Baltimore Orioles Top 63 Prospects

Basallo has been a top 10 overall prospect since the 2023-24 offseason, a power-hitting kaiju catcher with freakish all-fields pop, enough bat-to-ball ability to weaponize it, and plus-plus raw arm strength. Though he has some flaws on both sides of the ball, Basallo has always performed as a young-for-the-level player, sometimes amid injury. Still basically the age of a college draft prospect, Basallo first reached Double-A as an 18-year-old back in 2023 and is a career .283/.366/.498 hitter in the minors. In 2025, he slashed an absurd .270/.377/.589 at Triple-A Norfolk and earned a mid-August call-up, which he languished through (he hit .165). He signed an eight-year, $67 million extension not long after making the majors and, after a rough start to 2026, has seemingly found his footing and has been great during the weeks leading up to this publication and Basallo’s graduation.

Basallo’s power is special for a player of any position, let alone a catcher. He generates plus-plus bat speed even though his swing has been toned down and no longer features any kind of leg kick. He’s dangerous all over the strike zone, and sometimes even outside of it, capable of golfing out low pitches to his pull side or driving high fastballs the opposite way. His 57% hard-hit rate in the minors last year would have ranked fifth among all qualified big leaguers, and Basallo might have another gear in him as he matures into his prime. That said, a propensity to chase can make Basallo frustrating to watch for weeks at a time. He was swinging less often at bad breaking balls in 2025, but he still chased fastballs at a 40% clip, roughly twice the big league average chase against heaters. While this tendency will almost certainly make Basallo fight through ice cold stretches, his talent is too explosive for him not to be a productive player, especially if he continues to develop on defense and can play perhaps the most valuable position on the field.

Injuries have limited Basallo’s time behind the dish and are probably a big reason why he’s underdeveloped as a catcher. A stress fracture (2024) and elbow inflammation (2025) at the start of each of the last two years limited his early-season reps and, for a while, nerfed his arm strength. He’s had reps at first base (relevant given Adley Rutchsman’s presence) and DH, but he caught on back-to-back days with increasing frequency later in 2025 (and one time caught three days in a row). Because Basallo is so enormous, his exchange takes a while to complete, but he has plus-plus pure arm strength and ranked fifth among big league catchers who faced at least 10 stolen base attempts last year with an 83.9 mph average throwing velocity. His receiving isn’t good yet, but it isn’t so terrible that it damns him permanently to first base. His ball blocking (at least with his body) was better in 2025, but Basallo still has well below-average hands when he has to pick short hops in the dirt.

It’s often big, physical catchers like this who develop the strength and durability to play the position 100-plus times a year down the line, and we expect this of Basallo enough to feel comfortable projecting him as a primary catcher, though his hands are bad enough that he’ll always probably be a little below average back there. Ultimately, such a minor blemish won’t detract that much from what should be franchise-altering impact, as Basallo has the skill set of a lefty-hitting Gary Sánchez and is a potential 40-homer catcher with a huge arm.

A comp-round pick in 2022, Beavers progressed somewhat slowly through Baltimore’s system for a college bat with a good approach. He needed most of 2023 to get through High-A and barely made it to Triple-A in 2024. But the power that scouts have long projected finally showed up in 2025, and with it he posted the best numbers of his career. He earned a late-season call up and then notched a 125 wRC+ in 35 games in Baltimore, leaving him barely eligible for our list entering the season.

At the plate, Beavers is quick to the ball despite pretty long levers. He has a gorgeous left-handed swing, geared for loft in the low-and-in part of the zone like seemingly all of his brethren from that side of the plate. He doesn’t have an especially manipulable path, but his hands are so fast that he’s able to reach pitches up in the zone anyway. He can be lured out in front of spin, and the way his swing works leaves him vulnerable on the outer edge, which is why he projects as more of a good hitter than a great one.

As hinted at above, Beavers has a great approach, patient without being passive, and his keen eye should help him take plenty of walks at the highest level. They’ll come with a fair number of strikeouts as well, more the product of deep counts than a ton of swing and miss; Beavers had a plus contact rate at Triple-A and was still above-average in the big leagues. He hasn’t hit for much power against southpaws throughout his career, but his at-bats are still competitive. He strikes us as a guy who doesn’t need a strict platoon, but there may be some benefit to timing his off days in a way that lets someone else deal with Tarik Skubal. He’s also going to chip in a little on the bases. An above-average runner, he’s swiped at least 25 bags in all three of his full pro seasons, at an 82% clip.

While he played plenty of center field in the minors, and has featured there in Baltimore, Beavers fits best as a corner outfielder. Just on speed he’d be stretched up the middle, especially since there’s a hesitance to his reads and he can be a little flub-prone; we see him as an average defender in left. He’s on the list because of his bat, and while he’s off to a slow start in 2026, we still expect the stick to support an everyday role once he returns from his mid-May hamstring injury.

De León has had an uneven season each of the last three years; in all three, he pitched well enough to earn promotions and then struggled to throw strikes afterward. Toward the end of 2024, when he walked a batter per inning across his final seven outings, it looked like De León was trending toward a relief-only development path. While his 2025 featured a similar late-season strike-throwing swoon, it was better overall — 20 games, 87.1 innings, 2.59 FIP, 10.9% walk rate, 28.5% strikeout rate — and was capped by an Arizona Fall League stint in which he looked like the league’s best pitching prospect. Though he missed the first month of 2025 with an elbow impingement, De León ended up working 103.2 innings on the year (and probably a little more than that, as he stayed hot between the end of the regular season and the beginning of AFL play) and was still humming in the 95-98 mph range come Fall League.

De León still has command-related relief risk and a bit more because of his fastball’s vulnerability against righties, though it eats lefties alive. His delivery is atypical for a big league starter and it detracts some from his strike-throwing, but it also makes hitters uncomfortable. De León has big league starter size, but he isn’t the most graceful or powerful athlete. Instead, he’s a short-strider whose body swivels around his landing leg like a swinging gate, and even though he’s a short-levered guy, he still has a longer arm swing that he struggles to repeat. But we know De León can hold big velo across as lot of innings and that his secondary stuff (especially his splitter) can finish hitters. He throws both a splitter (it’s nasty, but erratic) and a changeup (it has less sinking movement, but he has better feel for it), which you can see in the linked video. De León will bust out the splitter against hitters of either handedness. His slider performed like a plus-plus bat-missing pitch last year, though it’s more plus to the eye and performing like a 60 so far in 2026. Even some of the De León sliders that don’t finish are still nasty enough to freeze hitters or induce whiffs, and he shows feel for pitching backwards with it, which he needs to do against righties.

His repertoire depth and ability to induce groundballs (57-58% groundball rate the last two seasons combined) should allow him to work efficiently enough to start, though probably not efficiently enough to go six or seven innings every time out. De León could debut late in 2026, though if his history as a player is any indication, it’ll probably take him a minute to adjust and entrench himself in the middle of Baltimore’s rotation, more likely in late 2027 and beyond.

Gibson is a physically impressive pitcher who came out of a smaller school, got better very quickly, struck out a ton of minor leaguers, and has now debuted less than three years since he signed as an undrafted free agent. Gibson’s fastball has added four ticks of velocity since he was at Liberty, but it lacks great movement, and we fear it might be vulnerable to big damage in the majors. But his command of an array of breaking balls should allow him to navigate lineups multiple times and carve out an innings-eating fourth starter role.

In 2025, Gibson reached Triple-A, tied for the third-most strikeouts in the minors with 166 tickets punched in 120.1 innings, and managed a 2.72 xFIP combined across three levels. He can backdoor his curveball and cutter against lefties, and his slider has uncommon velocity, often upwards of 86 mph. We’d like to see Gibson’s slider turn the corner a bit more often than it has in the lead up to publication; his glove-side feel generally isn’t as good as it is to his arm side. Chiseled and athletically balanced, Gibson’s delivery is easy and repeatable. It might take him the better part of the next couple years to go from up/down starter to stable rotation piece as he learns how to keep his fastball out of trouble against big league hitters. Over time, though, he should be a more integral contributor to the full-season efforts of a good pitching staff.

