ABERDEEN - With a roster that includes three Orioles top 30 prospects in his infield and two that primarily play second base, new high Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds manager Roberto Mercado may need to do some shuffling of his young talent when the new season begins on Friday at Jersey Shore.

Last summer the Orioles selected Connor Norby in the second round out of East Carolina, No. 41 overall. Every start he made last season between the Rookie-level Florida Complex League and low Single-A Delmarva was at second base. He batted .264/.380/.405/.785.

In January, when the O’s announced their latest class of international signees, they added 22-year-old Cuban-born infielder César Prieto from the Cuban baseball pro ranks. He was signed to a $650,000 bonus and last year batted .403/.463/.579/1.042 and showed amazing bat control, drawing 31 walks with just 11 strikeouts. During the 2020 season, he had a 40-game hitting streak. He also has played a lot of second base.

But during an IronBirds practice last night at Ripken Stadium, Mercado said that Prieto showed him during spring training that he can move around the infield. The skipper said he plans to get both these players on the field a lot.

“Prieto will be moving around the infield,” said Mercado, who is beginning his first year in the O’s organization. “He’s a guy that is athletic, and we saw it over the last five weeks. He can play second, short and third. Which gives us some opportunities to give guys a day of rest. That is a big plus for us. We’re going to move some guys around as well throughout the year. But Norby is going to be primarily at second base and that is where his focus is going to be.”

Now that the minor league baseball season has begun, let’s take yet another look at the opening day/break-camp rosters and provide a few thoughts on the four Orioles full-season affiliates at Triple-A Norfolk, Double-A Bowie, high Single-A Aberdeen and low Single-A Delmarva.

NORFOLK

Pitchers: Diógenes Almengo, Kyle Brnovich, Marcos Diplán, Conner Greene, Ryan Hartman, Blaine Knight, David Lebron, Zac Lowther, Ofelky Peralta, Grayson Rodriguez, Cody Sedlock, Kevin Smith, Cole Uvila, Nick Vespi, Alexander Wells.

Catchers: Brett Cumberland, Chris Hudgins.

Infielders: Rylan Bannon, Patrick Dorrian, Cadyn Grenier, Jahmai Jones, Mason McCoy, Terrin Vavra.

It was a cloudy day at Camden Yards, but the ballpark was still looking beautiful today as workers were putting the final touches on the new configuration in left field.

It’s going to take quite a drive to hit the ball out in an area where once players hit what some would call “Camden Yards specials,” balls hit in the air that would be outs in most parks, but not in Baltimore.

The Orioles are intending for the park to play more fairly now. Since 1992, more homers have been hit in Baltimore than any other park, and nine of the other current major league venues have been around that entire time. More homers were hit at Camden Yards in the last 20 seasons, and 18 of the parks now in use have existed in that span.

As the final panels on the padded wall were going up today, the ballpark looked very ready for a game, and there will be one there on Monday for the home opener against Milwaukee.

“They are just putting the finishing touches on it and certainly it will be ready for our home opener against Milwaukee,” said Jennifer Grondahl, Baltimore Orioles senior vice president of communications and community development. “I think I’ve heard our players talking about it a little bit and they seem excited. The pitchers are certainly excited.

The Orioles will begin the season with 15 pitchers on their 28-man roster. The rosters must decrease to 26 players and 13 pitchers beginning on Monday, May 2. But here is a guess at how that group of 15 could look starting Friday at Tropicana Field.

My group of pitchers includes 15 of the 21 hurlers that are currently on the club’s 40-man roster, so no 40-man roster moves would be needed to start the year with this group.

This is just a guess and how I might set it up, and as we know, putting me in charge is not a good idea. But on a blog, I can run things!

Lefty John Means gets the opening day start Friday and we already knew that. Last year at Boston in the opener, he led the Orioles to their first opening day shutout since 2005. He gave up just one hit over seven innings, throwing 97 pitches in a 3-0 win.

That was the Orioles’ first shutout in an opener since they beat Oakland 4-0 as Rodrigo López threw six scoreless innings. It was the sixth opening day shutout in club history.

The Orioles may be headed for a transition year with their infield. The players that take the field on opening day on Friday in St. Petersburg will surely be pushed from behind by some of the club’s top prospects.

