Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Baltimore Orioles. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. The parenthetical part of the title is largely just a nod to Zach Lowe, whose ESPN basketball column inspired this one. He occasionally mentions flaws or foibles holding a particular team or player back, in lovingly GIF’ed up detail. I’m more of a rah-rah type, and plenty of weeks I don’t have a single Didn’t Like in the column at all. This week, though, I can’t help it; mental lapses, baserunning errors, and overall sloppiness are all over the column. That’s not to say I don’t love watching it, because part of what’s fun about baseball is when a theoretically staid game gets messy, but let’s be clear: A lot of these plays are not good plays. We’ve got superstars getting confused, on-field collisions, and absolute howlers. Let’s get started.
1. The Profligate Nationals
The Nats are one of the unheralded fun stories of the baseball season. They’re hanging around .500 and playing like better days are ahead. CJ Abrams and MacKenzie Gore look like franchise mainstays. James Wood, another part of the return from the Juan Soto trade, isn’t far off. Mitchell Parker and Jake Irvin might be mid-rotation starters. Jacob Young is an elite defender. They have plenty of interesting role players, and the whole team plays with reckless and joyful abandon.
That’s particularly true on the basepaths, where the Nats rank third in steals but only 11th in total baserunning value. They’re always angling for how to advance another base, whatever the costs. Sometimes that ends in tears. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
Winning streaks don’t typically change the course of a team’s season. For example, the Dodgers are probably going to finish first in the NL West no matter how many games they win over the next week or so. The same would be true for the White Sox, just in reverse; they could rip off 10 straight wins and their outlook still would be about as bleak as it gets. And yet, in winning seven games in a row, the Astros have completely altered their trajectory for the rest of the season.
Incidentally, the last Astros loss came against those same abysmal White Sox on June 18, when Chicago rookie Jonathan Cannon was one out away from completing an eventual 2-0 shutout. After that game, Houston’s playoff odds fell to 29.3%, its nadir for the season. Since then, the Astros have won seven straight to pull within 3.5 games of the final AL Wild Card, and their odds to make the postseason are back above 50% for the first time since May 26. Now, entering this weekend’s series against the also-surging Mets at Citi Field, the Astros are just 4.5 games out of first place in the AL West.
It wouldn’t have been the least bit unreasonable to suggest prior to the winning streak that the Astros ought to be sellers at the deadline. Kyle Tucker had just been placed on the IL with a shin contusion that is expected to keep him out of the lineup until July. Cristian Javier and José Urquidy had just undergone Tommy John surgery, ending their seasons and making them non-factors for at least the first half of 2025. Houston had also just released veteran first baseman José Abreu, electing to eat the remainder of his disastrous contract that runs through next season rather than roster him any longer. This was a team that simply looked dead in the water, ravaged by injuries and underperformance and unable to get things going. Oh, how a week changes things.
No Kyle Tucker? No problem. All but four of the 14 batters the Astros have sent to the plate during the streak have posted a wRC+ above 100, with the quartet of Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Alex Bregman, and Jeremy Peña finally clicking at the same time. Impressively, the offense has caught fire despite homering just six times in the seven-game stretch; instead, Houston’s 20 doubles have kept the line moving.
In addition to the aforementioned Javier and Urquidy, the Astros also have been without Justin Verlander during this stretch, after they placed him on the IL with neck discomfort the day before their winning streak began. Instead, they’ve been forced to lean on a group of mostly unheralded pitchers, and boy have those arms delivered. Hunter Brown has turned his season around by revamping his pitch mix (Robert Orr and Ben Zeidman have a great look at it over at Baseball Prospectus), and Spencer Arrighetti just had the best start of his young career; he allowed three hits and no walks while striking out 10 across seven scoreless innings in Wednesday night’s 7-1 win over the Rockies. Ronel Blanco — Houston’s only pitcher who’s survived the injury bug this year — just keeps rolling right along and looks to be in prime position to make the All-Star team in his first full season, at age 30!
