Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Baltimore Orioles. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Martinez is an explosive rotator with big power potential. His slow-pitch softball swing produced a 60% contact rate last year, and it’s fallen further to 50% so far at Low-A. A huge adjustment is required. Though he’s young and had only treaded water in Low-A for a couple of months, last summer the Orioles rocketed Peguero up to Norfolk, where he struggled. It’s a similar story this year. He’s a 70 runner with some contact skill, but it’s not clear why the O’s have stepped on the gas with his development like this. Whitaker is a smaller, contact-oriented outfielder with some speed. He’ll have to hit at every level, but you can dream on a fourth or fifth outfielder outcome. Josenberger is a contact hitter who nonetheless strikes out a bunch, and without hitting for much power. He’s a versatile defender, though with only fair instincts at second base and in center. His best path to big league utility might be on the bases, as he’s a plus runner who has stolen nearly a bag every other game throughout his minor league career.

Once a shortstop, Bencosme started seeing significant time at second base last year, and has played mostly in left field in 2026. He’s filled out and is hitting for more power this year, though whispers of a juiced ball makes it difficult to place the additional pop in its proper context. Honeycutt can play a good center field and has power, but he’s swinging and missing too much to have prospect value; he has nearly a 50% strikeout rate as of publication. Arias, 21, is a contact-oriented, switch-hitting infielder who has slugged under .400 for the bulk of his career. While he has demonstrated above-average bat-to-ball skill (especially from the left side), he isn’t such a good shortstop defender that we’d feel comfortable projecting him into an on-roster utility role. Mejía is a squat teenage catcher with an above-average contact hitting track record in rookie ball, where he’s back to start this year. Stafford is a versatile little player who swings hard for a smaller guy and has experience at catcher and second base.

The Orioles have a ton of upper-level relievers with flaws, but also interesting traits. All of these guys project as up-down arms, and it wouldn’t be surprising if one or two exceeds that grade and becomes a semi-regular contributor. Sloan is a low-slot changeup monster with an above-average sweeper, but well below-average arm strength. He’s throwing 65% changeups right now and is dominating A-ball. Gillies is a giant 28-year-old righty who has been dominant in the minors at times and has dealt with injury at others. He tends to sit 93 and work with a good changeup that he likes to sneak into the top of the zone. Ogando is at Triple-A. He primarily works sinker/slider out of a low slot and is heavily dependent on getting hitters to chase his slider off the plate to succeed. He has a middle relief ceiling if that works at the highest level; Brendan thinks it’s not quite sharp enough and that he’ll be too walk-prone to be more than an up-down guy. Though Herberholz went undrafted out of Auburn, he barely needed a year to reach Triple-A. He has a nice change and otherwise throws strikes with a deep mix of fringy offerings. He projects as an up-down guy who can offer length.

Dorsey, a seventh-rounder out of Florida State, is part of the piggyback squad at Frederick. He has a very long, vertical arm stroke that produces plus extension, and a deceptive fastball/slider combo that might eventually play in relief. Pham is an over-the-top righty with a predominantly vertical attack. He had success as a starter at Double-A a couple of years ago, but he lacked the arm strength or stuff to succeed in that role long-term. His vertical movement has ticked up a tiny bit in relief; he looks like a depth arm who could flex in and out of multi-inning assignments. Long is another reliever built like a power forward. He had generic stuff as a mid-minors starter for years and has gotten a little velo bump in relief. He’s been effective at the top of his velo band (97) and when he hits the top rail with his fastball, but things have otherwise fallen apart this season. Raquet was a nice story last year, an indy baller turned big leaguer at the age of 29. He’s pitched a bit for Baltimore already and as a southpaw with a good slider, he’ll keep finding up-down work for a while. Cabrera touches triple digits and has an above-average spin rate. He hasn’t translated that into a great breaking ball yet, though. Magno is a smaller lefty with a plus slider. His stuff is light otherwise.

