Re-ranking the Orioles' top prospects after a half-season and the draft
Jackson Holliday reportedly signed Thursday, and the rest of the Orioles' top picks will soon follow. Where do they fit into the organization's top-10 prospects at this stage in the summer?
About halfway through the body of what you’re about to read, I remembered why I don’t typically do these types of exercises.
During the normal process of reporting, writing, and ordering the Orioles’ prospect reports for the Baseball America handbook every fall, there are hours of calls and pages of notes used to help sort out what ultimately are minuscule differences between players. I often make the final decisions with the cover of players having identical handbook grades and, thus, the specific order being a secondary concern.
Not here though! I badly wanted to explore how the Orioles’ farm system looked in this moment with the signings of their top draft picks assumed, and didn’t really want there to be any outside influence, which makes a significant change from how other rankings with my name attached might look.
The consequences of that were manifold. First, it created a narrower scope of input as I’m basically going off my own in-season reporting and casual conversations with sources throughout the year. Second, and as a result of point one, is that maybe the results are cheapened. This is one non-scout’s opinion, often being worked out and justified to myself while typing the words below. And third, it made splitting hairs between this incredibly talented group of players really difficult, exposing (or illuminating, depending on one’s perspective) all the key factors that distinguish one from another and how these kinds of choices are made.
One benefit is that I got to bend the rules for my own purposes. Kyle Bradish is at 46 1/3 major league innings, meaning he’ll likely graduate after his first start off the injured list. I decided to graduate him early out of convenience, as I think not having to slot him in allows the exploration of really interesting dynamics when it comes to their hitting prospects and, most importantly, there’s room for all of the players I wanted to include. Here goes: