How the Orioles discovered Noah Denoyer and helped make the undrafted free agent one of their breakout prospects
Noah Denoyer went undrafted in 2019, the last 40-round draft baseball will ever have. The Orioles unearthed their breakout pitching prospect with a mix of data analysis and traditional scouting.
“I really like this guy,” Ryan Carlson thought to himself. Then came the questions.
“Why am I the only one here?” he wondered. “Why isn’t anybody else on the guy?”
Carlson, then a first-year scout with the Orioles, was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin with a list of 10 Northwoods League prospects from the analytics department they wanted reports on.
The guy he really liked was Noah Denoyer, now a 24-year-old right-hander who despite recently landing on the injured list at Bowie is one of the more intriguing Orioles starting pitching prospects, outside their top picks. Denoyer wasn’t picked at all — he was signed that summer by Carlson as an undrafted free agent.
For Denoyer himself, it’s a testament to perseverance and, after the happenstance of his signing, making the most of it. For the club, his is an early story of synergy between all aspects of baseball operations helping the organization improve.
Carlson said: “It was a collaborative effort. I was just a small part of it, and it’s just really cool to see him pitching as well as he is right now.”