Aloy transferred from Sacramento State to Arkansas after his freshman year with the Hornets and as one might expect from a player transitioning from the WAC to the SEC, his offensive production dipped (from a 1.089 OPS to .841). But then he crushed on Cape Cod, where he hit eight homers in 21 games, and as a junior, winning SEC Player of the Year with a .350/.434/.673 line and 21 bombs. Elevated chase likely contributed to a draft day fall that saw Aloy picked 31st overall, which is pretty low for a prospect as toolsy as he is. He’s a plus athlete with an athletic build, a plus arm, above-average range, and average hands. He struggles some with hot shots, but otherwise looks like a pretty clean shortstop fit. Aloy also has plus bat speed and power to all fields. He had one of the best hard-hit rates (58%) in college baseball last year, and he’s a threat to go deep from pole to pole, which he’s demonstrated with wood bats. Still, it takes big effort and it comes at a cost: strikeouts.

Aloy has been whiff-prone in pro ball, with a strikeout rate right around 28% at both Low-A in 2025 and High-A early in 2026. He swings with a ton of effort, so much that he can lose track of the baseball mid-swing. This is compounded by chase, which is not limited to one pitch type but is an issue for Aloy against both fastballs and breakers. His strikeouts pose a barrier to a first-division everyday shortstop projection at this time, but Aloy’s tools are big enough that he’ll still likely carve out a role as a second-division player or power-hitting utilityman.

Nunez was drafted as a high school shortstop in 2019, released in 2021, then used an NCAA rule exemption (which states that high school signees can return to a school with baseball so long as it isn’t Division I) to attend Division II University of Tampa, where he began his journey to the mound. He signed with the Mets in 2024 and, as is the case with most successful conversion arms, started mowing through the minors very quickly. By the time he was traded to the Orioles at the 2025 deadline in the Cedric Mullins deal, he was striking out well over a batter per inning at Double-A. Nunez finished his first full season at Triple-A and began his second full season in the Orioles’ big league bullpen. Though he has an ERA just over 4.00 as of publication, every aspect of Nunez’s profile has been trending up since the moment he started pitching, and he not only looks like a dynamite late-inning reliever, we consider him a candidate to move into the rotation at some point in the future.

Since arriving in Baltimore, Nunez’s pitch mix has changed, he’s throwing harder than he was last year by about a tick and a half, his four-seam locations have migrated to the northern border of the strike zone, and his slider has played like an elite swing-and-miss pitch in a small big league sample. This guy is a great athlete who hasn’t been pitching all that long, so his command and changeup consistency should continue to improve, and while he’s drastically reduced his cutter usage since joining the O’s, he also has that pitch lurking in the background. Nunez is also a pretty big guy — 6-foot-2 with a strong lower body — and his delivery is well-balanced in spite of its explosiveness.

Nunez is no surgeon, but walks have never been a big problem for him. The components of a starter are here, and Nunez has pretty consistently been getting better each of the past three years. The tricky thing is successfully executing a conversion. Guys like Seth Lugo, Michael King, and even Clay Holmes were all starters at an early stage of their development, and Nunez has only ever been a reliever. Stretching him out would likely be a multi-year process. In the meantime, we like him as a premium reliever with three plus or better pitches and uncommon strike-throwing consistency.

Irish was a steady three-year SEC performer, culminating in a .364/.469/.710 junior year line. During his two underclass seasons, Irish played a mix of catcher, first base, and a little bit of right field. Whether or not he could actually catch was a big point of contention entering his draft spring, and we didn’t really get to find out. Irish was hit by a pitch in March and fractured his right scapula, and he mostly played the outfield the rest of the college season. The Orioles tried catching him again after the draft, but have not done so to this point in 2026, as Irish has played first base and both outfield corners.

When he can actually handle his exchange, Irish’s throwing arm is a fit behind the dish. His last pop time on a stolen base attempt in 2025 was a very exciting 1.89 seconds, but too often he doesn’t even get a throw off, or is inaccurate when he does due to sloppy footwork. His framing and ball-blocking are even further behind, and Irish would be a long-term project behind the dish were the Orioles to revisit developing him back there.

Irish’s arm in the outfield is sensational, and while his feel and ball skills as an outfielder are predictably raw, it’s where we feel best about projecting him now that the Orioles seem intent on letting him hit and move through the system more quickly rather than trying to develop him as a catcher. This dings Irish’s FV grade a shade compared to where he was before the draft, when the possibility that he might catch existed.

We still really like his bat. Irish is a rotationally ferocious swinger who is especially good at flattening his swing to snatch elevated fastballs, though because he’s hunting these pitches, he has a tendency to expand the zone against high heaters. He shows some ability to dip into his lower half to at least spoil lower pitches, but he tends to smash them into the ground. Pro opponents might be happy to have Irish hit hard grounders into play and just live toward the bottom of the zone against him. We like him as the strong side of a corner outfield platoon.

George was committed to Northwest Florida State but instead signed for $455,000 as a 16th-rounder and had a breakout 2025, beginning the year as part of Sarasota’s extended spring group and finishing it at High-A. Across three levels, he slashed .337/.413/.483, stole 50 bases (but was caught 25 times), and racked up 28 extra-base hits in 87 games.

George has exciting tools. He can really run and throw, and he swings hard for a smedium-framed athlete. His under-the-hood data from 2025 was excellent, as he posted a 77% contact rate and power metrics (37% hard-hit rate, 110 mph max, 103 EV90) just a shade below the big league average, which is great for a 19-year-old, even one without huge physical projection. We’re a bit bearish on George (or at least unwilling to take his data at face value) because of how long it takes his bat to get on plane with the baseball, often leaving him late against fastballs. This results in lots of opposite field contact and a good number of whiffs against elevated heaters. We want to see him handle well-executed pitchers around his hands before concluding that he has the skill set of an everyday player. George also needs to polish his center field defense, though we’re pretty confident he will because of his speed and guile. If for some reason his ball skills remain sketchy, we’re talking about a potential Gold Glove right fielder with a lethal arm. For now, we feel good about projecting George as a toolsy fourth outfielder.

German is seeking to become the first big leaguer from Seattle’s Chief Sealth High School since Keone Kela. The big right-hander gained a ton of velo between his time in high school and when Baltimore plucked him out of Seattle University, and he has picked up another couple ticks in pro ball. Already a pretty good strike thrower, the velo uptick sharpened his secondaries, and in short order transformed German from a generic Day 3 draft pick into a legitimate starting pitching prospect.

German is a tall, broad shouldered lad with an innings-eater’s build. More powerful than fluid, he still has the body control and short arm action of a starter. Like many hurlers in this system, he’s a downhill thrower with a high slot, above-average extension, and a lot of vertical break on his fastball. He sat 92-94 and touched 98 with it last season while reliably pumping strikes to both sides of the plate. All four of his secondaries missed bats, and the various ways they run and dip gives him a well-rounded movement profile. German doesn’t have a monster out pitch — the split comes closest — but there are platoon-neutralizing traits here and enough ingredients to get through a lineup multiple times.

German has not quite been the best version of himself this year. He’s been uncharacteristically wild and his fastball has sat 91-93 in recent starts, down a couple ticks from where he was most of last season. While something to monitor, at this point both the magnitude and duration of the rough patch is mild enough to keep his forecast in line with where we were on him at the end of last season, when he posted a 3.93 ERA with 10.41 SO/9 and 3.35 BB/9 while averaging about five innings per start at the upper levels. Evaluators bullish on his control or command may shade him up to a no. 4 grade, while those concerned enough about his trajectory in 2026 might reasonably round down the other direction. Our projection splits the difference.

A $100,000 signee out of Dallas Baptist, it didn’t take long for Bragg to look like a great scouting find for the Orioles, as he mowed through Low-A in 2024 and then really broke out in 2025. Bragg already had a pretty good sinker-slider combo, and another tick of velo helped both take a step forward. Perhaps just as importantly, he dumped the change he’d been throwing in favor of a split. Hitters mostly couldn’t touch it, and suddenly Bragg had a starter’s arsenal depth. After three dominant outings, he was promoted to Double-A, where he registered a 2.32 ERA in nine outings with a 33.7% strikeout rate and a 6.9% walk rate.

Unfortunately, Bragg blew out last summer. He had Tommy John right around the trade deadline, and he’ll likely miss all of the 2026 season. It’s a shame for many reasons, and about 917th on that list is that he stood a good chance of moving on to our Top 100 if he’d been able to carry something approaching a starter’s workload through the rest of the year.

Healthy Bragg looked like a legitimate starting pitching prospect. Working exclusively out of the stretch, he has a low-effort delivery with a small drop-and-drive, a clean arm swing, and no head whack or heel grind. He pounds the zone with both fastballs, with a low slot and release that gives his four-seamer carry and helps his sinker induce grounders. Both his slider and cutter flashed above average all the way back in 2024, and he’s now executing them regularly. His best splits are in that neighborhood as well. Surgery always throws a wrench into these projections, but if he doesn’t have a significant setback in either timeline or performance, Bragg projects as a no. 4 starter.

