Back to normal: A year later, re-evaluating the Orioles' top prospect list from 2022
Before there was liftoff, there was this prospect list. Even if many of the players are still eligible with their futures still to be written, it's neat looking back at what has changed.
The return of minor league baseball in 2021 brought normalcy back to the Orioles’ farm system and, more importantly, gave a chance for some of their top prospects as well as lesser-known ones to show they didn’t waste their time away from the game.
So many of the rumblings that could only be taken at face value a year earlier—on the talent of newly-acquired players in trades or the draft, or the players who were completely off the radar who were far better than last anyone saw them—were verified over the course of the summer. And so many players took advantage of the in-season work drilled within the club’s hitting program to improve in 2021, as well.
The resulting prospect list, taken in total, helped the Orioles climb into the top few farm systems in the game. If the players who they’re counting on pan out and meet their potential, this list (as well as the pending 2023 one) will be looked back on as an early sign of things to come.
But it’s also an end point, at least for this exercise of looking back and reflecting on what was good, bad, or otherwise notable about the handful of Orioles top prospect lists I did for Baseball America. I feel like the lessons were worth digging into, even if they will undoubtedly be forgotten come next fall.
Either way, here’s a look back on the Orioles’ 2022 preseason top prospect list at BA.
The Top 10
1. Adley Rutschman (70/Medium) 2. Grayson Rodriguez (70/High) 3. DL Hal (60/Extreme) 4. Gunnar Henderson (55/High) 5. Colton Cowser (55/High) 6. Jordan Westburg (55/High) 7. Kyle Stowers (45/Medium) 8. Heston Kjerstad (55/Extreme) 9. Kyle Bradish (50/High) 10. Coby Mayo (50/High)
Notable names outside the top 10
Given this list is barely a year old, the top-30 only features a handful of names with major league experience. In many cases, the players were on their way down the rankings after ranking highly in the past and have no dropped out entirely. That doesn’t qualify for Mike Baumann (No. 11), of course. But Jahmai Jones was ranked No. 19 entering a season in which he had season-ending elbow surgery, was released, then signed with the Dodgers. Former No. 1 prospect Yusniel Diaz was No. 23 here, with Alexander Wells at No. 25 and Zac Lowther No. 26.
The next-10 included a couple of big leaguers as well. Of Félix Bautista, No. 37, one sentence was maybe insufficient, even if this was a correct sentence: “A 26-year-old reliever who is much more physical than his listed 6-foot-5, 190-pound size suggests, Bautista refined his control to keep his 100-mph around the strike zone and struck out 77 in 46 2/3 innings to put himself on the major league radar for the Orioles in 2022.” On the radar for sure. A couple spots behind him, former top pick Cody Sedlock checked in.
Nailed it
Back in February, long after this list was submitted and in the relative infancy of this newsletter, Coby Mayo was the subject of an article I look back on fondly. It was about how prospect buzz can build, and build, and build, and how Mayo’s profile fit the type of player that can easily happen to.
I remember thinking about who to slot in at No. 10 a lot last fall, with not exactly a top consideration. Baumann was coming off a year where he wasn’t his best but was also recovering from injury, so it was hard to punish someone I thought highly of by moving him out of the top-10. Connor Norby was in the mix a bit as well, and ended up at No. 12, though all three of these players ended up with the same grade.
At one point, it just kind of dawned on me that I should just put Mayo there to plant a flag. Turns out that at No. 10, other outlets would plant their flags much higher. But when someone jumps up the way Mayo did in terms of performance, it makes all the difference if there are meaningful changes or improvements driving that. Mayo, with his control of the strike zone and the added loft and leverage to his swing to keep his hard contact in the air, had that. So, was he as high as maybe he should have been? Perhaps not. But, Mayo being in the top-10 at a stage in the offseason before the hype began was something I feel really good about.
Blew it
This was more technical than anything else, but really ate at me. I was doing the On The Verge podcast about the full list in February when I realized I made a mistake in putting the list together. BA asks for an extra report (No. 31) in case players are traded or otherwise removed from the rankings. I was chagrined to even have Darell Hernaiz in that spot, as I thought he still had a lot of potential and didn’t want to penalize him for a learning year in his full-season debut. But, that’s where he ended up, only I listed a different player at No. 31 in the next 10 section, so Hernaiz was left out.
I felt very bad about this and apologized to him during the season, and he was gracious about it, but the error remains. He’s back in this year, and much more the player I thought he’d be than one worth leaving out entirely.
