as he can catch at least some of the time.

Willems plays a mix of catcher and first base, and is still developing at the former. He’s a pretty good receiver and pitch framer, and his throwing accuracy helps his pedestrian arm strength play, but his ball-blocking is pretty bad. Pitchers with really nasty stuff that tends to finish in the dirt might be tough for Willems to catch, but command merchants who live on the corners will benefit from his framing and keep his issue from being exposed. This should happen frequently enough to enable Willems to catch some of the time, get the occasional 1B/DH start, and be a potent bench weapon.

Cuevas played all over the diamond in rookie ball, but in 2024, he pared things down to (in order of frequency) right field, center field and first base. He doesn’t have especially good hands, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s limited to the outfield in the near future. The good news is that Cuevas’ look in center field has been flashy enough to merit long-term development there. Cuevas is a short-levered lefty stick with pull-side power. After he K’d at an orange flag rate in his first DSL season, Cuevas’ strikeouts have came down to a more palatable level the last two seasons. His style of hitting tends to lend itself to strikeouts, and Cuevas may not sustain his 15.6% 2024 K-rate, but he’s so geared to lift and pull that he’ll get to his power. A Ben Gamel/Brian Goodwin sort of roster fit feels reasonable to project for Cuevas. He’s currently on the shelf with a hamstring injury.

Strowd is a cutter-heavy kitchen sink reliever whose high-effort delivery compromises his ability to command the ball. Strowd’s whole-body delivery only has a modicum of consistency because of how short his arm action is. He’ll reach back for 97-98 with his fastball, but tends to favor his low-90s cutter early in counts and use his fastball as a chase pitch. Off of that he bends in a mid-80s 12-to-6 curveball, which flashes plus, and in the past he has flashed a tailing changeup, though that pitch has been absent early in 2025. Strowd spikes a ton of non-competitive pitches, and even though he generated many swinging strikes against Triple-A hitters, he has carried an elevated ERA. He needs to find another level of control to be a consistent part of the big league roster, but his stuff is nasty enough to play in middle relief.

Josenberger had two solid underclass seasons at Kansas and then experienced a power breakout as a junior at Arkansas. After seeing action at a few positions while he was a Jayhawk, Razorback Josenberger played exclusively in center field, but he’s revisited the infield in pro ball and is likely to play a lower-impact multi-positional role on a big leaguer roster. Though he has the speed to be a plus defender in the outfield, poor ball skills occasionally plague Josenberger. The same is true at second base, where Josenberger is only fair. His versatility is a big deal, but he isn’t an impact defender anywhere. On offense, Josenberger has good feel for contact from both sides of the plate. He’s roughly average as a righty and plus as a lefty, with an 86% contact rate from the latter side. He’s hunting fastballs from both sides of the plate, and his contact rate against them is even more exceptional, creeping into the 90% range. A lack of size and power will limit Josenberger’s overall contribution to that of a 1-WAR type of role player, but his speed, versatility, and ability to put the ball in play gives him clear big league utility.

Bencosme’s game is more slick and skillful than it is toolsy. He’ll make some incredible defensive plays because of his hands, but he doesn’t have the monster arm strength or range you’d ideally want in a shortstop. He tracks pitches well and guides the barrel to them consistently, but he’s now going on two consecutive years of below-average offensive performance due largely to a lack of power and physicality. He slashed .240/.318/.348 in 2024 at Double-A Bowie. While Bencosme has plus feel for the barrel and his bat-to-ball skills are among the best in this system, the quality of his contact often isn’t good enough to shoot the baseball past the infielders. He’s been a low BABIP guy because of this. The high end of his potential outcomes looks like that of Jordy Mercer, where Bencosme adds enough physicality to have a couple years with 40- or 45-grade power and good shortstop defense. If the cement is dry on Bencosme’s physicality and athleticism, then he has more of a sixth infielder fit.

Arias is a switch-hitting utility infield prospect who is a career .241/.348/.349 hitter in three-plus minor league seasons. He has better feel for contact from the left side, where Arias is adept at flattening his path to spray high fastballs to the opposite field. That said, he also has a very stiff lower body and might be vulnerable to low stuff in a way that hasn’t been exposed yet. In A-ball, he has posted contact and plate discipline metrics (78% contact, 23% chase) that are slightly better than average, with power numbers (32% hard-hit rate) that are slightly below average, and even though I’m inclined to round down on the contact projection because of Arias’ look, it’s tough to see his offense bottoming out to the point where he goes completely bust. The real feature here is Arias’ defensive versatility. At age 20, Arias is already a viable defender at three different infield spots. He’s a plus athlete with average range and a well-calibrated internal clock. Even though he’s only 20, he’s a relatively low-variance prospect who looks like a future utility infielder.