Cartaya is the biggest “arrow up” arm in this system since our last update, as he is currently enjoying a two-tick velo bump, both in the middle and at the peak of his range. His arm slot has been raised a good bit since last season, which has coincided with a huge uptick in his fastball’s bat-missing ability (it’s currently producing whiffs at an elite level). The new slot also seems to have added depth to his low-spin breaking ball, but hasn’t altered the exciting components of his changeup.

Cartaya can finish hitters (including lefties) three ways: attack the heart of the zone and above with his fastball, locate glove-side curveballs, and tail changeups off the plate to his arm side. All three of these pitches flash plus. Cartaya is also throwing strikes more consistently than in any of his other pro seasons, especially with his fastball, but because of the violent nature of his delivery, this is the area where we’re the least confident that he has actually improved. He checks a lot of starting pitcher boxes — size, repertoire depth, demonstrated durability (he worked 98 innings last year) — and is on track to be added to Baltimore’s 40-man roster after this season even though he was passed over in this past winter’s Rule 5 Draft. Cartaya is still crude enough that we’d wager he’ll spend most of his first option year in the minors and only start to establish himself in 2028. Between now and then, he has a shot to be a Top 100 prospect if he keeps throwing strikes at the clip he has so far with this new delivery.

Dzierwa’s father played football at Northwestern, and Joseph was a multi-sport high school athlete who lettered all four years in baseball and football (imagine a 6-foot-8 lefty high school QB) and three in basketball. After his first two seasons at Michigan State, Dzierwa (pronounced “jyier-wa”) announced that he was transferring to Vanderbilt, but a few weeks later changed his mind and went back to East Lansing for his junior year. He became the highest-drafted Spartan pitcher since Mark Mulder and the highest-drafted pitcher of Mike Elias’ Orioles tenure.

A strike-throwing changeup artist in college, Dzierwa is enjoying a bit of a velo spike in the early going of 2026, as his heater has climbed from the 90-93 mph range to the 93-95 area. This might be due to him working in shorter outings early in the year, as his peak velo hasn’t changed but his average fastball velo has. Hitters don’t seem to pick up the baseball out of his hand, and are either frozen by it or swing underneath his fastball. Despite his size, Dzierwa doesn’t generate big extension, but he does have a lower arm slot that creates uphill angle on his heater, which he tends to command to the top of the zone. He also commands a tailing changeup that has enough action to miss big league bats, and he deploys it against hitters of either handedness. His ceiling could be limited by a lack of breaking ball quality, as Dzierwa’s mid-80s slider has softer lateral break. As the prospect team has said ad nauseum on this website: Lefties who command good changeups tend to be good big leaguers. That describes Dzierwa, who should be a quick-moving no. 4/5 starter.

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. Angular and skinny, Bradfield’s .261/.366/.361 career line as of this writing is emblematic of his tools on offense. His profile is driven by his terrific swing decisions and contact ability, as he lacks the power of a modern, first-division regular. He hunts fastballs and is adept at parsing them from breaking stuff, which he rarely offers at. This is in part because he doesn’t have 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.

His swing has changed a couple of times during the last year plus, and before he was put on the IL with left hand discomfort not long before this update, Bradfield was using a swing that looks an awful lot like Roman Anthony‘s. His hard-hit rate was way up around 50% in a small sample before he got hurt (it was 33% last season), but his K% was also up. It seems possible, but not probable, that Bradfield’s new swing will have a drastic, positive impact on his offensive output. He’s still cutting down at the baseball a lot of the time and can’t lift anything in the bottom third.

Bradfield’s blazing 4.1 speed will help him beat out a ton of infield choppers and grounders, he’ll be a defense-altering bunt threat, and he’ll make an impact on defense. The drag created by his jersey as he blazes around the field seems to be the only thing preventing him from lifting off the ground. He might rob more doubles than he’s capable of hitting throughout the course of a full season, and this speed/defense combo is the water-carrying aspect of his skill set. Bradfield is a luxury model fourth outfielder or a below-average regular in center field.

Acevedo is one of the better up-the-middle defenders from the 2026 international class, a future plus shortstop with a plus arm and a projectable build. He also has real twitch in his wrists as a hitter. His swing is a bit atypical, as his hands fire from a dead stop, but they’re really quick, and that’s mostly what matters at this stage of development. Acevedo’s defensive fit and physical projection give him exciting ceiling if his hit tool turns out to be good and allows his physical tools to play on offense. Acevedo had several offers around $2 million on the table and ultimately got $2.3 million to sign with Baltimore.

Born in Friday Night Lights country, Willems went to high school in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. By the 2021 draft, he’d developed into one of the best high school catchers in the country, and signed with the O’s for $1 million. His everyman physique and shoulder length curly hair stand out immediately, particularly in his catcher’s gear, and between that and his high-effort style of play, Willems stands a good chance of becoming a cult favorite if he has any kind of career at all.

Willems’ bat gives him a good chance to do so. Short arms and above-average power make for a great combination, particularly for a guy who tends to hit the ball in the air. Willems has looked more discerning in the early going this season, a positive development for a hitter who already had a pretty good, if aggressive, approach. It’s a power-over-hit profile. Willems can manipulate his barrel around the zone, but he’s vulnerable against soft stuff and he isn’t going to beat out a whole lot of grounders.

Willems isn’t great behind the plate. He isn’t an especially smooth receiver or blocker, and it takes him awhile to get out of his crouch and release the ball on stolen base attempts. You can play him there occasionally, but it’s hard to see a team starting him there every day even if he hits his offensive ceiling. Willems thus projects as a hybrid sort of bench bat, a Mitch Garver type who catches once per week while playing a little first base and DH and pinch-hitting when he’s not in the bucket. He’s off to a solid start in Triple-A and should be ready to debut sometime this summer.

Wells’ pro career got off to a bumpy start in 2024, when he posted an ERA just under 7.00 and allowed more than 10 hits per nine at High-A. The Orioles made a bunch of tweaks to his delivery, most notably dropping his arm slot and speeding up his cadence, which seems to have unlocked more velo and helped him get more break on his slider.

Wells has a couple of deceptive markers in his delivery — a hidden stroke, a distracting glove throw — and his ability to tunnel a curve and a late-breaking slider with his four-seamer help those elements play up further. His cutter theoretically offers an appealing east-west counterweight to an otherwise vertical arsenal, but the velo separation off the fastball is substantial and hitters have hit it fairly hard in recent years. That leaves him a little short against lefties, as the change is conspicuous in its absence. Wells is a fringy athlete with below-average command, but he’s around the plate, and with the way strike zones have shrunk, the 7.1% walk rate he’s running in Triple-A is well above average in this year’s International League.

The O’s have a few options in how they choose to deploy Wells. A traditional starter role isn’t out of the question, but it doesn’t seem likely. In addition to lacking a changeup, he hasn’t hit the 90 pitch mark as a professional and doesn’t often break 80. Wells is tracking as a once- or twice-through guy, and he could also be quite good in a traditional relief role. Pitchers who can hit 100 with control and deep secondaries don’t often find themselves in short stints, and the ceiling is pretty high when they do. Regardless of which route Baltimore chooses, this is a promising arm who has a good shot to help the 2026 club.

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. Then he struggled in 2025 amid a three-month IL stint. He’s again on the 60-day IL with a shoulder strain and hasn’t pitched yet in 2026.

Fruit was already throwing hard in college, but his velo has trended up in pro ball, with fastballs in the 94-98 mph range in 2025. His cross-bodied, high-slot delivery produces 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 a slider rather than a slider and a 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. Twenty-three of the 38 changeups Synergy has on tape from Fruit last year came in his final three starts of the season. A lack of command and his growing injury history create a lot of relief risk here, but Fruit’s stuff is good enough for him to work in higher-leverage spots.

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. The O’s continued to develop him that way but only for a short time, as Reilly blew out just after we published our 2025 list. He had UCL reconstruction surgery about a year ago and is likely going to miss most of the 2026 season.

Healthy Reilly is a high-octane arm with a deceptive fastball. He can run the ol’ no. 1 up to 98, but it tends to sit 93-95 and plays up in the zone thanks to big spin and carry. He pairs the pitch with a hard cutter and a slider that generates a little more east-west movement. He also has a split that flashes average, though he didn’t put many on tape last season. Reilly hasn’t been a great strike-thrower throughout his career, and between the way he throws and how he likes to nibble with the fastball at the top of the zone, it’s hard to see him working deep into games. It’s worth continuing to develop him as a starter because the stuff is good enough to support a five-and-dive role if he can find the box often enough. More likely, he’ll work as a mid-to-high-leverage reliever in the end.

