As the Orioles pitching staff made vast improvement last season – a team ERA of 3.97 after the club had ranked last the year before at 5.84 – there was an area of improvement that may have flown under the radar.

The staff as a whole was much more pitch-efficient in 2022. The O’s staff averaged 16.2 pitches per inning. That was tied for eighth fewest in the major leagues. They ranked last the year before, throwing 17.5 pitches per inning. The Los Angeles Dodgers (15.6) and Cleveland Guardians (15.7) topped the majors in this stat in 2022.

In adding southpaw Cole Irvin via a trade with Oakland, the Orioles get a pitcher who is among the best in the majors in this stat. He averaged 15.0 pitches per inning in 2021 and was even better last season at 14.4. That was second fewest in the American League last season. A pitcher with that average would need just 86 or 87 pitches to clear six innings.

And by the way, while Jordan Lyles led the club with 13 quality starts last year (and the team went 9-4 in those games), Kyle Gibson and Irvin each recorded 15 quality starts. They eat up some innings and provide some quality along the way.

During his Zoom interview with O’s media Friday morning, Irvin talked about how being so efficient with his pitches is a real plus.

New Orioles lefty pitcher Cole Irvin has quickly adjusted to the fact that he woke up yesterday an Oakland Athletic and ended the day a Baltimore Oriole. He said he enjoyed conversations Friday with manager Brandon Hyde and pitching coach Chris Holt. He’s excited to see what the O’s coaches can offer him.

And when Oakland played in Baltimore last September, he took note of the talent in the other dugout that was on its way to 83 wins.

“I’m excited,” Irvin said during a Zoom call with Baltimore media this morning. “The first thing that came to my mind when I got the call, when we faced Baltimore at the end of the season, is how many plays Gunnar Henderson made that series. That kid’s jersey was dirty by the end of the first inning, top to bottom.

“I’m excited. It’s a young group. It’s going to be a lot of fun, there is so much talent. Just the difference from ’21 to ’22 was a visible difference. Excited to kind of get involved with the organization a little more, get to know the fans. There is a lot to be excited about.”

The Orioles acquired Irvin and Single-A right-hander Kyle Virbitsky Friday for minor league shortstop Darell Hernaiz.

The Orioles have the best farm system right now in Major League Baseball. This according to several outlets ranking them that way. And if one big standard in determining that is most prospects on a top 100 list, the Orioles last night matched their Baseball America performance by getting eight ranked on the latest MLBPipeline.com list.

Gunnar Henderson, still prospect-eligible and eligible for the American League Rookie of the Year award this season, was ranked No. 1 by both outlets, and by Baseball Prospectus as well recently.

MLBPipeline.com places three O’s in the top 12, four in the top 40 and eight among the top 99.

Pitcher Grayson Rodriguez is No. 7, Jackson Holliday No. 12 and Colton Cowser No. 40. Jordan Westburg comes in at No. 74, Heston Kjerstad at No. 80, DL Hall at No. 97 and Joey Ortiz at No. 99.

The list doesn’t even include Kyle Stowers, Coby Mayo or Connor Norby, who might well have merited consideration. The Orioles ended the 2022 season with six on the MLBPipeline.com top 100, and Henderson was No. 2 to end the season.

The Orioles had a surplus of quality minor league infield prospects and they were still seeking a pitcher to slot into their 2023 big league rotation, especially a lefty. Today those two added up to a deal where the Orioles acquired lefty starter Cole Irvin and Single-A right-hander Kyle Virbitsky from the Athletics in exchange for minor league shortstop Darell Hernaiz.

In the deal, the O’s gave up a top 30 prospect – Hernaiz was No. 16 via MLBPipeline.com – but they also acquired a pitcher that has averaged 180 innings the last two years with an ERA of 4.11. He has made 62 starts the last two seasons, but still has four years of team control remaining and will not even be arbitration eligible until after the coming 2023 season.

Here are a few more notes on the new O’s lefty after the deal was officially announced by the Orioles this afternoon:

* Irvin went 9-13 with a 3.93 ERA last year over 181 innings. He recorded strong numbers in WHIP (1.160) and walk rate (1.8) while making 15 quality starts. He produced 1.4 fWAR to rank second among A’s pitchers.

* An A’s beat writer tweeted today that Irvin was likely going to be Oakland’s opening day starting pitcher this year.

As infielder/outfielder Adam Frazier joins the Orioles this year after signing a one-year deal for $8 million in December, which player on offense will the club be getting? The player that was above average in 2021 when he was a National League All-Star, or the player that was below average last season?