Sanchez is a defense-first prospect who signed for $1.3 million in January 2024 and slashed .212/.416/.281 during his DSL debut season. He skips across the infield like a water bug and can really play shortstop; Sanchez was one of the best infield defenders in last year’s DSL. His size is a gating factor for his offensive projection. Though Sanchez has roughly average feel for contact, he lacks power and is a very small athlete who might not develop viable strength. At the time he signed, there were international scouts who thought Sanchez was considerably less projectable than the other shortstops signing for a little north of $1 million, and the early indications are that they were correct. Sanchez is still a good prospect, but he likely has utility ceiling.

Peña was one of the youngest prospects in the 2025 international signing class and got considerably stronger during the commitment window. From the jump, he’s been a viable shortstop prospect with good speed, but now he looks like he also has a shot to do some damage on offense if he can keep getting stronger. Peña signed for just shy of $1 million and will get his career underway in the 2025 DSL; given his age, he’s probably going to spend two seasons down there.

Brnovich was traded as part of the package for Dylan Bundy before he ever threw a pitch for the Angels, and spent most of his first full pro season at Double-A Bowie. It seemed like he was on the fast track to Baltimore as a backend starter, but Brnovich had a TJ in the middle of 2022 and had suppressed stuff upon his initial return. At the start of 2025, his stuff is up a tad and he’s having bat-missing success with his double-knuckle breaking ball against Triple-A hitters. He has reached back for 96 early in starts before settling into the 92-93 mph range for the meat of his outings. Brnovich bullies the strike zone with all three of his pitches. His breaking ball locations are fairly precise, while his fastball and changeup tend to live in the zone, but are scattered throughout it. Brnovich looks like a fully baked backend starter in terms of stuff and command, but he hasn’t ever worked more than 100 innings in a season, and to not have that box checked at age 27 slides him into more of the no. 6-9 starter part of the depth chart.

Pham was a college reliever who remained in the bullpen for his first couple of pro seasons before a successful transition to the rotation in 2023. He’s an undersized guy with a vertical fastball/curveball combo to which he’s added a well-located mid-80s cutter. He has to nibble with his fastball location somewhat, stopping Pham from working efficiently. In 2024, he worked 119 innings at Double-A Bowie and posted a 4.24 ERA, a 27.9% strikeout rate, and a 10.1% walk rate. He’s back at Double-A to start 2025 and looks like a near-ready spot starter.

Sosa is a big-framed lefty power bat with fringe bat-to-ball ability. He posted a 108 wRC+ as a 19-year-old at Low-A last year, then struggled late in the season after he was promoted to Aberdeen, where he’s been assigned again to start 2025. Sosa has big raw juice and posted some of the best peak exit velos in Baltimore’s system last year, regardless of age. His swing is often long and awkward looking, and he struck out in 29.1% of his plate appearances across 2024. Sosa’s power, speed (he stole 30 bases in 40 attempts), and long-term frame projection (he has a prototypical corner outfield power hitter’s build at 6-foot-3, 215 or so) keep the prospect pilot light on here despite his strikeout risk.

Liranzo is a hard-swinging teenage power prospect whose 2024 was altered and shortened by injury. He struggled when he was healthy, but Liranzo’s size and bat speed are exciting. He was one of Baltimore’s better DSL performers in 2023, and still has a three-season timeline for development before Baltimore will first be confronted with a 40-man decision for him. Liranzo is a power projection flier looking to bounce back in 2025.

George was committed to Northwest Florida State but instead signed for $455,000 as a 16th rounder. He’s a smaller-framed, power-hitting outfield prospect whose top hand is very strong through contact. He showed up to 2025 camp having added a substantial amount of strength. He is similar to current Oregon State outfielder Gavin Turley when Turley was a high schooler. He has exciting power in a smaller package. George has cloudy hit tool projection because he didn’t play a ton on the showcase circuit. He’s a toolsy young sleeper toward the bottom of the system who had an “arrow up” spring on the backfields.

Rivera was traded to Baltimore as part of the 2022 Tanner Scott deal and was immediately moved to the bullpen, where he’s spent the past couple of seasons rising to a Double-A assignment to start his 2025 40-man platform year. Rivera’s delivery features a huge open stride, with his front leg landing way, way toward the first base side of the rubber, creating funky angle on his east/west stuff. Rivera’s secondary pitches are both pretty nasty. His low-80s slider is a true “sweeper” even if (like me) you’re using a narrower definition for that pitch type; it has huge length and 2-to-8 shape. Off of that, Rivera works the arm-side of the plate with his fastball and changeup. He doesn’t throw especially hard, but above-average movement helps the fastball play. That said, he may have to pitch more heavily off his secondary stuff versus big leaguers. Fastball vulnerability keeps Rivera more in the oft-optioned bucket even though he has platoon-neutralizing weapons.