Quinn was mostly a starter as a freshman at Ole Miss, then mostly a reliever as a sophomore. He transferred to Georgia for his draft year and did a bit of both, transitioning into a short-outing starter role late in 2025. Quinn went to Cape Cod after the conclusion of Georgia’s season and his fastball sat 95 across a couple of starts leading up to the draft, which boosted his stock and reinforced scouts’ notions that he could be upcycled into a starter in pro ball. From a stuff standpoint, that’s absolutely true. Quinn has been sitting in the 95-97 mph range and is up to 99 early in 2026, his breaking balls have devastating, platoon-neutralizing depth, and his changeup has enough action that it, too, could be a viable fourth pitch. Whether he will be able to command any of these pitches consistently enough to start is a question that will likely require a multi-year answer. Each of his pitches gets scattered all over, which not only has consequences for Quinn’s walk totals and overall efficiency, but for his poorly-shaped fastball’s effectiveness. Quinn’s stuff is nasty enough to consider him an exciting pitching prospect, and he should be developed as a starter in case things click, but based on where his command is currently, we’re inclined to project him as a multi-inning reliever.

Garcia is a big, 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 has looked closer to two bills for the last two seasons and has added some pretty serious power as he’s filled out. He seemed poised to break out during last year’s FCL season, but instead really struggled with strikeouts during the first month of play and then fractured his right hand just as it seemed like he was turning a corner. He was shut down for the year after just 31 games.

Garcia posted a 79% contact rate in the 2024 DSL and then was down below the line of viability at 61% in 2025, with both samples being pretty small. It’s too early in the 2026 FCL slate to know which one is closer to Garcia’s true talent (as of this writing, he has a 65.1% contact rate across his first 25 plate appearances), and things are even cloudier when it comes to assessing his right-handed swing, as he’s only had a handful of career 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. His burgeoning physicality has resulted in a quick slide from SS/3B to more 3B/1B and an occasional start at short. Though he’s more volatile than some of the other exciting position player prospects in Baltimore’s system, Garcia has maybe the greatest power-hitting potential of everyone this side of Samuel Basallo, and a rare power ceiling for a switch-hitter when you zoom out and consider the entire minor league population. His forecast has among the most extreme injury-independent variance of any prospect, and we really value his upside.

Because the Cubs did not play extended spring games in 2026, we did more video review of their DSL group from last year than is usual as an I-dotting exercise, and De La Cruz (who was traded to Baltimore for Andrew Kittredge at last year’s deadline) stood out as the toolsiest and most projectable of Chicago’s two rosters of players down there. He’s a rangy, broad-shouldered 6-foot-2, he generates exciting hip-and-hand separation during his swing (an indication of power potential), and he’s athletic enough to play the infield, though maybe not shortstop depending on his eventual size. Wilfri was incredibly patient while facing errant DSL pitching last year, but he wasn’t overly passive. His contact data (76% overall, 83% in-zone) isn’t bad for a switch-hitter this young, though he was much better hitting from the left side. The other aspects of De La Cruz’s data are a bit incongruous with his surface performance. He slashed .258/.465/.400 combined between the two orgs last year, but he was generating a ton of lift under the hood. De La Cruz simply isn’t hitting the ball all that hard yet, but based on his size and the mechanical explosivity of his swing, he might eventually. Because that’s in play, he has right tail outcomes where he becomes a Top 100 prospect and everyday player.

Roque is a twitchy, muscular, medium-framed speedster with a plus arm. He’s a fairly short-levered hitter whose swing has natural lefty-hitting loft. He runs well enough to develop in center field and has the arm to be a weapon in right if he ends up needing to slide. Modest physical projection caps his ceiling a tad and is likely what kept his bonus a shade under $2 million, though our international sources were sufficiently bullish about his center field fit that he ranked 15th in the class on signing day.

Bateman is built like the drawbridge of a medieval Transylvanian castle at a hulking 6-foot-8. The Padres signed him away from an LSU commitment with a $2.5 million bonus and then traded him to Baltimore as part of the giant Ryan O’Hearn/Ramón Laureano deal a year later. Bateman struggled down the stretch with Frederick, where he’s back pitching in a piggyback role and is off to a better start in 2026. He has a backend starter’s mix but in a young, XXL physical package. He lacks an obvious plus attribute but has precocious arm strength, an innings-eater’s frame, and sufficient mechanical consistency to throw a starter’s rate of strikes. Quick-armed for a pitcher his size, Bateman will sit 94-96 deep into outings, albeit without great life. His slider has tight, lateral movement but tends to lack vertical depth, and Bateman is much more apt to drop it into the zone than he is to dot it in a chaseable locale. His current changeup isn’t good, but based on the quality of his arm action, it should improve to a place of viability as he works with it. At his size, it’s possible Bateman will be able to tinker with his stride length or direction to find better angle for his fastball and slider, but those pitches look closer to average right now. There’s still a lot of developmental runway here, but the paths to substantial improvement aren’t obvious.

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. Trimble was a draft-eligible “freshman,” an older would-be sophomore 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.

Though he’s been productive when healthy, injuries have really limited Trimble’s pro reps. In a half decade, he has yet to exceed 100 games in a single season, and he was again rehabbing (from a hamstring injury) as we worked on this list. For a smaller guy, Trimble can really swing it (especially from the left side), and he has enough switch-hitting power to enthusiastically forecast him as a bench weapon and extra outfielder. He has classic lefty low-ball loft and covers the bottom two thirds of the strike zone well, but he’s vulnerable up top. Though Trimble runs well when healthy, he isn’t a polished route runner and can be tentative at the catch point. He’s played much less high-level baseball than most players his age and we think his defense might have a longer developmental tail. If he turns into a good center field defender, we’re looking at a better caliber of role player.

Estrada is a player who divides opinion. Everyone acknowledges that he crushed the low minors. He had a 136 wRC+ at Low-A in 2024 as a 19-year-old and followed that with a strikingly similar 2025 campaign in Aberdeen. That performance has come with traits that generally appeal to evaluators of all stripes: He has the “good power, short levers” frame and skills that scouts tend to like, and he generated average measurable power or a tick more as a teenager with strong contact data at both levels. Even if you don’t see him as particularly projectable, he’s a switch-hitter with some barrel feel and he’s likely going to wind up with 55 raw power. That’s a good start.

Estrada is all the way down here because the swing itself is scary. From the left side in particular, he has a barrel tilt that severely lengthens his bat path. If you slow down the video of any of his swings from that side, you can see the top of the bat moving toward the third base dugout as the ball is coming in before he turns it loose. It’s tough to be on time with that kind of length and timing, and while it’s theoretically fixable — Tyler Locklear did a little over the course of his prospect trajectory — this might be tough to overhaul completely. We separately arrived at the conclusion that even average velocity upstairs will pose a problem for Estrada, and that’s already happened to some degree at Double-A, where he’s off to a slow start and is only pulling soft stuff with any authority.

The defensive evaluation puts further pressure on the bat. Estrada is at best a fair defender at second, and Eric in particular thinks there’s a good chance he’s just a left fielder at the end of the day. The FV grade here tries to square the circle, crediting him for strong production and a few hitterish traits, while rounding down due to the visual evaluation of his hit tool. He’s a tricky report and a volatile player to say the least.

The Astros excavated Twine Rollin Palmer from an Oklahoma community college in the second-to-last round of the 2024 draft, and quickly flipped him to Baltimore for Ramón Urías at the 2025 deadline. Palmer is currently thriving in a piggyback role at High-A Frederick. He can really spin the baseball, with his fastball and his breakers all rotating at more than 2,600 rpm, which is nuts for a fastball. Hitters seem uncomfortable with his delivery, which features a cross-bodied stride but a vertical arm slot, traits that we typically don’t see together. The combination of Palmer’s elite fastball spin and his nearly perfect backspinning axis creates huge carry on his heater, which averages 19 inches of vertical break. Off of that he bends two breakers that span the 75-85 mph range. Both have big lateral movement but varied amounts of depth.

Palmer commands both his fastball and his breaking ball tandem pretty well, but his changeup tends to find the meat of the strike zone more than is ideal. He doesn’t have a traditional starter’s mechanical look, but he does have the size, his fastball command is improving, he’s quite young, and he’s just one full season removed from a small college program. First flagged by James Fegan a few weeks before he was traded to Baltimore, Palmer looks like a bulk-inning relief arm who pitches in the thick middle of a good team’s staff.