Or maybe the stats meet somewhere in the middle.

In 2021, over 639 plate appearances between Pittsburgh and San Diego, Frazier hit .305/.368/.411/.779 with 36 doubles, five triples, five homers, 43 RBIs, 10 steals and 83 runs scored.

But over 602 plate appearances for Seattle, which made the postseason in 2022, the 31-year-old lefty hitter batted .238/.301/.311/.612 with 22 doubles, four triples, three homers, 42 RBIs, 11 steals and 61 runs.

Big difference in that Frazier’s OPS+ was 114 in 2021 and just 80, or 20 percent below league average, last season. Frazier has a career .728 OPS, which produces an OPS+ of 99, or just about at league average for his career.

Even for a pitcher who looked to be on the cusp of his major league debut, it was stunning stretch of pitching. During a season when top O’s pitching prospect Grayson Rodriguez went 6-2 with a 2.62 ERA, he pitched even better in six starts leading up to when he got hurt.

When the 23-year-old right-hander took the mound at Triple-A Norfolk’s Harbor Park on June 1 versus Jacksonville, a call to Baltimore seemed almost at hand. I was writing at the time that, in my humble opinion, Rodriguez was very ready to debut with the Orioles.

That night he pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings but then walked off the mound and didn’t return. We would later learn he had suffered a Grade 2 right lat strain. He would not pitch again on the farm for three months. On Sept. 1 he returned with a rehab outing for High-A Aberdeen.

In those last six outings at Triple-A, counting the night he got hurt, his ERA was 0.79. Over 34 1/3 innings he gave up three earned runs on 16 hits with nine walks and 47 strikeouts. In four of the games he threw scoreless outings.

It was a stunning stretch of pitching, even for one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. Rodriguez is No. 6 on Baseball America’s new listing of the top 100 prospects. When he talked with reporters ahead of his game return in that Aberdeen outing, he noted that his pitching and stats were eye-popping in May for Norfolk.

It was a real strength of the much-improved 2022 Orioles – the Baltimore bullpen. Will it be a team strength again this year? It will likely need to be for the Orioles to keeping trending upward toward an American League playoff berth.

In 2021, the O’s bullpen ERA of 5.70 ranked last in the majors. The final season bullpen ERA of 3.49 from last year ranked as seventh-best in the American League and ninth-best in MLB.

On Aug. 16, the Baltimore bullpen ERA of 3.05 was among the best in the majors. That would not hold up and there was some falloff late in the season. But the final mark was over two runs better than the previous season.  

That can help a team improve from 110 losses to 79.

Bullpen pitchers can be volatile in performance with much variation from year-to-year. Lefty Cionel Pérez, who pitched to an ERA of 1.40 averaging 3.3 walks per game with the Orioles, had an ERA of 6.04 and allowed 6.2 walks per nine innings over 50 2/3 innings in parts of season between 2018 and 2021.

How does a player batting .206 with an OPS of .596 at the end of June last year at Double-A end up several months later ranked among Baseball America’s top 100 national prospects?

For Orioles shortstop prospect Joey Ortiz, it took a lot of hard work, a few swing adjustments and belief in self.

He went from a player that had left labrum surgery end his 2021 season in June to one struggling a year later on the farm. And then to one that was tearing up the sport in the last half of last year. His second half tear meant he would rise from No. 28 on Baseball America's O’s top 30 preseason last year to their No. 8 prospect at the end of the year, and now he’s top 100 at No. 95 on the list released last week.

When I talked to a pair of O’s minor league skippers about the club getting eight prospects ranked in Baseball America's top 100, it was clear that Ortiz’s rise may have meant the most to a few people in the Baltimore organization.

“I love this kid and can’t say enough good things about him,” said Double-A Bowie manager Kyle Moore. “He overcame the injury. That could have been it for him. He went through surgery and rehab just to get back to the field and have a chance in ’22 and he worked so hard and put himself in such a position to play with guys like Westy (Jordan Westburg) and Gunnar (Henderson). And then he breaks out. It almost makes you emotional. He was behind the eight ball a few times.”

For a team looking to build an elite pipeline and support and grow its organization with quality home-grown talent, the last week or so have been good days for the Orioles.

It began a week ago today, when the club announced an international signing class of 27 players, headed up by 16-year-old shortstop Luis Ayden Almeyda. He got a $2.3 million signing bonus, the largest ever handed out by the Orioles to an international amateur. 

The O's class featured 13 players signing for $100,000 or more, and Koby Perez, the club's senior director of international scouting, told reporters the club has about $500,000 remaining from its pool allotment of $5,825,500. They could sign more players through Dec. 15. 