Ogando was last in affiliated ball in 2023 with Arizona. He spent 2024 in the Atlantic League and then pitched for Team Dominican Republic in the 2024 Premier12 tournament, and then for Licey in the Dominican Winter League; he signed a minor league deal with Baltimore just before Christmas 2024. Ogando has always been able to throw pretty hard, but he dropped his arm slot after leaving the D-backs and his stuff took a leap. For the last six months or so, Ogando has been living in the 95-97 mph range with sink. His super low slot is evocative of Mychal Givens, though Ogando’s breaking ball is not to that level. He arrived with what looked more like a cutter, but his early-season breaking balls have appeared more slider-y. Likely to get a big league shot at some point in the next year or so, Ogando looks like a fastball-heavy middle reliever who can climb into a more substantial role if the Orioles can accentuate his breaking ball. He broke camp with Double-A Chesapeake.

The younger brother of Rockies minor league lefty Sam Weatherly, Ty is a string-beaned 6-foot-6 and has burgeoning secondary pitch quality. He exhausted all five years of COVID-era eligibility at Ball State before signing with Baltimore after the 2023 draft. He spent a portion of 2024 injured, threw just 35.2 innings, and broke camp with High-A Aberdeen in 2025. He has four distinct pitches and a loose, quick arm for a 6-foot-6 guy, but Weatherly has difficulty repeating his release point and has tended to struggle with walks. It’s plausible for pitchers this size to have late-arriving command, but Weatherly has had this issue for a while. That said, the tools to work in long relief are here. Weatherly has weapons to use against both lefties and righties, and it puts him in position to be stretched out as a starter again if it turns out he’s just been slow to mature into his frame.

Stafford is a super entertaining little athlete and a potentially uber-versatile utilityman who caught and played the outfield in college; he’s also being given some pro reps at second base. Stafford needs work at each spot. He’s not strong enough to be a reliable receiver yet, but he has rare twitch and agility. A quick exit from his crouch aids his mediocre arm strength. As you can imagine, Stafford’s inexperience at second base means that he’s currently not very good there, but he’s a special athlete and it’s a worthwhile experiment for him and Baltimore to try as many positions as possible in the lower minors. On offense, Stafford swings pretty hard for a guy his size and has an authoritative top hand through contact, but it generates doubles pop right now. He has fun 26th-man projection.

Trimble was a favorite here at FanGraphs before the 2021 draft, when the toolsy, switch-hitting center fielder was coming off a .345/.414/.638 spring at Southern Miss that saw him hit 17 homers, including several during postseason play. It was a breakout year for him, as Trimble was a draft-eligible “freshman” whose first collegiate season was wiped out by COVID. He seemed like a tip-of-the-iceberg prospect who might have gone higher if his performance track record had been longer. Injuries have limited him to 137 career pro games, and he’s on the IL yet again as of list publication.

This is still a pretty explosive guy who swings hard for a player his size, especially from the left side. Both of Trimble’s swings have minimal loft and are more geared for line drives than home runs, but he has above-average bat speed from the left side and less talent as a righty. Trimble is capable of playing all three outfield spots at an above-average level, with efficient routes and quality jumps. He looks most comfortable playing center, which is likely a product of his experience there compared to the corner spots. He’s a bottom-of-the-40-man type.

Wagner began the 2022 season on Clemson’s bench and ended it having slashed .369/.496/.852 with 27 home runs, third most in college baseball. He was a draft-eligible sophomore with very little track record of performance aside from his amazing 2022 sprint. In his first full pro season, Wagner slashed .239/.342/.405 with a 25.9% strikeout rate in a year split between High- and Double-A. He had offseason surgery to remove a fractured left hamate and began 2024 on the shelf, and then he was shut down again with a lower back injury not long after he returned. Wagner struck out a ton during his healthy window, but was coming off a type of injury notorious for its lingering impact on hitting. There were already some red flags in Wagner’s 2023 data and visual performance. He’s prone to in-zone swing-and-miss, and is a pretty extreme inside-out hitter. But he also swings pretty hard and looks to have come to 2025 camp with a new level of physicality, and Wagner has really only had two seasons of consistent playing time since high school and therefore has more variability as a prospect than others his age.

A 2025 bounce back is imperative, however, and ideally Wagner will show progress on defense this season as well. He has played a mix of second and third base, and has enough arm for third, but his 40-grade hands and range are kind of an issue at second. Might his health have also impacted his look on defense? There’s potential for Wagner to have big league utility in the Mike Brosseau vein, where he’s deployed against lefties as often as possible and passable at the non-shortstop infield positions.

Peguero is a twitchy, switch-hitting multi-positional dev project. He can really run and will post jailbreak home-to-first times just below four seconds, which supports a long-term fit in center field. The Orioles have also deployed Peguero at second base a little bit, and he needs a good bit more development there. Peguero is quite small but he swings hard enough to do doubles damage to both gaps and baselines. As a switch-hitting utility guy, that has appeal. He may be tested by good righty velo later on, because despite his size, Peguero’s lefty swing is a little long and late. He’s coming off a .260/.341/.328 line accrued mostly on the complex, and began 2025 serving as the leadoff hitter at Delmarva.