A new season means a new MLB Pipeline prospect ranking.
This week on “The Bird’s Nest,” Annie Klaff and I broke down some of the highlights from an updated top 30.
The Top Dogs
Samuel Basallo and Coby Mayo are two of the top prospects in all of baseball. Two of the best 15 in the game per Pipeline’s top 100, to be exact, and No. 1 and No. 2 in the O’s top 30. Basallo, now the top prospect in Baltimore’s system, has turned heads down in Sarasota with his eye popping exit velocities and defensive improvements. However, the catcher still needs seasoning in Triple-A Norfolk after posting a .638 OPS in 21 games with the Tides. That’s to be expected during your age 19 season. As for Mayo, there’s not much left to prove offensively down in the minors. Continuing to progress defensively at both third base and first base is the next step in his development.
The Speedsters in Center
Enrique Bradfield Jr. (No. 3) and Vance Honeycutt (No. 5) have some of the highest upside among O’s minor leaguers. The book on Bradfield is out: exceptionally fast with a glove bound to be golden, but how will the bat progress? An on-base percentage close to .400 at Bowie last year is a great jumping off point. As for Honeycutt, four of the five tools seem to be there. The hit tool, which was missing to start his professional career, just may be the most important one. If the former Tar Heel can cut down on his strikeouts and make more contact, the sky's the limit.
The Rest of the 2024 Class
Four other members of the O’s 2024 draft class join Honeycutt in the top 30: Griff O’Ferrall (No. 7), Ethan Anderson (No. 18), Austin Overn (No. 29) and DJ Layton (No. 30). O’Ferrall and Anderson both figure to have a high floor. Good contact rates, a high baseball IQ, and more walks than strikeouts in college. Overn and Layton, on the other hand, presume to have a larger delta between their ceiling and floor. Overn, a wide receiver during his freshman year at USC, is an outstanding athlete with a 75 run tool and a 70 field tool. If the bat can progress, Overn could become a “Bradfield lite.” Layton was the only high schooler that the Orioles selected within the first 10 rounds of last year’s draft. The switch-hitting shortstop has great raw tools and has yet to make his professional debut, but Baltimore clearly aw something special there.
The Arms
I promise there were also pitchers in the O’s top 30. They even drafted some of them, too! The highest ranked among them include Chayce McDermott (No. 4), Michael Forret (No. 8), Keeler Morfe (No. 9), Pat Reilly (No. 10), and Nestor German (No. 11). If McDermott can stay healthy, he is most likely one of Baltimore’s first phone calls for the big league rotation, should injuries occur. Among the other four, Reilly is the only one to reach as high as Double-A. All boast great stuff with stellar strikeout numbers, and could progress into an eventual McDermott/Cade Povich tier of pitching prospect down the line.
All in all, this is not the same farm system that was the runaway best in baseball for consecutive years. There are still the slam dunks in Basallo and Mayo, but gone are the days of having six or seven players in the top 100. But it’s important to remember that that fact is a very good thing. It means that the Orioles are winning more baseball games and no longer have the opportunity to draft a prospect the caliber of Adley Rutschman or Jackson Holliday.
However, the O’s have shown that they don’t need the first overall pick to have success in the draft. Samuel Basallo was an international prospect and Coby Mayo was a fourth-round pick; they’re now some of the best prospects the game has to offer.
And speaking of international prospects, there are 11 such players in Baltimore’s top 30. That’s a testament to the growth of the Orioles’ involvement abroad, and much credit is due there.
It’s a very young farm. 18 of these 30 players are presumed to be starting the season at High-A Aberdeen or lower. On the flip side of that coin, we haven’t seen many of these players’ true potential yet.
The fact that the focus is back on the big leagues rather than the minors is a very good thing. But don’t be surprised when one of the best player development systems in baseball continues to produce top talent.
For a more detailed look at the O’s top 30 rankings, check out this week’s episode of “The Bird’s Nest.” You can catch the show every Wednesday live at 11 am on the MASN Orioles’ Facebook and YouTube channels or after the fact on any of your favorite podcast platforms. That is, of course, assuming that there are no major technical difficulties to work around. Which definitely did not happen.