The Baltimore Orioles had a rough season in 2018. What is in the farm system to give Orioles fans hope for the future?
We are in our third offseason at Call to the Pen of putting together top 10 prospect lists for every organization in baseball. Today’s list is the Baltimore Orioles.
The Process
Our team prospect lists are compiled by Benjamin Chase, who has spent time doing plenty of watching via MiLB.tv of every organization in baseball along with talking to a very wide array of scouts who have seen players in person to hone his own opinion on players. That allows for a wide coverage on players from the Dominican Summer League all the way to the major leagues.
These lists are the opinion of Ben, and his process is heavily weighted on his own view, but also on trusted views of others. Typically, each system’s list of 10 is peeled down from a consideration list of 50-75 players. There will be some weight given to a player who is closer to the major leagues, but often these opinions will be different than some of the “major” lists out there. Feel free to comment at the end of the list with any questions you may have!
With that out of the way, let’s dig into today’s list:
Baltimore Orioles system review
Orioles list for 2017
Orioles list for 2018
Orioles 2018 minors all-stars
The Baltimore Orioles have been getting plenty of rough reviews for years on their farm system, and their lack of involvement in the international market has really led to the team having to nail the draft, which is a tall order for any scouting department.
That said, the ripping that the Orioles’ pitching development has received over the years is really a thing of the past as John Wasdin has done an excellent job building a pitching development program since taking over that role within the minor league system in 2017. Due to that, while the top of the list is position-player heavy, if this list were expanding to a top 20, much of the next 10 would be pitchers.
Let’s start with the countdown, starting with a player that fell outside of the top 10, but was picked up in 2018 via the draft or international signing and is worthy of extra attention going into 2019…