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 my own observations. This is the fifth 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.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Fringe 40-Man Types
Aron Estrada, UTIL
Edgar Portes, RHP
Edwin Amparo, INF
Carter Young, SS
Estrada, 20, is a physical, medium-framed, switch-hitting Venezuelan prospect who posted a 133 wRC+ at Low-A in 2024 before a late-season promotion to Aberdeen. While I have doubts about the sustainability of his offense given the length of his swings, Estrada’s biggest issue is his defense. He doesn’t currently have the hands or actions to play the infield at all, and he might soon be limited solely to left field. This is a prospect where my visual eval is a good bit lower than whatever a model would likely spit out given Estrada’s TrackMan data. Portes was a 40 FV on last year’s list as a loose, projectable righty with below-average stuff. His stuff has plateaued and he’s sitting about 90 mph this spring, but the way he’s built and moves gives the 22-year-old Dominican a chance to add velo as he matures. Amparo is a switch-hitting 20-year-old infielder whose build, swing, and defensive abilities evoke Abraham Toro. He’s mixing second and third base at Delmarva. Young was a famous high schooler who ended up at Vanderbilt due to perceived hit tool risk. He hit well enough at Vandy to sign for $1.3 million when he was drafted in 2022, but he’s struggling to replicate that in pro ball.
Big and Tall
Keagan Gillies, RHP
Sebastian Gongora, LHP
Yeiber Cartaya, RHP
Jared Beck, LHP
Riley Cooper, LHP
Gillies is a 6-foot-8 righty who put up video game numbers at Tulane and has reached Double-A in a relief capacity as a pro. This guy’s extension and release height both hover around seven feet. His fastball is as steep as a runaway truck ramp and he bends above-average sliders into the top of the zone. He could be a deceptive middle reliever. Gongora sat 90-94 mph last year at Louisville, and was 93-95 and touched 96 in his first outing of 2025. He has a deceptive, short arm action and a tight mid-80s breaking ball, the look of a lefty specialist. Cartaya is a 6-foot-5, 22-year-old Venezuelan righty who is sitting 95 out the gate. A 40 athlete who has struggled with walks, Cartaya struck out 89 in 64.2 innings last year. His breaking ball is pretty blunt and slow to break, but it has good looking two-plane shape and really performed in 2024. Beck is a seven-foot lefty out of Division-II Saint Leo University in Florida (you can guess their nickname). He has amassed 173 strikeouts in 132.1 career innings thanks largely to a good slider, but he walked a batter per inning in 2024. Cooper, 23, is a 300-pound low-slot lefty with a good slider and an upper-80s fastball.
Complex Follows
Adriander Mejía, C
Luis Guevara, SS
Félix Amparo, 2B/1B
DJ Layton, SS
Jemone Nuel, SS
Alexander Rincon, CF
Hector Campusano, 2B/OF
Kevin Velasco, RHP
Mejía is a squat Venezuelan catcher who, in his second DSL season, led the Orioles down there in contact rate at 84%. He’s short to the ball, but isn’t especially toolsy or projectable. He didn’t turn 18 until last August. Guevara, 19, is another smaller up-the-middle DSL player with good feel for contact. Amparo cut his strikeout rate way down from his 2023 DSL debut and K’d at an 8.2% clip in 2024 while slashing .313/.383/.503. He’s a loose rotator whose best rips looks great, and whose worst ones look long and disconnected. His defensive fit is unsettled; he has played all over the infield but isn’t technically sound and he might end up at 1B/OF. He’s an athletic sleeper with good bat speed. Layton is a switch-hitting shortstop who signed out of a Charlotte high school for $715,000 in last year’s draft. He runs well and is a good athlete who’ll need to learn how to hit. Nuel is an 18-year-old Jamaican shortstop who can really pick it. Watch for him to cut his strikeouts in a 2025 DSL repeat; he K’d 30.3% of the time last year. Rincon is an 18-year-old lefty hitting outfielder with really whippy wrists and good bat speed. His swing often looks imbalanced; he might break out if things become more fluid and connected. Campusano is a wispy multi-positional teenager who spent 2024 in the DSL. He’s a loose, whippy athlete who needs to get stronger to wield the bat with great authority, but his feel for his age and size is pretty good. Velasco is a 6-foot-1 Venezuelan righty who posted a 0.88 WHIP in last year’s DSL. He’ll throw quality strikes with 93-94 mph fastballs and flash an above-average low-80s slider.