Hidalgo signed for $700,000 in January, and is a 6-foot-4 lefty with low-90s heat and the spin foundation of a good slider. Perez was acquired from the Dodgers last month in exchange for Chayce McDermott. He’s a 6-foot-4 righty who sat 89-93 in the DSL last year. Rincon is an incredibly projectable outfielder who made a plus rate of contact in his second DSL season. His swing is very long and produces a ton of groundballs such that he has still managed to produce two below-average offensive seasons and is about to undergo his third DSL stint. We still want to monitor this guy because of his potential power/speed combo at physical maturity, to say nothing of his underlying contact feel. Baro is a lot like Rincon except without the contact foundation. He’s athletic and projectable, but he struck out 32.8% of the time as a 16-year-old DSL hitter last year. Zapata is a 17-year-old Dominican lefty who touched 96 last year (but averaged 93) and flashed plus mid-80s changeups and sliders. He also walked a batter per inning and is back in the DSL for a second season. Sanchez signed for $1.3 million a couple of years ago and has struggled to make enough contact. His second DSL season was worse than his first, as he K’d at a 28.2% clip. Casado is a 6-foot-3 FCL righty who has been up to 95 early this year. He has a starter’s pitch mix but not the command, as he’s walked about a batter per inning in rookie ball. Sanchez is an FCL outfielder who hit for power in last year’s DSL because of a pull-heavy approach.

The Orioles arguably have the deepest system in baseball. It’s perhaps a bit lean at the top for how long this list is, particularly if you’ve mentally moved Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers out of “prospect” mode. This is the first time this cycle we’ve ranked 60 or more players in an org, and whenever you can assemble that kind of depth, you’ve almost certainly got someone with upside lurking in there, even if they haven’t shown it yet.

Despite that, there’s an “eye of the beholder” element to how people within the game view this system. There are a ton of players here with big league tools or traits, many of whom also come with glaring flaws. Most orgs with this many potential big leaguers are universally well-regarded, but in this case, you can find people in baseball who cover the Orioles and aren’t particularly enthused. The bulk of the 40+ FV tier here is made up of likely relievers (good ones, but still relievers) and young, high-variance hitters with big bust risk. Beyond that are a lot of marginal roster types and bench fodder guys. Baltimore will have plenty of low-end utilitymen and middle relievers for the next several years.

The Orioles’ acquisition and development machine operates efficiently. They have an idea of how they want to mold players, and they’re good at targeting guys with physical traits that they can turn into on-field impact. This is especially clear with pitchers: Time and again on this list, you read about tall hurlers with high slots, deep mixes, and carrying fastballs. Some guys enter with those attributes, others grow into them, but the club clearly has a type or two and is good at developing them.

That’s part of why they don’t often go out of their way to acquire pitching prospects except in bulk during draft time and as throw-ins in trades. When the Orioles use a high pick or spend a lot of international bonus money (hooray for the club now having deep, well-regarded international classes a lot of the time now, and multiple DSL teams), it’s almost always on position players. They’ve had success with some mid-six-figure high schoolers lately (Nate George is the big one, and Jaiden Lo Re is off to a nice start), and have one of the few systems in which we ranked more position players than pitchers.

This has had some negative effects on their ability to field actual baseball teams at all of the minor league levels. Twice last week, the Orioles’ FCL squad had to throw multiple position players in close games because the org ran out of healthy arms. MLB’s tight roster restrictions aren’t helpful here — Why, exactly, is it so important to limit teams to only 165 players across five domestic affiliates? — but the org has a ton of injured pitchers, and the way they target and develop arms leaves them vulnerable to something like this. The roster limits stretch a lot of teams’ pitching staffs thin, but when your personnel is mismanaged to the point where you’re cancelling extended spring training games and throwing position players for multiple innings multiple times at the very start of the league’s schedule, it’s impacting other teams and arguably requires intervention.

The Orioles are of their time. There’s a Darwinian logic at play here: Take a bunch of guys with tantalizing tools, stress test them, accept that a fair amount of attrition is the cost of doing business, use most of the ones who break through until they hit arbitration, and try to extend the players who you consider to be the best of them. It’s a modern assembly line. The optimized nature of Baltimore’s operation spills over to the personnel side as well. It’s no secret that teams are able to pay employees quarters on the dollar relative to what they could earn in other industries because lots of people want to work in baseball.The Orioles aren’t alone in capitalizing on that, but more than most clubs, they seem to outsource a lot of work to interns, contractors, and bird dogs desperate to find their way into the game. Again, it’s working, and we tend to like the players that all three arms of Baltimore’s player acquisition group (pro, amateur, international) target. We don’t see deviation from old baseball norms as necessarily being a bad thing, but in the Orioles’ case, some of how they break convention leaves a wake that impacts other baseball stakeholders.