How soon those prospects arrive is an open-ended question, but surely the Orioles have them - both in quantity and quality - and the infield on opening day 2023 could look very different. Or maybe sooner than that.

Ramón Urías has cemented a starting infield spot this spring, a spring he began with a leg up on the competition after batting .279/.361/.412/.774 in 85 games last year. That produced an OPS+ of 111, and he is still youthful at 27. It’s just a matter of where he plays, with second, short and third all possible. Just not all at once.

The rest of the group, to be nice, lacks much in the way of big league stats, but Jorge Mateo, no doubt, intrigues with his blazing speed, and he did produce a .748 OPS in 116 O’s plate appearances last year. Rougned Odor and Kelvin Gutiérrez are in the mix, and Odor could start at second with Gutiérrez at third. Chris Owings, Shed Long Jr. and Richie Martin remain on the camp roster, and Martin has certainly hit well under the Florida sun.

But it’s the infielders on the rise that probably most excite Birdland. There are a few top 10 prospects and a decent group that will be at Double-A or Triple-A, not to mention a few ranked players expected to begin at high Single-A Aberdeen as well.

The Orioles, in conjunction with their affiliates at low Single-A Delmarva, high Single-A Aberdeen and Double-A Bowie announced their break-camp rosters today. The rosters could still change between now and opening day on Friday for those three clubs, but the bulk of the rosters were set today with this announcement.

Earlier, in this entry, we detailed the Triple-A Norfolk break-camp roster. The Tides open their season tomorrow night at home versus Charlotte. Left-hander Kevin Smith is expected to start that game.

The Bowie roster can carry 28 players, while the A-ball teams in Aberdeen and Delmarva feature 30-man rosters.

DELMARVA

Pitchers: Carson Carter, Moisés Chace, Shane Davis, Juan De Los Santos, Daniel Federman, Thomas Girard, Conor Grady, Dan Hammer, Kelvin LaRoche, Yeankrlos Lleras, Daniel Lloyd, Ryan Long, Hector López, Alejandro Méndez, Eduard Monroy, Preston Price, Raul Rangel

They are No. 1. The Orioles have the top farm system in all of Major League Baseball. They do according to both ESPN, which listed them atop its rankings in mid-February, and according to MLBPipeline.com, which rated the O’s No. 1 when updating its rankings earlier this week.

When Baseball America released its latest organizational ratings in January, the Orioles were rated at No. 4. They are No. 10 in the latest rankings via The Athletic.

When it comes to MLBPipeline.com, they first ranked the Orioles No. 1 late last August and kept them there in the newest update this week. The club has been on a steady rise in the last couple of years. In the 2020 MLBPipeline.com preseason rankings, the O’s farm was No. 13 and moved to No. 8 by midseason. Before the 2021 season, they got the No. 5 ranking and then moved to the top spot, which they now continue to hold.

In response to several questions I have been getting if the Orioles were ever No. 1 previously in these rankings, they were not.

“The Orioles are obviously struggling at the big league level, but the farm system is headed in the right direction,” MLBPipeline.com analyst Jim Callis said last summer when the club first moved to No. 1. “They have the best prospect in baseball in Adley Rutschman, who is the best catching prospect I have seen in three decades of covering prospects. They also have the game’s best pitching prospect in Grayson Rodriguez. They have built nice depth, especially in terms of position players.”

When right-hander Jordan Lyles threw five innings for the Orioles in Friday’s win over Philadelphia, it was the first five-inning outing this spring by an O’s pitcher. Maybe someone did it on a back field or in a minor league game, but not during a spring training game.

It was a welcome sight, and the Orioles are hopeful he eats that many innings and more each game when the regular season begins next weekend.

Lyles was so efficient that he needed just 55 pitches to get through five innings, allowing four hits and two runs with no walks and two strikeouts. No O’s pitcher had exceeded three innings, and then Lyles got five.

O’s starters pitched the fewest innings in the American League last year. O’s starters averaged 17.50 pitches per inning, and that was also the worst mark in the American League. Five innings via that average would amount to 88 pitches, not 55.

“For a spring training outing, working on his pitches, his command, pitched five really good innings,” said manager Brandon Hyde. “I know he feels good about getting the work in that he got. I thought he actually got better as the game went on. Breaking ball got a little better. That’s a veteran major league start right there, and happy to have him.”