Now that the Astros are firmly on the buy side ahead of the deadline, barring something catastrophic to negate their winning streak over the course of the next month, how will they approach things?
Even with Javier, Urquidy, and J.P. France all out for the year, the Astros have rotation help on the way. Verlander and Luis García are expected back soon, with Lance McCullers Jr. not far behind and rookie Jake Bloss able to help out once he too is off the injured list. Verlander, Valdez, Blanco, McCullers Jr., and García would make for a strong playoff rotation (especially because Arrighetti, Bloss, and Brown will be in reserve). But, understanding that they’ve got other positions of issue, namely first base, why not acquire two Birds with one trade? Yes, I’m saying they should trade with the Blue Jays.
Toronto is on the other side of the coin, with its playoff odds down to 5.1% entering Thursday’s drubbing of the Yankees. Perhaps no team this season has been as disappointing as the Jays, whose best course of action looks like selling and rebuilding for the future.
Ideally, the Astros would take advantage of Toronto’s unexpected woes by trading for first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who is under club control through the end of next season, while also adding a starting pitcher, though it’s unclear how willing the Blue Jays would be to deal Guerrero. Heck, his trade value alone feels extremely unclear: He’s having a very good year (133 wRC+) but still has infuriating batted ball tendencies, with a grounder rate above 50% and just 10 home runs. Teams will surely line up to acquire Guerrero if he were made available in the hopes that they can optimize his contact. The Astros especially would be drawn in by the thought of Vladito taking aim at the Crawford Boxes, thus giving them their best power threat at first base since Yuli Gurriel clubbed 31 homers in 2019 with the help of the juiced ball.
If we presuppose that the Blue Jays are, in fact, willing to trade Guerrero and retool for 2026 and beyond, knowing he could earn close to $30 million next season in his final year of arbitration, the biggest hangup would be agreeing on a price that the Astros would be comfortable paying, especially considering the state of their farm system. Eric Longenhagen and Travis Ice described their farm as “below average on impact and an average one in terms of depth.” But when you consider the uncertainty surrounding Toronto’s top two prospects — Ricky Tiedemann, who hasn’t been able to stay on the field consistently, and Orelvis Martinez, who was just suspended 80 games for PED usage, halting his development — intriguing, higher-floor prospects just might be what the Jays are seeking. Among the players that Houston could offer are Bloss, Jacob Melton, and Joey Loperfido, who would be left without a spot if the Astros were to add Guerrero.
It’d be valid for the Astros to balk at that price, but what if they took on a steady-if-unspectacular starter like Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt, or José Berríos along with Guerrero to tamp down the prospect cost? All three pitchers are good, but also on the wrong side of 30. If the Jays are going the path of retooling anyway, it may behoove them to remove a highly paid starter from their payroll because he probably won’t be around to make an impact on the next good Toronto team anyway. Sure, adding one of these starters would likely push Houston’s payroll to unforeseen heights, but the Astros should be game to take on such a contract if it means getting another solid starter without giving up as much in prospect value.
The Astros are having a weird season and may have a weird future as they move away from the risk-averse front offices of Jeff Luhnow and James Click. So they might as well lean fully into it and take some risky shots that could reap them major rewards.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Nolan Schanuel’s aversion to day games, the Astros reaching .500 and coming for the Mariners, Houston’s weekend opponent (the Mets) making it back to .500 and nearing a playoff spot, the success (and good fortune) of Reynaldo López, the bad fortune of Adam Duvall, and how “expected” stats have changed perceptions of performance, Hunter Greene and vomiting on the mound, a Dodgers bat…man’s clutch catch, Shohei Ohtani’s RBI streak, Ohtani’s dog’s backpack, and pedantic questions (1:20:55) about leaving the bases loaded, when a game is “all” one team, and how umpires signal a full count.