If we want to talk about intentional decisions worthy of second-guessing this early, I guess designating Carter Baumler and Reed Trimble as breakouts could have gone better. My top choice, Norby, certainly played out, but Baumler made only a handful of starts post-Tommy John before a shoulder injury shut him down, and Trimble spent the season working his way back from shoulder surgery.
Ranking draftees is hard
This was probably an unnecessary section, now that we’re at the end of this project. You just kind of put the somewhere around players who seem similar, and over the years that’s where players stay until they make a significant jump or fall out completely. Colton Cowser was at No. 5, which felt and feels right, then Norby at No. 12, Trimble at No. 21, and Rhodes at No. 24.
If anything about evaluating draftees is more challenging in recent years where the Orioles are concerned, it’s remembering that there’s a big difference between a draft-eligible sophomore and a college junior in terms of their experience and how they transition to pro ball.
Hudson Haskin needed a full year in the low minors before taking a step forward in 2022, and while Rhodes and Trimble both dealt with injuries that limited them this summer, their outlook on reaching their potential is dimmed some by the fact that it just meant players who had barely more than a season in college baseball thanks to the pandemic missed that many more games with injury and lost the chance to consistently see high-level pitching along with it.
There’s no closing the book on either of them at this point, but the difference between a sophomore and a junior and the rate of adjustment to life in the minors was on my mind while writing up Max Wagner this month and I plan to remember it as he attacks Aberdeen next spring.
A weird thing I remembered looking at these
This is a pretty strange collection of pitchers to look at through the lens of top prospects. Remove the position players, and the list goes Rodriguez, Hall, Bradish, Baumann (so far, so good), then Drew Rom, Baumler, Kevin Smith, Wells, Lowther, Kyle Brnovich, and Jean Pinto. Rom was really the only one to hold his position in 2022. Baumler’s injuries didn’t help him.The high-minors lefties—Smith, Wells, and Lowther—fell off this year. Brnovich had Tommy John surgery, and Pinto backed up a little.
The next wave, including Brandon Young and Zach Peek, also had their seasons cut well short due to injuries. That 2021 season after a pandemic that truly was a lost year for so many pitchers proved tough grounds to evaluate on, but as this group backed up, many impressive arms stepped up into rankings consideration. There’s a much higher floor to the pitchers in the top-30 coming out later this month.
Having so many of their young pitchers work in piggyback roles to limit innings in 2021 always meant the cream wouldn’t rise until 2022. It has, and this interim group of pitchers reflects what it looked like while the process was ongoing.
The main takeaway
Expectations can be dangerous. This was the third list in a row where I left it thinking it was really cool, and it was going to look a lot different the following year.
Entering the 2020 season, I figured there were going to be a ton of graduations including Austin Hays, Ryan Mountcastle, potentially Diaz and Hunter Harvey, then meaningful major league opportunities for Baumann, Dean Kremer, Keegan Akin, Lowther, and Wells. In reality, the pandemic meant only Hays graduated, and that group remained in the mix entering the 2021 season. Same went for that list, though, with pretty much the same group of players eligible and not much happening at the alternate site or in the majors to meaningfully change the list.
To some small extent, this 2022 list actually did transform some. Mountcastle, Kremer, and Akin all graduated, so that freed up some room. So did Harvey being out of the organization and the falls mentioned in the ex-10 section above. But I really, really thought the 2023 list would be wildly different from 2022. Rutschman and Bradish did graduate, yes, but I figured Rodriguez and Hall would get 50 major league innings easily, that Westburg would be up around when Henderson was, and that Kyle Stowers would graduate as well. They’re all still on the 2023 list, and while this isn’t one of those “development isn’t linear” moments, it’s certainly a reminder that these thing can take longer than expected.
Some of the timing of the Orioles’ call-ups suggest they might have it in mind to keep players on prospect lists one extra year and boost the farm system—Hays ended 2019 with 128 at-bats against the cap of 130 for eligibility, Mountcastle had 126 at the end of 2020, and now Henderson has 116 to all but ensure he’ll spend the offseason as baseball’s top prospect. I don’t necessarily think they’re doing it on purpose, but it shows their process a bit and explains why players might feel like they’re on these lists for a year too long. It’s fun writing up these reports and learning about all these players. It just feels like if the players are as talented as people inside and outside the organization think, they should get a chance to show it sooner.