The Orioles’ two Will Robertsons

There have been only two players in baseball history named Will Robertson, and the Orioles have both of them.

One Will Robertson was claimed off waivers by the Orioles from Pittsburgh on December 5^th. He’s a left-handed hitting outfielder with 70 major league at-bats with Toronto and the Chicago White Sox who turned 27 on Friday.

The other Will Robertson was a right-handed hitting outfielder drafted in the 30^th round by the Orioles in 2017.

After three seasons in the minor leagues, Robertson’s playing career topped out at High-A Frederick in 2019 and transitioned to the front office.

Robertson was a scouting analyst, a special assignment scout, director of player personnel, and since October, the vice president of domestic scouting.

Come July, Robertson will be supervising the Orioles’ draft, where they’ll pick seventh. The Orioles participated in the draft lottery at the Winter Meetings on December 9^th but didn’t get a top selection.

“Obviously, higher is better,” Robertson said in Orlando. “I would have loved to have seen a better number, but we just control what we can control.”

Robertson said that the Orioles work on their draft throughout the year.

“We’ve already seen a lot of these players over the summer and previous year,” he said. “After January 15^th is when I think we’re really going to have to hit the ground running.

“I don’t have any strong impressions about its strength relative to other years. I think that takes shape later. A lot of times the narratives can be misleading as far as strong versus weak. There’ll be good players. There’ll be big leaguers, and we’ll try to find them.”

For the next six-plus months, there will be mock drafts, analyzing who the Orioles might pick. He hoped the Orioles would get the top pick but instead the White Sox, Tampa Bay Rays and Minnesota Twins have the first three selections.

“It definitely crossed my mind,” Robertson said of the top pick. “I’ve been so focused on what we can control that it hasn’t been fantasizing or dreaming.

“We’re still going to evaluate all the players, and there’s a lot to happen between now and July. We’ll see which players end up at our pick and surely there’ll be so many that we’re excited to take.”

While Robertson is still getting used to his new job, he already knows the people he’s working with.

“Super excited to have the opportunity,” Robertson said. “It’s really cool, right? This is a dream job. We’ve got a really good group around. I’m surrounded by a lot of good people with a ton of draft expertise and a track record of success that will help me out.”

Robertson can lean on president of baseball operations Mike Elias, who has run drafts in Houston and Baltimore; Matt Blood, vice president of player and staff development, who has run recent drafts; and Danny Haas, who was the Washington Nationals scouting director from 2023-2025.

Haas rejoined the Orioles in September as Elias’ special assistant, and was briefly a minor league player in the Boston Red Sox organization.

Robertson learned about professional scouting from Mike Snyder, a longtime Orioles front office employee who’s currently the vice president of pro scouting. He’s learned about international scouting from Koby Perez, the team’s vice president of international scouting and operations.

He doesn’t think having a player’s background is mandatory.

“I think you can be a really good evaluator and baseball operations employee without having that scouting background,” Robertson said. “Maybe, if anything, I have some empathy or a perspective of what players go through when they show up, the lifestyle of being a minor league baseball player, so maybe there’s a little bit of ability to zoom out and say, ‘Hey, maybe what I saw today was there might be a lot of going on in that player’s life. What I see in this one little snapshot may not be representative.’”

Front office employee Will Robertson has yet to meet Orioles outfielder Will Robertson, who’s only two years younger, but he can’t ignore the comparison.

“I certainly got a lot of text messages about it,” he joked about the acquisition. “We’ve talked about it for a year. You can’t ignore his presence in the baseball world. I’ve actually received Venmo requests meant for him, so I make sure that those get to the right destinations. I didn’t play in the major leagues. He probably gets less of it coming in his direction.”

Call for questions: I answer Orioles questions most weekdays. Please send yours to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com.