Today is an important day on the baseball calendar, although you might not see or hear that mentioned anywhere else. At some point this evening, likely around 10:30 PM Eastern, the seventh game of the night will wrap up and the 2024 major league season will cross over into its second half, technically speaking. Half of the 2,430 games on the regular season schedule will have a winner and a loser, and the majority of the league’s 30 teams will have played at least 81 games. To me, it’s the perfect time to check in on the various postseason races around the league. Teams have had plenty of time to prove who they are, but there is just as much time remaining for those narratives to change completely. Let’s dive in.
To give you a quick sense of how things have changed since Opening Day, here is a side-by-side comparison of the potential playoff field as determined by our preseason projections, the most popular picks from our preseason staff predictions, and what the playoffs would look like if the season ended today:
How the Playoff Field Has Changed
Playoff Race
Preseason Projections
Staff Predictions
If Season Ended Today
AL East
Yankees
Orioles
Yankees
AL Central
Twins
Twins
Guardians
AL West
Astros
Astros
Mariners
AL Wild Cards
Mariners, Rays, Orioles
Yankees, Rangers, Mariners
Orioles, Twins, Red Sox
NL East
Braves
Braves
Phillies
NL Central
Cardinals
Cubs
Brewers
NL West
Dodgers
Dodgers
Dodgers
NL Wild Cards
Phillies, D-backs, Giants
Phillies, D-backs, Giants
Braves, Cardinals, Padres
The current projected standings look quite similar to that final column, with two exceptions: the Astros are projected to beat out the Red Sox for the final American League Wild Card spot, and the Padres and Cardinals are projected to swap places in the second and third National League Wild Card positions. Read the rest of this entry »
By June of 2013, Baltimore’s beat writers had established their favorite in-season stat to track: Manny Machado’s rapidly rising doubles count.
Machado was in the midst of his first full season in the majors and on pace to make a run for the single-season doubles record. He finished the season with 51 (a several-way tie for 51st all-time), but in the moment, he represented a rookie with sky high potential, standing in the shadow of a mountain representing his own potential peak.
As he dumped double after double into the outfield, Orioles broadcasters noted for fans that the 20-year-old Machado was still developing physically, so his power tool was poised to level up as his career progressed, and when it did, some portion of those 51 two-baggers would convert to round-trippers. The Doubles to Dingers developmental arc is a real phenomenon. After hitting a double once every 14 plate appearances and a home run once every 50 in 2013, Machado followed up that performance in ’14 by doubling just once every 25 PA while upping his homer rate to once every 30. More recently, the current Baltimore broadcast booth has applied the Doubles to Dingers arc to Gunnar Henderson, another promising second-year player on the left side of the Orioles’ infield. However, as Henderson has increased his home run rate in his second full season by over 50%, his doubles rate has held steady, suggesting he’s leveled up his hit tool alongside the power surge, which doesn’t quite fit this narrative arc.
So which players have best exemplified the Double to Dingers storyline, and how did their stories play out afterward? We don’t need to rely on broadcasters, who have a tendency to fuel fan optimism, because this is extremely quantifiable. To identify players on this path, I started the search in 1988 and looked only at players who at the time had three or fewer seasons of at least 100 PA in the majors. I compared their ratio of dingers to doubles during the season in question to their career ratio for all seasons prior. Only samples of at least 300 PA were considered when calculating the ratio. Players also needed to be hitting doubles in at least 4% of their PAs prior to unlocking the next level of power, and after leveling up, their new homer rate should settle in above 2% of PAs (thresholds chosen are round numbers at or just below league average because this really only matters for hitters producing at a baseline level of competency in both key categories). To further ensure that the change in their dingers-to-doubles ratio is caused by a somewhat proportional change to the frequency of both doubles and dingers, their homer rate needed to increase by at least half a percent; likewise, their doubles rate must have decreased by at least half a percent. Read the rest of this entry »
ForWhomTheBellTrolls: RE- KC Royals. A lot of fans seem to think it might be a mistake to “sell the future” for reliever rentals and whatnot, and obviously there is a balance. But to me, the farm system is so bad and the team is so far away from actually being a legitimate looking sustainable contender that it could be another 5 years before they are in this type of position again. Do you think it actually makes more sense to sort of “go all in” to some degree for KCR?