Butterworth was a nice find for the Padres in the 12th round, and was part of the prospect package sent to the Orioles in exchange for Ramón Laureano and Ryan O’Hearn. He’s a glove-over-hit shortstop defender with great hands and a strong arm. He has plenty of range for the position, but what really stands out is the speed with which he gobbles a grounder, transfers, and fires accurately from any angle. He offers both reliability and range, which translates into a plus glove. Butterworth isn’t going to hit much. He’s on the leaner side and lacks the bat speed and barrel control to project an average hit tool. Still, the glove is good enough to project him as a utility infielder anyway.

After lighting up both complexes, Rodríguez entered 2025 as a breakout candidate. Unfortunately, 10 games into his season, he fractured his ankle sliding into first base on a pickoff attempt, an injury that required season-ending surgery. He just got back on the field this week, and started a rehab assignment at the complex on Monday.

At his best, Rodríguez was a savvy defensive catcher with a projectable hit tool. His contact rates back in 2024 were, if not off the charts, at least near the top of them: He ran a 4% swinging strike rate and 89% contact rate, while connecting with 81% of pitches outside the zone. It came with a fair amount of chase, and you don’t necessarily want to put the bat on all those balls off the plate, but taken together the numbers reveal a pretty special feel for contact. While Rodríguez doesn’t project to grow into a whole lot more juice than he already has, with his defensive chops, the hit skill still gives him an everyday ceiling.

About the glove. Eric covered the nuances in last year’s report, which have been reproduced here: 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.

The injury obviously throws a wrinkle into the ultimate projection, but provided that it doesn’t hinder his mobility too much behind the plate, he still has the floor of a backup catcher with a puncher’s chance to grow into a regular.

Mejia is an exceptionally loose athlete with one of the whippiest arm strokes in the minor leagues. He’s lean but strong, and has enviable flexibility and body control, all of which allows him to touch 102 even though he’s not filled out by any stretch. While some pitchers reach triple digits without breaking a sweat, Mejia uses every ounce of his body to generate velocity. He has a max-effort motion, with a powerful leg lift, an accelerated drop-and-drive, and a deep, long, and violent arm stroke. Low-level hitters are understandably tardy on both of his fastballs and have zero shot when he executes his low-90s slider, which flashes plus-plus. He also can’t hit a barn right now: In 18.2 innings across six starts, he’s walked 22, uncorked 11 wild pitches, and hit one poor guy now considering a career change.

It’s not every day we throw two future 70s on a pitcher, much less one all the way down here on the list. Mejia, though, has two huge questions to answer: Can he find a way to develop viable control with his delivery, and can he stay healthy throwing like this? Brendan is skeptical he can do both without throttling down a little, but is also unwilling to be out entirely on a guy with this kind of stuff. He also raised his slot this season, and it’s possible that his control will improve as he gets more experience with his new arm action. The obvious path forward is to step off the gas, as it’s better to have two 60s on the card and 40 command, than two 70s and a 20. Your guess is as good as ours on which path Mejia will take.

The Orioles held a mini pre-draft workout for area prospects at Lo Re’s high school in Tempe (just a couple of miles down the road from Eric’s lair) and ended up drafting the infielder in the fifth round, signing him away from a BYU commitment for about half a million bucks. He’s a smaller player without big present bat speed, but his swing is beautiful and he had a great contact track record in high school (though he was at fewer events than some of his peers). He also takes a great infield, and he entered pro ball with an uncommon defensive versatility that the Orioles have immediately put to use, as Lo Re played four different positions during his first ever week of actual games.

Though he doesn’t swing especially hard, Lo Re’s body is well-connected from the ground up. His top hand drives his swing a lot of the time, allowing him to cover the top and inner third of the strike zone. It’s an offensive skill set similar to Myles Straw, though Lo Re is a better rotator and might end up with a bit more power if he can get stronger without sacrificing his mobility. Lo Re has played three infield positions and center field already in pro ball. He looked like a viable pro shortstop to the eye in high school, but it’s going to take some time before anyone outside the org will have a firm grip on his fit in center field. He’s only just begun playing there, and only some of the time. The infield/outfield mix is another similarity with prospect-era Myles Straw, though we feel better about Lo Re’s ability to stay on the dirt. Baltimore has had recent success with six-figure high schoolers and we think Lo Re will continue that trend en route to a contact-oriented utility role.

Nuel is a blazingly fast up-the-middle position player prospect from Jamaica who slashed .261/.433/.398 in his second DSL season and cut his K% from 30.3% to 20.4%. He’s now hitting leadoff for the FCL team and mostly playing second base. Nuel has two catalytic qualities in his speed and selectivity. He’s built like a college defensive back at a lanky 6-feet tall, and his swing is already geared for lift in the extreme. That may not suit Nuel’s skill set at maturity, as it won’t take advantage of his speed, but if he grows into meaningful power in his 20s, then the swing foundation to do damage is already here.

Nuel has just started playing some center field and it might eventually be the spot where he can best make a big impact on that side of the ball. The crowded nature of Baltimore’s complex position player group is going to make it tough to get a great feel for any of those guys’ defensive chops this year. Instead, the biggest part of Nuel’s 2026 is going to be carrying a viable contact rate through his first domestic pro season. He’s a toolsy, high-variance prospect who seems to have begun to find his footing.

Peña was one of the youngest prospects in the 2025 international class and got considerably stronger during the commitment window. He ended up signing for just shy of $1 million and slashed .240/.356/.341 during his DSL debut. That isn’t a great batting line on its own, but Peña was 16 for basically the entire season. Ordinarily this sort of player would repeat the DSL and nobody would bat an eye because he’s so young. Instead, the Orioles have promoted Peña. He spent the spring in Sarasota as part of their FCL group, but he’s yet to play an actual game because he needed surgery on his left ankle.

Peña is a viable shortstop prospect with good speed and exciting frame-based projection, but his swing is stiff and awkward-looking (especially his lower body), and we’re concerned about how he’ll perform against secondary pitches as he climbs. We had the equivalent of a third round draft grade on Peña before he signed and continue to here.

After a hot first half in the Cal League, Figueroa was one of the many, many prospects San Diego traded to Baltimore as part of their 2025 deadline push. He was promoted after the deal, but struggled and hit .182. He then began 2026 on a power-hitting heater putting him on pace to blow through his 2025 total. Figueroa whiffs a lot. He had a 71% contact rate last year and has been closer to 60% to start this season. But Figueroa has real thunder in his hands and enough juice to hit for power the opposite way, which he must because his swing’s length causes him to spray most of his well-struck contact that way. He’s a stiff-legged guy and below-average athlete, a one-tool player with enough power to carry some value despite his issues.

A forearm strain limited Bright to 15 starts (23 outings) in 2025, though it thankfully never required the Tommy John surgery that often follows. Back healthy in 2026, he started the year at Double-A and was recently promoted to Norfolk, where he’s made two starts. Though he’s mostly worked out of the rotation, Bright is likely destined for the bullpen. He’s barely averaged four innings per start as a pro, and he’s just a fair athlete, with a 5.4 career BB/9 rate.

Bright’s arsenal is tricky to evaluate. The fastball is standard enough, 92-95 with carry and tail, though his slot and release are so high it doesn’t miss a ton of bats. The trouble is his curve, which is friggin’ sweet aesthetically, a tight 12-6 buckler with big amplitude and 70-grade spin and bite at its best. Bright can’t seem to consistently find the handle on it, though, as he neither throws it for strikes (it had just a 38% in-zone rate last year) nor puts it in locations where it generates swing and miss. Hitters often foul it off but also posted a .330 wOBA on it when they put it in play last year, which isn’t bad, but also isn’t what you want for a pitcher’s go-to secondary. His upper-80s cutter is more of a barrel-misser, and his change is fringy.

All of that leaves Bright at a crossroads. It’s a little unusual that the Orioles, often pretty good at helping hurlers find a new pitch, haven’t coaxed a power breaking ball from a guy with some of the best feel for spin in the org. Perhaps the curve becomes that kind of pitch in short stints, or maybe there’s a slider in his future. Regardless, he projects as a reliever, where hopefully he’ll find another gear with his heater and work as a fastball-breaking ball option out of the ‘pen.