Hard-Throwing Righties
Carter Rustad, RHP
Zane Barnhart, RHP
Simon Leandro, RHP
Adrián Delgado, RHP
Rustad was a 2024 senior sign (he was first at the University of San Diego, then Missouri) in the 15th round who has had a velo spike at the onset of 2025 and altered his secondary stuff. He was sitting 92-93 at the end of the 2024 college season, but was 94-96 in his first pro outings. His curveball has morphed into a low-80s slider and his style of changeup looks like it’s morphed into a splitter. The velo spike might only be due to Rustad’s move into the bullpen, and how his arm strength trends throughout the season will dictate whether he moves onto the main section of the list on next update. Barnhart will touch 98 and has a pretty good sweeper, and looks like he’s adding a cutter. He could be a middle reliever. Simon is a skinny 6-foot-3 guy who’ll touch 97, while Delgado was touching 98 in last year’s DSL but walked a batter per inning.
Injured
Randy Berigüete, RHP
Carter Baumler, RHP
Justin Armbruester, RHP
Berigüete is a 6-foot-4, 22-year-old Dominican righty who sits 95 and has a plus-flashing slider. A lack of command has lead to A-ball walks and fewer K’s than his stuff would suggest. He began 2025 on the 60-day IL. Baumler was once a high-profile high school signee who has dealt with a litany of injuries as a pro, most recently shoulder inflammation. Armbruester is a funky cutter guy who looked like a low-leverage reliever when healthy, but he left a recent outing in a lot of pain while grabbing at his armpit area.
System Overview
The very top of this system is in a kind of mini crisis, as Coby Mayo has been struggling since his big league call-up, Samuel Basallo has had two consecutive seasons begin with elbow soreness that has prevented him from catching, and Chayce McDermott is working his way back from a lat strain. Of the three, I suppose I’m most concerned about Mayo, because the margin for error his offense has a first base-only guy is so thin, though obviously I’m not worried enough to have moved him. The players with the best chance to leap into that upper group are a revamped Austin Overn and Elvin Garcia. If you want to project a little more aggressively on, say, Griff O’Ferrall’s strength, or Luis De León’s command, or Vance Honeycutt’s hit tool, then you could argue those three are also in that mix.
There are 23 prospects with 40+ or better FV grades here, which is a lot, and recall that Baltimore traded about 10 prospects away throughout 2024, several of whom (Joey Ortiz, Jackson Baumeister, Moisés Chace, and more) are big leaguers or prospects of consequence.
The biggest development here, because it contrasts so sharply with Orioles farm systems of old, is the sudden influx of Latin American talent. There were two Orioles DSL teams last year, and they were pretty deep. The team has a brand new Dominican Academy and is investing heavily in this previously ignored market. These are not the Angelos Era Orioles.
In the domestic draft, pitcher development has been key for Baltimore, as lots of these guys end up with new changeups, and/or some kind of breaking ball alteration, usually moving to a firmer pitch type. The changeup dev (a lot of them are splitters) is a very consistent feature throughout the org, as is added velocity. The Orioles have also been situationally more risk-tolerant in the draft room. They still take their share of O’Ferralls and Ethan Andersons, players whose college contact performance gives their profile more stability, but Honeycutt and Jud Fabian are the antithesis of that archetype. Experimentation with different defensive positions (look at the versatility up and down the org) helps ensure a lot of these guys will be able to play a relevant complementary role in the big leagues even if they fall short of being true everyday players.
More is coming. The Orioles have five of the first 69 picks (19, 30, 31, 58, 69) in a 2025 draft that I believe to have a deeper second and third round than usual. It means Baltimore can add high-upside pitching to the big league roster via trade if they’re inclined, and then reload in the draft (or vice versa). The team did disappointingly little on the pitching front during the offseason (the “We Tried” messaging around Corbin Burnes began last week) and already they’ve dealt with numerous injuries rendering them thin. If the Brewers’ trade for Quinn Priester is any indication, desperation costs. The Orioles have grown their own big league-ready depth in the form of Brandon Young and Cameron Weston, but they haven’t yet developed the kind of high-end impact that helps you scrap through October.
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