MLBPipeline.com, which ranked Almeyda as its No. 20 international prospect, gave him tool grades of 50 for hitting, running and fielding and 55 grades for power and arm. 

“I’m very excited and blessed,” Almeyda told MASNsports.com in his first one-on-one interview as an Oriole prospect. “I am ecstatic to start out with this organization and develop as a ballplayer and a man as well.

The 2023 Major League Baseball season will be unique in a few ways with some new rules coming to the majors for the first time. Such as the use of the pitch clock.

Will Orioles pitchers have any issues adjusting to the clock? We can’t know this answer yet, obviously, but I am going to guess any issues will be minimal.

Under the new rules, pitchers will have 15 seconds to pitch with no one on base and 20 seconds with a runner or runners on. The timer starts when the pitcher catches the return throw from the catcher, and to beat the clock the pitcher must start his motion before the clock runs out. The ball doesn't need to touch the plate before the clock expires, but the pitcher's motion must have started. Pitchers can step off the rubber and reset the clock, but this year can do that just twice per plate appearance.

MLB is trying, it seems, both to improve pace of play and improve time of game. In the minor league games using the clock last season, the average time of game was about 26 minutes shorter. Major league games moved past the three-hour mark on average in 2014. In 2021 big league games took an average of three hours, 10 minutes. The average last year was three hours and four minutes.

On Statcast they actually have a “pitch tempo” leaderboard. It tracks the amount of time from one pitch to the next for hurlers. Among the Orioles, when no one was on base, lefty Keegan Akin was the fastest worker with an average of 14.4 seconds between delivering pitches.

The 2016 season was a good year for the Orioles. They won 89 games and they made the playoffs before one swing in the American League wild-card game ended their season in Toronto. But the calendar year began with the Baseball America release of its top 100 prospects list. There were no Orioles among the top 100. Zero.

The year before, only two were ranked, with Dylan Bundy at No. 48 and Hunter Harvey at No. 68. The year after, 2017, the O’s had just Chance Sisco on the list at No. 57.

So maybe now, looking back, that was insight into the mounting losses that were ahead for the club. But now things are vastly different on the Baltimore farm. The Orioles led all clubs, with eight players on the new Baseball America top 100 prospects list this week. Evaluators see others who could be on the list.

Three players in three years and eight in one year. The Orioles never before had more than five on this offseason Baseball America listing of the best young talent in the sport. Now they show the way.

What happened to make this so?

Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias has said the current O’s top 10 prospects list is about as deep as he’s ever seen. And this is a man that worked for talent-rich organizations in St. Louis and Houston. 

That is quite a statement and it was pretty much proven sound when eight of those 10 were ranked among the Baseball America top 100 prospects list released Wednesday. The magazine has been producing top 100 lists early every year since 1990, and until yesterday the Orioles had never had more than five players ranked in the initial list of the year.

It was great news for an organization that stated a clear intention of building an elite talent pipeline and one that is going to have to thrive using a lot of its homegrown talent. Right now the Orioles have the deepest prospect pool in baseball, and that was not news before yesterday. Numerous outlets have ranked their farm No. 1, even before yesterday.

But a haul of eight is indeed a haul. Cleveland had the second-most with seven, while the Dodgers, Mets and Rays had six each. The Orioles never had more than five on this initial list until now. 

The O’s began the 2022 season with five and ended it with six on the Baseball America ranking of their players this way: Gunnar Henderson (No. 1), Grayson Rodriguez (No. 4), Jackson Holliday (No. 38), DL Hall (No. 55), Colton Cowser (No. 88) and Jordan Westburg (No. 89).

It was a record-setting day for the Orioles with the release of the new Baseball America national top 100 prospects list today. Not only does Gunnar Henderson continue as the publication’s No. 1-ranked prospect, but the Orioles topped all of Major League Baseball with eight players ranked in the top 100, one more than Cleveland's seven and two more than the Dodgers, Mets and Rays, who had six each. 

This is the second year in a row in which Baseball America has ranked an Oriole as the top prospect in the sport. Adley Rutschman was No. 1 in the poll released last year. The publication has been producing top 100 lists since 1990, and the only other time the same organization had two different players at No. 1 in consecutive years was when the St. Louis Cardinals' J.D. Drew and Rick Ankiel topped the ratings in 1999 and 2000, respectively.

Also, no team had two players from the same draft ranked No. 1 in back-to-back years until today. The O’s selected Rutschman No. 1 overall in 2019 and Henderson was their second pick in that draft, at No. 42.