The old saw about how long levered guys sometimes just need extra time to grow into their bodies can be a little frustrating because there’s not much you can do but wait and hope. It’s still early in the season, but we may be seeing that at play with Gongora. The lefty always threw strikes in college, but after a rough year in that department in 2025, he’s posted a tiny 1.97 BB/9 through his first seven starts at Double-A. He’s probably running hot and his command is still progressing — on video, it isn’t unusual to see him alternate a perfectly placed breaking ball with a heater 18 inches from the target — but it’s impressive nonetheless, and his control drives a backend starter projection.

Gongora has a classic starting pitcher’s four-pitch mix. Out of a high slot, he works with a low-to-mid-90s fastball, straight with a bit of carry. He has two functional breaking balls, a lovely 1-7 curve and a harder two-plane slider. He used his change less often than the breakers last year, but it too has good action and arm speed, and projects average. Unlike a lot of Orioles arms, Baltimore hasn’t overhauled too much with Gongora. He’s slowed the cadence in his delivery in pro ball, and to Brendan’s eye he looks a little more limber. But the O’s have kept his high slot, and the tweaks to his offspeed pitches have been minor. That continuity has perhaps been helpful as he’s developed in pro ball, and it also means there’s runway ahead to play with a cutter, a split, or something else if the current mix proves hittable. As is, he’s having success at Double-A — 3.66 ERA, 40 strikeouts, two homers allowed in 32 innings across seven starts — and projects as a backend starter.

Eeles is a 5-foot-5 outlier who had no Division I offers coming out of high school and ended up at Division II Cedarville, where he spent four seasons. In 2023, he used his extra year of college eligibility after the pandemic to transfer to Coastal Carolina, where Eeles (who was listed at 5-foot-7 at the time) posted a .500 OBP as a fifth-year senior. Undrafted, he went to Indy Ball and raked in the American Association before the Twins finally signed him in May of 2024. He needed all of 47 games in Minnesota’s system to reach Triple-A, where he posted a 140 wRC+ with 12 bombs in 111 games across the level. He had a more muted (and injury-plagued) 2025 and was shipped to Baltimore in exchange for Alex Jackson this past winter.

If you need a strictly physical comparison for how a guy at Eeles’ size can run and generate viable big league power, Kevin McGonigle is a reasonable model. Eeles doesn’t have the same pop (though he has a bit more speed), but they share an unusual degree of athleticism in a compact and not especially impressive-looking frame. At the plate, Eeles does several things well. He has a connected swing with a great eye and at least above-average contact skill. There’s more length to his path than most guys his size, and velocity looms as a potential problem, but he otherwise covers the plate and various pitch types well.

Defensively, Eeles is landlocked at second. His short, choppy strides are quick and entertaining (not to mention a source of envy for those who track their steps), and give him a tight turning radius. His hands are just fair, though, and his arm is below average, both of which eat into his range. Despite his success at the upper levels, Eeles is a tricky roster fit. His hit skill and ability to work a count are enviable traits, but it’s tough to roster a second baseman if they don’t hit enough to start. He’s valued here as a bench piece, but long-term, he’ll likely either hit enough to play a lot or have a pretty short big league career.

Lord’s nomadic amateur career took him from a Bay Area high school to Division III Carleton College to the University of Washington. In that time, he picked up 10 ticks of velocity and blossomed into a third-round prospect. He blew out soon after signing with the Orioles and only made it back on the field for a few starts late last season. This spring, he looks significantly more physical than he did in college, and after five dominant Low-A starts, he was recently promoted to Frederick.

Watching Lord pitch, it isn’t hard to see how he blew out. He’s a max-effort thrower with inverted-W arm action, a big head whack and an arm recoil at finish. He’s near the box pretty often, though, enough so that a hybrid outcome is a real possibility if Baltimore wants to go that route. The stuff itself is quite good. Lord reaches the upper 90s with his downhill fastball, and he’s blown it by A-ball hitters thus far. His north-south breaking ball is even better, a plus hammer that he’s able to add and subtract with. He’s also experimenting with a change, and while he’s put a good one on tape, he doesn’t have much feel for it and needs to slow his body down considerably to execute the pitch. Never say never, but the forecast here is for him to lean on the fastball and slider. Depending on how the Orioles choose to develop him, he projects as either a solid middle reliever with a chance to work in the late innings, or a multi-inning length option.

You’re not going to believe this, but in Ashman, the Orioles targeted and acquired another tall pitcher with a high slot and a downhill fastball. Despite pedestrian velocity and good, but hardly exceptional movement traits, Double-A hitters are constantly under his four-seam fastball. We don’t know if he can keep generating whiffs and 70-grade results on contact with it against better opponents, but watching hitter after hitter take bad swings against the fastball, we can’t grade it any lower than this. His success with the slider and change is more explicable, as both have bat-missing late movement. Ashman’s also a strike-thrower with a clean delivery and a pretty good feel for working the fastball up and running his slider on and off the plate (his feel for the change is less advanced). Mid-level relievers don’t usually get this FV without high octane stuff, but Ashman’s results — he’s struck out 61 hitters in 36.1 Double-A innings now while allowing only 11 walks — and the way hitters tend to look helpless against him justifies an exception.

Watts-Brown’s strike-throwing took a big step forward last year, when he trimmed his walk percentage nearly in half and rode that newfound control into a breakout season. Across three levels, he notched a 3.62 ERA while striking out 11.44 per nine, a performance that prompted the Orioles to acquire him in exchange for Seranthony Domínguez.

Watts-Brown sits 92-95 and touches 97. He’s able to generate nearly 20 inches of vertical break, but neither his slot nor his motion aid the pitch’s deception, and it doesn’t miss a whole lot of bats. His feel for spin gives him a shot at two above-average breaking balls, though he doesn’t have them yet. While both his slider and curve generated 38% or better CSW rates last year, his execution is inconsistent. He doesn’t always finish the pitch and both can be cement mixers if he hangs them, as he did a couple times in his first Double-A start this season. His change has also progressed year over year, and the sink on it allows him to throw it to both lefties and righties.

What role does this portend? He has the look of a no. 4/5, with enough arsenal depth to face lefties and righties, but without the fastball or arm strength to project toward the top of the rotation. In this era, these guys are starting to get funneled into hybrid or multi-inning roles. Regardless of how he’s used, he’s tracking like a low C1 or high 40-FV type of prospect.

Originally drafted by San Diego, Hightower was traded to Baltimore in the Ramón Laureano deal last summer. He was an older high school draftee, so he’s already 21 even though he’s only in his second pro season. He started the 2026 season pretty well — .342/.390/.368 line in his first 10 games — but has been on the shelf with a shoulder problem since mid-April.

Hightower hits with a big leg kick and a high, long, looping load. Those mechanics are often associated with boom/bust sluggers, but Hightower is a discerning hitter with pretty good pitch recognition skills, and he’s able to stay balanced when adjusting off the fastball. He’s not getting to lift much, as he often lets the ball get deep and tends to beat pitches into the ground. It may be worth seeing if shortening the load or using some other mental cue to get the bat going earlier can help him get out in front more. Hightower probably won’t be a power hitter regardless, but he’s a groundball and low line drive hitter presently, and you’d like to see him get the ball in the air more often.

Hightower is a fundamentally sound defender. His actions are clean, he gets himself in front of the ball, he gets the ball out quickly, and his throws are generally accurate and online. He’s played a mix of shortstop and second base since arriving in Baltimore’s system, and while his legs are rangy enough to stick on the left side, his arm is below average for the job; he fits best at second base. Still, he’s good enough to handle short occasionally in a utility role, which is where he projects in the long run.

A leviathan corner outfield prospect with huge power, Gomez is very likely to develop at least plus raw power at peak, and he has a slight chance to enter 70-grade territory. He has already hit a ball 107 mph during live BP this spring. Whether he’ll make enough contact for that to matter we’ll learn once DSL play gets underway. Right now, his swing tends to work toward the opposite field gap; he’s less able to pull the ball than some of the other thumpers in the 2026 class. Still, he’s similar, skill-wise, to a handful of players who got about a million bucks more than Gomez’s $1.25 million bonus.

Weston is a low-slot, nearly sidearm kitchen-sinker working in a length role at Norfolk. He succeeds in part by distributing his mix relatively evenly. His two-seamer sits in the low 90s and can generate grounders when used judiciously, but it doesn’t have the kind of movement that lets him lean on it. The cutter and particularly the slider are his best bat-missers. His sweeper is pretty slow, down to the mid-70s, and has a strike-stealing, disarming effect. The split and change are pure chase pitches, with the former generating more whiffs. No one pitch carries the mail on its own, but like so many other guys in this system, the well-rounded movement profile has a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts effect.