12:02
Dan Szymborski: I think there’s something to that…if not for Cleveland.
12:02
Dan Szymborski: I think if you go all-in, you at least want to have a really good shot at the division
12:03
Dan Szymborski: and the second best record
12:03
Dan Szymborski: It becomes trickier when you’re mostly chasing a wild card
Baseball is truly a game of goops and gunks. Clubbies prepare pearls with Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud. Position players paste their bats with pine tar and pamper their gloves with leather conditioner. Trainers soothe sore muscles with Icy Hot or Tiger Balm, and coaches spray the field with foul streaks of tobacco juice. Between innings, players wolf down caramel-filled stroopwafels specially designed to replenish high-performance athletes while fans slather hot dogs with mustard, ketchup, relish, chili, and blindingly yellow nacho cheese sauce that is, in fact, none of those three things. And of course, pitchers have been known to secret everything from sunscreen to petroleum jelly to Spider Tack on their person. If it defies easy categorization as a solid or a liquid, there’s a place for it at the ballpark.
Rosin sits somewhere in the middle. It’s powdered plant resin that sits on the mound inside not one but two cloth bags, but it doesn’t work its magic in that form. It requires a liquid to coax out its adhesive properties. The only approved liquid is sweat, for which a player might go to their hair or their forearm, but even then, there are limits. David Cone demonstrated the power of rosin after Max Scherzer’s ejection last April. With just a small amount of water and rosin, enough to create only the slightest discoloration on his fingers, Cone could create enough tack to make the baseball defy gravity. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in January, I expressed grave concern over the state and direction of the Washington Nationals. They’d followed their World Series title with four straight last-place finishes, jettisoned most of their good players, and watched a series of prospects flame out. It wasn’t just a matter of waiting for Dylan Crews and James Wood to hit the majors; I argued that Washington needed to build a foundation of strong supporting players. Wood and Crews could be the difference between the Nats winning 80 games a year and 90, but if the infrastructure wasn’t ready, they’d turn a 70-win team into an 80-win team. And at that point, why did we even bother?
I’m pleased to report that the Nationals — no doubt sobered and inspired by my pessimistic appraisal of the situation — have answered the call. They don’t stink anymore. I don’t know if they’re good right now, as 38-41 and fourth place in the division isn’t exactly reminding anyone of the Big Red Machine. But on the journey from cheeks to championships, mediocrity is the first waypoint. Besides, with the NL Wild Card race being what it is, the Nats look like they’re going to be within a couple games of a playoff spot halfway through the season. Read the rest of this entry »
This week marks the halfway point of the 2024 regular season. We’re out of silly sample size season now, having moved on to wondering which teams will add at the deadline and which will start building for tomorrow. Season-long leaderboards are populated with the best players in the league, just like you’d expert. The White Sox and Rockies are awful; the Yankees and Dodgers are great. Plenty of this season has gone according to plan.
Not everything has, though. The Blue Jays and Cubs didn’t get off to the starts they hoped for. On the other side of the coin, the Phillies and Guardians have both exceeded expectations by a mile. Perhaps not coincidentally, both teams have gotten superb performances from their relief corps all season. It’s largely the usual suspects: Emmanuel Clase is one of the best closers of the decade, while the Phillies had the best bullpen projection in the sport coming into the season. But it’s not exclusively the usual suspects. Case in point, or perhaps I should say Cade in point: Cade Smith.
If you’re not a Guardians fan, you might not know who Cade Smith is, and I can hardly blame you. He made his major league debut this season after a solid 2023 campaign during which he compiled a 4.02 ERA (3.42 FIP) and struck out 35% of opposing batters. He struggled to control his walks and Triple-A hitters touched him up for six homers (20% HR/FB), but all told, it was a good year. He broke camp with the big league team; those same power rankings that liked the Phillies so much had Smith down for 61 innings of work as a middle reliever. Read the rest of this entry »
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Dan Szymborski