So Henderson, who was the 2022 Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year also, is still No. 1. Pitcher Grayson Rodriguez is now No. 6 and the second-highest rated pitcher behind the Phillies' Andrew Painter at No. 5. Baseball America now ranks Jackson Holliday, the overall No. 1 pick by the Orioles in the 2022 draft, at No. 15. The Orioles also have Colton Cowser at No. 41, pitcher DL Hall No. 75, Jordan Westburg No. 76, Connor Norby No. 93 and Joey Ortiz at No. 95. Norby and Ortiz crack Baseball America's top 100 rankings for the first time this year.

With eight players ranked, the Orioles blew away their previous best in this initial pool release by Baseball America. We say initial as the last several years the publication has tweaked its poll throughout the season. In 2022, the Orioles ended the season with six in the top 100. But in the initial poll release of each year, the Orioles' best previous showings were five players ranked in 2008, 2021 and 2022.

We didn’t really need a reminder this week but we got one. The Orioles' Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall are two of the best pitching prospects in baseball. And during the 2023 season there could be times they pitch in the same Orioles rotation for the first time.

Rodriguez, the club’s top draft pick in 2018, is ranked as the club’s No. 2 prospect behind Gunnar Henderson, and No. 4 nationally in top 100s by both Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com. Hall, the club’s top pick in 2017, is ranked as the O’s No. 5 prospect by Baseball America and No. 55 in their latest top 100. Via MLBPipeline.com he is No. 6 on the team's top 30 and was No. 87 in the site's last top 100. Both outlets should be releasing new top 100 lists soon.

The reminder this week that Hall and Rodriguez are among the best pitching prospects in the sport came when MLBPipeline.com released its listing of the current 10 best right-handed and left-handed pitching prospects in the sport. Rodriguez got knocked off the top perch by the Phillies' Andrew Painter and is now the No. 2 right-hander. Hall came in at No. 4 among the lefties.

The drafting of Hall as their top pick in 2017 and Rodriguez as their top selection a year later represents the only time the Orioles have ever taken high school pitchers in back-to-back years with their highest pick. Some over the years question taking high school pitchers so high in the draft, so if the O’s get both in the same rotation, and if they have any success, they will be beating some odds in one sense.

Both Hall and Rodriguez reached 100 mph with their fastballs during the 2022 season. But beyond the sheer velocity, both also show plus offerings with sliders and changeups, and Rodriguez added a cutter last year. Right now they both have plus stuff in abundance and their potential is high.

The automated balls and strikes system, known as ABS, is reportedly coming to all of Triple-A Baseball for the 2023 season. It is fair to assume this means the next stop could be the Major Leagues for the ABS system.

This is not necessarily a “robo-ump” system as some have called it and there will still be an umpire behind the plate on every pitch. But on pitches where a batter doesn’t swing, the ABS system and not the plate ump will determine whether the pitch was a ball or strike. My understand is the umpire wears an earpiece and gets the call. If it’s a strike he raises his arm as plate umpires have always done and a strike is called, although it would be the ABS system that determined that and not the ump.

The home plate umpire is still there to make those ABS calls known and also for checked swing calls and plays at the plate, etc.

According to this Jan. 12 story reported by ESPN (subscription may be required), the electronic strikezone will be used in all 30 Triple-A parks this season to include, of course Norfolk’s Harbor Park, the home of the Orioles’ Triple-A Norfolk Tides club. The report indicated half the Triple-A games will use the full ABS system for every pitch and half will use a challenge system that MLB also could implement one day. Under that system teams get three challenges a game, for pitchers and hitters. They can challenge a called pitch and ABS will determine ball or strike. If the challenging team is correct, they retain that challenge. If not, they lose it and are down to two remaining.

A twitter question I got raised an interesting point – will Harbor Park use the ABS system or the challenge system? Well, my understanding is it is likely all parks will use both, so all 30 Triple-A teams at home play about half the games with full ABS and half using the challenge system.

The announcement of 27 international signees by the Orioles Sunday represents their fourth international class under executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and the club’s senior director, international scouting Koby Perez.

Each year their highest signing bonus has exceeded the previous year. On July 2, 2019, the club’s top signee, in the first Elias/Perez international class, was outfielder Luis Gonzalez at $475,000. Then due to COVID-19, the signing dates were pushed back. On Jan. 15, 2021, the top signee was catcher Samuel Basallo at $1.3 million. That was topped last January by outfielder Braylin Tavera at $1.7 million.

Yesterday the O’s handed out their biggest international bonus yet, adding 16-year-old, right-handed hitting shortstop Luis Almeyda, known to his family by Ayden his middle name, for $2.3 million.