Deception wise, there’s some push and pull here. Weston’s deep arsenal comes with an unusual combination of good extension and a low slot. Hitters seem to find his open stride and slow arm path pretty comfortable, though, and his results at Triple-A hint that this could be a real problem. The jump from Double- to Triple-A generally isn’t large, but Weston’s walk rate has nearly doubled at Norfolk and his home run rate surged once he hit the upper minors, suggesting that experienced opponents are picking up the ball pretty well. The Orioles have already moved him from a pure starting role to more of a hybrid assignment, and it’s in that sort of lower-leverage length capacity that he figures to work at the highest level.

Fabian’s backstory and skills are likely familiar to most readers, so we’ll recap this quickly: Fabian skipped the draft as a high school senior and put up big numbers as a freshman at Florida. After the COVID season, he swung and missed a ton as a sophomore, enough that he elected to go back to school rather than sign for second-round money. He performed a little better the following year, but was again selected in the second round.

The concerns stemming from all those strikeouts have proven valid. Fabian swings hard and uphill, and even though he lowered his average launch angle a tick last year, he was still whiffing as often as ever. There’s real juice when he connects, but he looks like a mistake hitter with a grooved swing. Defensively, he’s a plus runner who flies around the outfield with abandon and can go get it in center, enough so that he could be a reliable roster fit even with a one-note offensive profile. Fabian is hitting .226/.377/.403 in Norfolk, with large walk and strikeout totals in line with previous seasons. He’s a ready-made low-variance fourth outfielder.

Foster was originally drafted by the Mets, and at $40,000, he was a relatively low-dollar signing. He came to Baltimore as part of the return for Gregory Soto last summer. He made his debut in April, striking out nine in 7.2 innings but also walking six and firing off a couple wild pitches; he’s back in Norfolk.

Foster is a downhill thrower who primarily works with his fastball and slider. He lives in the mid-to-upper 90s with a fairly straight fastball, and the pitch tunnels effectively with his north-south slider. His best sliders are plus, but the pitch plays slightly down from there due to a paradoxical-sounding mix of below-average command and predictable locations: He’s both liable to miss the target but also apt to work to the glove side, as he tends to pull the ball with him as he falls off the mound. Foster is a pretty good athlete, and there’s a chance he finds a way to throw enough quality strikes to carve out a career in middle relief. More likely, he’ll be optionable relief depth and move on and off the roster fairly frequently for a few years.

Smith was mostly a reliever at Harvard and walked more than a batter per inning during his draft spring. He was so crude that he began his pro career in extended spring training and only went to an affiliate after a few weeks of playing on the complex. But Smith showed enough improvement during that span to merit trade interest from Baltimore, becoming the least famous of the guys dealt as part of the Ryan O’Hearn/Ramón Laureano haul. During his time with the Padres before he was traded to the O’s, Smith was sitting 93-94 with a roughly average curveball. By the time he got to the Fall League, he was touching 98 (and sitting anywhere from 93-96 depending on the outing) and working with a more powerful (but similarly shaped) slurve, a firmer slider, and the occasional low-80s splinker. Smith’s arm stroke is way, way late, and his command comes and goes, but he’s huge, he generates plus extension, and his stuff gets a ton of groundballs (67% last year). Plus, he has some late-bloomer traits because of his small school background and lack of reps (he’s on the IL with rotator cuff tendonitis, so the reps still haven’t come). He should be a solid middle reliever in time.

Liranzo signed for $500,000 in the 2023 international class. He was very young when he signed, so even though an injury wiped away most of his 2024 season, he’s going to play most of this season as a 19-year-old in Low-A.

Liranzo is a traits bet. He has big league physicality, with projectable power and enough athleticism to handle the left side of the infield. He takes a big, lofted hack and has the bat speed necessary to stay competitive on fastballs up, but there’s a lot of head movement and he tends to get off balance against soft stuff. Spin in particular presents a challenge, and he misses it a ton when pitchers execute low and away. How he learns to hit that particular pitch could well be the difference between Liranzo reaching the big leagues or sputtering out sooner, because there’s otherwise enough contact feel and power to project on him. Defensively, he’s playing all over the infield, and while we think he’s going to grow off of short, there’s no reason he can’t play an average third base at maturity. He projects as a utility infielder with unusual thump for the job and an everyday ceiling at third base if he can find a way to battle the soft stuff to a draw.

Vasquez is a tool shed with a lot of flaws. His swing is grooved and stiff, he struggles with fastballs up, he doesn’t have a great approach, and defensively, he’ll sometimes clang fairly routine balls because his feet aren’t in the right spot. But at the end of the bench, you want guys who can help in some way or another, and Vasquez can do quite a few things. His power is an asset, as he’s got big juice and can hammer a mistake in the lower part of the plate. Defensively, he’s seen time at five positions this year, and while he isn’t an ideal long-term fit at short, he has the requisite range and arm to play there in a pinch. His versatility and thump should get him onto a roster at some point, particularly if his feel for the game ticks up with more experience.

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, 80 wRC+) was below the ACC average. His inability to slug again impacted his offensive production relative to his peers in 2025, as he had a 92 wRC+ in a season spent mostly at High-A (though he was an 80% contact hitter and stole 44 bases). At Double-A Chesapeake to start 2026, O’Ferrall is struggling on offense while he branches out on defense, where it looks like third base is going to be his best fit. He lacks the range and quick actions of a great shortstop, but O’Ferrall’s body control and balletic style help him make great plays in on the grass at third and around the bag at second.

Despite his statistical track record to this point, O’Ferrall is more of a mistake hitter than a true plus batsman. He drives middle-middle pitches toward the oppo gap and can turn on stuff by his belt, but he is otherwise not doing much damage. Defensive versatility is going to be a necessary aspect of his duties in the majors. Big league speed requires the shortstop to make it snappy, which isn’t O’Ferrall’s game. He needs to improve enough to be the second-best shortstop defender on a big league roster. If he can do that, he’ll have a bench infield role.

Austin had a great sophomore season and entered his junior year in the mix to go in the back of the first round, but he had a tough spring and went in the third. He’s fast, versatile, and swings hard for a smaller guy, and so far in pro ball, he’s been more frequently on time to pull. Austin had a huge arm bar in college, but it has softened, and his hands don’t load nearly as deep as when he was at Vanderbilt. Austin had a good first few weeks of the season with this new swing before he hit the IL with a strained hamstring. He has enough power to be a dangerous pull-side hitter if indeed this is suddenly a part of his game.

Austin is still going to strike out a lot, probably too much to be an everyday player at the positions he can field. He’s accrued at least a little bit of experience at every non-catcher position since college, including his first pro game at third base early this year, but he has the most experience at second base and in the outfield. He’s a mixed bag at second (fringe hands, but big range and acrobatic effort) and is a better corner outfield fit despite his speed. It can be tough for teams to roster 2B/LF guys, and it would do a lot to make Austin’s profile more stable if he were to improve in center field or at third base.

Yeaman spent two years at College of the Canyons prior to his junior year as an Anteater, during which he slashed .336/.447/.591, albeit with closer to average TrackMan data. He was graded as a low-variance 45-FV prospect at draft time with a utility infield forecast, but Yeaman has really struggled to hit so far in pro ball. He was below the Mendoza Line last year after the draft and is again to start 2026. Yeaman was a gap-to-gap hitter in college who is suddenly unable to cover the outer third of the zone. He’s swinging inside a lot of sliders, though many of them are very well-located. While we don’t think he is truly this bad of a hitter, his start is alarming enough to nerf his grade into a lesser utility bucket. Yeaman has mostly been playing third base in pro ball due to the presence of Wehiwa Aloy, but he looked like a lock to remain at short in college. Aside from the occasional errant throw, he has all the other physical tools to stick there.

The broad strokes of Anderson’s profile read a lot like Victor Caratini’s did. He 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 has been an above-average statistical performer in pro ball, with an 80% contact rate last season, a career OBP north of .350, and a Double-A OPS well over .800 as of this writing.

Anderson is an excellent first baseman, but he struggles at least a little bit with all facets of catcher defense, and we consider him more of an emergency option back there than someone who might be able to catch regularly the way Caratini has. We also have some degree of skepticism around the offensive part of his game. During our looks, including last year’s Fall League, Anderson struggled with spin and was late against anything remotely resembling a big league fastball. Except for some of the very advanced metrics (xwOBA and other expected stats based on contact quality), Anderson’s data says different, and from a pure contact rate and exit velo standpoint, he’s a 55 bat with 45 power. We’re inclined to trust what our eyes are telling us in this case, which would mean Anderson’s offensive skill set is only viable if his defense at catcher improves. Here he’s projected as a fringe 40-man player.

