Major League Baseball’s annual amateur draft begins on Saturday, and the Orioles will pick seventh. That will be their highest choice since 2022 when they selected Jackson Holliday first overall.
MLB Pipeline’s senior writer Jim Callis shared his thoughts on the draft and whom the Orioles might select.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
Question: How do you assess this draft?
Jim Callis: “I think it’s average-ish overall. I think the strongest demographic might be the high school pitchers, although that’s a demographic that scares teams the most. There’s a lot of college hitters, but a lot of them have an obvious hickey. It’s not quite as strong as you’d like that to be.
“The high school hitters didn’t seem especially deep, but it seems like some guys are climbing [mock draft] boards. That crop’s looking a little better. I think the college pitchers are the thinnest group. I think there’s a quick drop-off. Even Jackson Flora, who’s the number one college pitcher in the draft. Everybody agrees on that. I don’t think he’s quite as strong as the normal top college pitcher is in a normal draft … Overall, it’s about average.”
Q: Is this going to be the year that the Orioles draft a pitcher with their first pick?
Callis: “I would be shocked, given their M.O., given what I hear if the Orioles ever took a pitcher in the first round unless Paul Skenes was staring at them, and I certainly don’t think they’d take a high school pitcher in the first round.
“I don’t think it’s impossible that Jackson Flora from UC-Santa Barbara … He’s probably going to go ahead of the Orioles, but he could be on the board for them at seven, and it still would surprise me if they took him at seven. I just don’t think that’s what they believe in in the first round.”
Q: Why do you think their philosophy won’t allow them to take a pitcher in the first round?
Callis: “This is speculative. Mike Elias has been there since the 2019 draft, and they just haven’t taken many pitchers in the first three rounds at all. I haven’t heard this directly from them, but piecing together, clearly their models discount pitchers compared to hitters or you’d see more pitchers taken higher in the draft.
“This is more speculation. I haven’t talked to Mike or anybody about this, but if you look at when Mike was with the Astros, and they were going to the American League Championship Series and winning pennants and winning World Series, the bulk of their pitchers were super cheap international guys or mid-round, not early-round draft picks.
“They took Brady Aiken and Forrest Whitley in the first round, and those guys didn’t make it. [Mark] Appel, too. They took all those guys in the first round, and they didn’t pan out, and nobody thought they overdrafted.
“They had a deep farm system and they went out and traded for Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke, all of whom could be in the Hall of Fame one day. They spent some early picks on pitchers, but the bulk of the pitchers they got did not come from that.
“They didn’t have success taking pitchers early, and they had no trouble finding pitchers without taking them early in the draft, so I think that experience probably colors their thinking in Baltimore.”
Q: Excluding Holliday in 2022, the Orioles have taken college position players in each of Elias’ drafts. Do you think they have a bias toward taking college players with early picks?
Callis: “I don’t know that for a fact. They spent heavily on Coby Mayo. They spent heavily on Gunnar Henderson. I don’t know if their model is biased against high school players.
“I think if everything’s equal, you probably feel better about taking the college players just because you have more data and more track record and you’ve seen them against better competition.
“The year they took Jackson Holliday, I don’t think there was a college player they could have taken there. I think a lot of teams, if everything is equal, you’re probably taking the college guy over the high school guy because you have more confidence. It’s less projection involved. You have more evidence as to what you think the player is going to become.”
Q: Who do you think will be there for the Orioles?
Callis: “It’s mostly college hitters. There’s kind of a consensus top six in this draft and the Orioles, of course, are picking seventh. You’re top six in whatever order are college hitters — Roch Cholowosky, the UCLA shortstop; Vahn Lackey, the Georgia Tech catcher. You’ve got the one pitcher, Jackson Flora from UC-Santa Barbara, and then you’ve got three high school hitters — Grady Emerson, and Jacob Lombard, who are high school shortstops, and Eric Booth, who’s a prep outfielder.
“It doesn’t always work out like that everybody has their boards lined up the same way or people cut deals, but I think there’s a pretty good chance that those six guys could be gone before the Orioles pick at seven.
“I do think if say, Lombard or Booth got to them at seven, I think they would strongly consider taking one of those guys. I don’t think they’d say, ‘Oh, we don’t really want a high school guy,’ but I think unless somebody falls in their lap, they’re looking at college hitters.”
Q: Who do you think the college hitters they’re looking at are?
Callis: “You’ve got Drew Burress, who’s a Georgia Tech outfielder. You’ve got Ryder Helfrick, who’s a catcher from Arkansas. The tough one is, there’s an Alabama shortstop named Justin Lebron, who might have the highest ceiling in the draft, but he didn’t hit great in SEC play.
“He probably would have torn up the Big 10 or the Big 12 if he was in a lesser conference. The SEC is that much better. We’ve seen the Orioles take plenty of guys who are tooled up and have risky bats. I don’t know if we’re saying that’s the Orioles’ type or they would strongly consider him,
“Those are the names that I hear the most and there’s a bunch of other college hitters you could throw out there too, but those are the three names that you hear the most there.”
Q: How would you rate the Orioles’ farm system right now?
Callis: “This time of year, it’s always a hard question because when you’re ranking farm systems, you have to sit down and rate them all, and when we last did that in February, there’s been about 30 top 100 prospects, not all Orioles who graduated to the big leagues since then.
“If I break the 30 farm systems into four groups, where we they fall? I feel like they would be middle of the pack-ish. Nate George is [out with illness]. Ike Irish, who was in last year’s draft, has hit the ball really well. Wehiwa Aloy is hitting for some power.
“I think on the pitching side, which is something they need to develop, there have been some positive signs. Luis De León needs to throw more strikes, but he’s missing bats. They’ve gotten Trey Gibson to the big leagues. Boston Bateman’s made some progress. Nestor German’s made some progress. [Chesapeake left-hander Joseph] Dzierwa’s looked good. The other pitcher they took early in last year’s draft, JT Quinn, has looked pretty good. Juaron Watts-Brown is pitching pretty well.
“They feel like a middle-of-the pack system, and they gave up a bunch of prospects to get Shane Baz.”
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