Born in the United States in Patterson, New Jersey, Almeyda’s dad Hector was a firefighter for 25 years. His mother and grandparents were born in the Dominican Republic. Almeyda’s family moved to the Dominican in 2021 and he then qualified as an international signing. His family moved to the DR in part to care for his grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s disease.

At one point he appeared headed for Tampa’s Jesuit High School, but instead of moving to Florida, his family went to the DR. Had he ended up there his entry to pro ball would not have come before the 2025 MLB Draft. Now he gets his bonus and start toward the majors sooner.

The Orioles have announced a large international amateur signing class today of 27 players headed by shortstop Luis Ayden Almeda, age 16, from the Dominican Republic. Almeyda’s signing bonus is $2.3 million, per MLB.com, the largest ever given an international amateur by the Orioles. He becomes the club’s first international signee with a bonus exceeding $2 million.

Last year’s top signee, outfielder Braylin Tavera, did have that distinction until today, signing for a $1.7 million bonus to head up the class announced last January.

Almeyda sets an O’s record and becomes the fourth player to sign for $1 million or more under the regime of executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and senior director of international scouting Koby Perez. In the 2021 class, they signed catcher Samuel Basallo for $1.3 million and shortstop Maikol Hernandez for $1.2 million.

“I’m very excited and blessed,” Almeyda told MASNsports.com in his first one-on-one interview as an Oriole. “I am ecstatic to start out with this organization and develop as a ballplayer and a man as well.

“It really wasn’t a tough decision. I had my mindset on this team from the start since they started with me. I know that they have one of best farm systems in the minor leagues or maybe the best farm system in the minor leagues. You know, I’m just excited to get on this journey.”

A new international amateur signing period has arrived in Major League Baseball. Later today the Orioles are expected to announce their latest class of international signees. Their class, per reports, will be headed by Dominican shortstop Luis Ayden Almeyda.

A right-handed hitter, the 16-year-old Almeyda, according to Baseball America, will get a bonus of over $2 million. The Orioles have never had an international amateur sign for $2 million or more, and Almeyda’s bonus would easily beat the previous record, set this time last year.

Here are the seven-figure bonuses from the O’s in the last two classes:

$1.7M – OF Braylin Tavera, from Jan. 15, 2022.

$1.3M – C Samuel Basallo from Jan. 15, 2021.

In this recent post, Dan Szymborski, senior writer for FanGraphs.com and the developer of the ZiPS projection system discussed how his system saw Adley Rutschman’s 2023 season playing out.

Pretty well is the answer.

ZiPS projects Rutschman to produce an .823 OPS and 126 OPS+ in 2023, which would rank 26 percent above league average. It would be another strong season for Rutschman, and if his ZiPS projection of 4.7 Wins Above Replacement is accurate, per its current player projections, Rutschman’s WAR would rank 11^th best in the majors.

But Rutschman is not the only player that ZiPS or another projection system, Steamer, sees as having strong numbers in 2023. In looking at both ZiPS and Steamer, it seems ZiPS expects a bit more offense from other Orioles too.

For instance, ZiPS projections have four Orioles producing an OPS+ of 115 or more next season, with Rutschman at 126, Gunnar Henderson 123, Ryan Mountcastle 119 and Anthony Santander at 115. By comparison, the Yankees have just three players projected to exceed a 115 OPS+, with Aaron Judge at 164, Giancarlo Stanton 119 and Anthony Rizzo at 116.

During the 2022 season, the Orioles organization got a lot of props for its farm system and player development operation. Baseball America, MLBPipeline.com and ESPN now rank its system as No. 1. They all placed Baltimore at the top in midseason rankings, the latest we have from the outlets. They could update those soon.

Now comes an MLB Pipeline poll published recently in which the outlet surveyed major league front office officials. That group also has the Orioles as having the No. 1 farm in baseball.

Half of those asked which team has the best farm in baseball responded Baltimore. The Los Angeles Dodgers came next at 21 percent, and Arizona third at nine percent. Of the 30 clubs, nine got votes for the top farm, but no club got nearly as many votes as the Orioles did.

The article states: "The Orioles have ranked as the top farm system in our last three rankings, and it looks like the industry agrees. Even with Adley Rutschman graduated, the combination of high-end prospects just about ready to impact the big league team and depth in the system has them very well-regarded, with the Dodgers not too far behind."

So we have pretty much reached a consensus here with the top outside outlets selecting the Orioles, and many of those execs inside the game doing so as well.