After he pitched well in relief in 2022, the Mets moved the hard-throwing Gomez into the rotation at Brooklyn to begin the 2023 season. He made three short starts there before he needed Tommy John, and he didn’t pitch at an affiliate in 2024. In 2025, he has became the hardest thrower in the history of prospect coverage here at FanGraphs. Once peaking at 99, Gomez touched 105 and was sitting 97-103 when he was traded to the Orioles as part of the Cedric Mullins deal. Gomez still hasn’t thrown a pitch at an Orioles affiliate. He was put on the IL with a lower back injury the week after the O’s traded for him, and he began the 2026 season on the Development List.

Gomez’s arm speed breaks the sound barrier and when his delivery is synched up, he approaches the upper boundary of what is possible for humans to do with a baseball. He has zero idea where it’s going, however, and he throws a ton of non-competitive pitches, especially when it comes to his low-90s slider, which he lands for a strike less than 60% of the time. Gomez still somehow limited opponents to a .154 batting average and 60% contact rate last year, and both his pitches generated elite miss. It’s reasonable that Gomez would struggle to control his new velocity; it’s historic. He’s more likely to be a Ben Joyce, Mauricio Cabrera or Thyago Vieira type than Aroldis Chapman, more a marvel tha a great pitcher, but lots of hard-throwing relievers find their footing later in their careers and Gomez will be relevant as long as he’s throwing this hard.

Rivera is a reliever who reached Triple-A earlier this season. He’s a max-effort, low-slot righty with strong secondaries but just average arm strength and 30 command. It’s clear why that is. He’s an open strider with a big rock-and-fire, a massive head whack, and pronounced spinal tilt; the way he raises his arm slot on fastballs (the four-seamer in particular) adds an extra degree of difficulty to the delivery. Despite all that, Rivera consistently generates plus movement on both his sweeping slider and fading change. If you’re inclined to optimism, the 22-year-old has only walked seven hitters in his first 24 innings of the year. It’s a significant departure from the norm, and he’d be a value tier higher if we thought he was likely to keep doing that over the long haul. As is, he projects as an optionable reliever.

Neighbors is a powerfully built righty reliever with a mix of average and above-average stuff. He’ll touch 97 with a carrying fastball, and he pairs it with a couple of north-south breaking balls. He mostly relies on his mid-to-upper-80s slider — the higher-velo ones are often classified as cutters, and it isn’t clear whether these are separate offerings with similar shape — and also mixes in a curve with more depth. They’re all effective, though below-average command limits his ability to fully leverage the mix. Neighbors is off to a rough start in Double-A, where he’s allowed four homers and walked 13 in 13.1 innings so far this year. The stuff itself still looks as crisp as ever though, so the assumption for now is that this is a blip. He projects as an optionable reliever with a more secure middle relief ceiling if he’s able to throw strikes more consistently at maturity.

Marsh was shelved for a portion of his junior year and signed with the Mets as an undrafted free agent, then had a three-tick velo spike in his first year in their system before he became part of the Cedric Mullins deal at the 2025 deadline. Marsh’s adjustment this year appears to be a differently-shaped slider, which now has more two-planed break rather than gyro movement. Stuff-wise, he has the look of a pretty standard middle reliever, and next needs to hone his command, which currently limits him to up/down projection.

Layton was an over-slot sixth-rounder who signed for $715,800 last year. He’s filling up the stat sheet in Delmarva, where he’s hitting .295/.446/.432 (150 wRC+) with enormous walk and strikeout totals. For good measure, he’s 11-for-19 on the bases and has started at four positions, including short and center. He’s a switch-hitter with a long, upper-cut swing from both sides, and while he seems to track and identify pitches reasonably well, right now he’s having a lot of trouble hitting anything in the upper third of the zone. There’s enough athleticism and hit skill to stay on him for now, but he’ll either need to turn it loose earlier or shorten up. Defensively, Layton has been at least fair at a bunch of different spots and has middle-of-the-diamond speed, if a light arm for short. He looks like a potential super-sub type if he can get the swing-and-miss under control.

Like fellow farmhand Esteban Mejia, Morfe throws exceptionally hard and has no clue where it’s going. Unlike his teammate, Morfe is a muscular, low-to-the-ground hurler with a comparatively easygoing delivery. His arm swing is short, the effort level isn’t anything out of the ordinary, and he actually threw a tolerable number of strikes in the not too distant past; the 12.1% walk rate he posted in the DSL and Low-A in 2024 isn’t bad for an 18-year-old with this kind of arm strength.

Last season was a disaster, though, as Morfe walked or hit 36 batters in 21.2 innings. He made one similarly erratic start this year before hitting the IL with elbow pain. All of that sounds, and is, terrible. Still, Morfe is a 21-year-old with elite arm strength. Even if he needs elbow surgery, this is too good of an arm to drop off the radar entirely.

Even though he hasn’t been an especially good surface-stat performer, we want to keep the prospect pilot light on for Sosa because he has big lefty power and is still a very projectable 6-foot-4. After he slashed .222/.309/.407 at High-A last year, Sosa was promoted to Chesapeake in September, then broke camp there in 2026, and has struggled across about 40 total games at the level as of this writing. He swings like a big, long-levered guy who is still growing into his body. Though he’s at Double-A and is theoretically in his 40-man roster platform year, we don’t think Sosa is a threat to get popped in the Rule 5 and still consider him a long-term project with potential impact power.

Sanchez signed out of Cuba for $450,000 as part of the 2023 international class. After raking on both complexes in recent years, he’s off to a dreadful start in Delmarva, where he’s hitting .181/.216/.337 with a 31.8% strikeout rate. The jump from the complex to Low-A is a big one, and it’s not uncommon for international players in particular to struggle, but even by those standards he has stumbled out of the blocks.

We need not call Sherlock Holmes to figure out why this is happening: Sanchez takes an enormous hack, with a big front leg kick, a gigantic load, and a full-body, rotational upper cut path that also involves a fair amount of head bobbing. He’s a twitchy and athletic kid, so the swing itself looks pretty sweet when he makes contact; the rub is that he’s not doing that at all. There were red flags last year too — he whiffed on nearly half of the breaking balls he saw — and evaluators have long suspected he’d need to make an adjustment at some point. We’re there. His ceiling as a power-over-hit regular still looks attainable, but he’s a long way off.

Rosario signed for just over a million bucks in January because of his advanced lefty bat and projectable frame. He has experience at a number of positions, including catcher, but is raw enough as a defender that he may just play left field or first base in pro ball so that his bat can dictate his promotion pace. Our sources indicate he has only worked out in the outfield so far as the O’s tune up for the coming DSL season.

Allen is a deep sleeper. He started his college career at Owens CC in Ohio and was drafted out of Division II Ashland University. He has big league size, arm strength, and body control, and good feel to spin two breaking balls. The curve in particular is a shapely 12-6 that has enough bite to miss bats. He’s working with an extremely slow delivery and a long arm path, the former of which isn’t deceptive and the latter of which makes it difficult to get to release consistently. Both of these characteristics are ripe for tinkering, and we think there’s a chance that pro instruction fuels a breakout. He debuted with Low-A Delmarva earlier this year, flashing the good and the bad in 5.2 innings of work before hitting the injured list. Allen is a project and likely a slow-mover, but he has traits well worth the seventh-round flier Baltimore took on him last summer.

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. He threw just 14 innings at Double-A before he was shut down with a shoulder injury that required surgery; he has yet to pitch in 2026.

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 his 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 25, 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.

Allsup was alternately wild and dinger prone throughout his college career at Auburn, right until the end of his junior year, when he started throwing harder and finished strong down the stretch. That prompted the O’s to take him in the fourth round of the 2024 draft, and they kept him stretched out in 2025. Unfortunately, he blew out and will miss all of the 2026 season.

Allsup was again wild in 2025, when he walked 72 hitters in 99.2 innings, mostly at Low-A. He’s a powerful, if slow twitch, athlete with a stiff, rock-and-fire delivery, and he’ll likely always be a below-average command guy. He maintained the good velocity at least, sitting in the mid-90s throughout starts with two breaking balls that project above average. The slider/cutter is a relatively new pitch, one he picked up in pro ball, while the power curve was his most reliable swing-and-miss offering. His change flashes, although he doesn’t have great feel for it. Between the injury, good-but-not-great stuff, and history of control problems, Allsup will almost certainly wind up in the bullpen. He projects as a middle reliever, with a chance for more if everything ticks up in a simplified role.