Who is the Orioles 2021 #10 prospect?

[Tony-OH]

Who is the Orioles 2021 #10 prospect?

[sportsfan8703]

I’m going with Vavra here. He was off to a really good start before the back injury. Good OBP and showed power. Son of a MLB hitting coach. Even played 9 games in CF before the injury. Norby is in play here because I think despite the three year age difference that they will likely start only one level away from each other.

After watching pretty much all of our “pitching prospects” fail the last two seasons, it’s just too hard for me to get behind Bradish, Rom, Pinto, Baumann, Lowther(I think he’s still eligible), etc…, this early when we have so many good bats. A “run” on pitching is coming, but I still think Vavra, Norby, Trimble, Rhodes, and Basaillo, could all be in front of them. 

[ChosenOne21]

I think it has to be Norby here. Pinto is the kind of unknown upside guy Tony likes to put at #11. If Henderson is rated higher than Stowers and Westburg on age, then I think Norby is probably higher than Vavra. Also, didn't Vavra bat like .245 while being a little old for AA?

[Sports Guy]

Along with Basallo, i think the players listed in this poll will make up 10-15.

The order I would have them is Pinto, Basallo, Norby, Vavra, Bradish, Rom.

But I think Tony goes Norby at 10.

[Aristotelian]

This one is really like throwing darts. All the options are good in this slot. Going with Norby on pedigree and upside. Everyone other than Pinto has some strike against, either performance or injury concern, and Pinto is still too unproven to make that big a leap. 

[interloper]

It's between Bradish and Norby for me and I went Bradish just because he's the next closest pitching prospect and I believe in his starter upside. He started to figure out AAA towards the end of the year and he should be better than the rookies we ran out in 2021. 

[Frobby]

Yep, now we’re into the mass of guys who are interesting but don’t have a top level upside.   I’ll be a contrarian and go with Pinto here.    He’s only played at low levels, but he’s very young and was quite dominant this year.   And Tony usually likes to take a flyer somewhere around 10.

[ChuckS]

Norby or Pinto here. 

I think Bradish has too much relief risk for Tony. 

[sportsfan8703]

23 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Yep, now we’re into the mass of guys who are interesting but don’t have a top level upside.   I’ll be a contrarian and go with Pinto here.    He’s only played at low levels, but he’s very young and was quite dominant this year.   And Tony usually likes to take a flyer somewhere around 10.

I still think we have some high upside guys left, they are just in Delmarva and below. Baumler is probably the only “high upside” pitcher and he’s coming off TJS. Basaillo, Rhodes, Deson, and Willem, all have realistic high upside possibilities.  

I like John Rhodes a lot. He’s my candidate to have a breakout/Stowers type season.  Big, strong, COF, with a plus arm. Already filled out. If not for the draft being pushed back a month, he wouldn’t even have been eligible to be drafted till next year. Put up a .996 OPS in his two years at Kentucky, and raked in a good wood bat summer league. He was on his way to be in the mix of a first rounder in next year’s draft. 

[Sports Guy]

For me, there is a sizable gap with our top pitching prospects.

GRod and Hall are on one tier and no one is that close (unless you are really dinging Hall’s health)

Pinto is next and he is pretty far ahead of Bradish imo.

The age and upside of Pinto points him ahead of Bradish imo.  I think you could justify Basallo or Norby ahead of Pinto but no one else.  
 

Bradish leads the next group but there are multiple guys there that can stake the claim as the next best pitching prospect.  

[sportsfan8703]

1 minute ago, Sports Guy said:

For me, there is a sizable gap with our top pitching prospects.

GRod and Hall are on one tier and no one is that close (unless you are really dinging Hall’s health)

Pinto is next and he is pretty far ahead of Bradish imo.

The age and upside of Pinto points him ahead of Bradish imo.  I think you could justify Basallo or Norby ahead of Pinto but no one else.  
 

Bradish leads the next group but there are multiple guys there that can stake the claim as the next best pitching prospect.  

Peek and Brnovich are underrated on this board IMO. They’re right there with all the other swingman type SP prospects we have. I think Baumann and Lowther are still eligible for the list. Baumann is in the argument for the 3rd best SP prospect with Bradish and Pinto. 
 

Elias has shown that he’s going to use his own draft capital on position players, but he will target SP in trades. I don’t want to get off topic but I think that’s where Elia can kind of back fill in the pitching depth is getting what we can for Sulser and Mancini. Whether that’s the offseason, or July. The bats are there and we have the #1 overall pick/top bonus pool. 

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Peek and Brnovich are underrated on this board IMO. They’re right there with all the other swingman type SP prospects we have. I think Baumann and Lowther are still eligible for the list. Baumann is in the argument for the 3rd best SP prospect with Bradish and Pinto. 
 

Elias has shown that he’s going to use his own draft capital on position players, but he will target SP in trades. I don’t want to get off topic but I think that’s where Elia can kind of back fill in the pitching depth is getting what we can for Sulser and Mancini. Whether that’s the offseason, or July. The bats are there and we have the #1 overall pick/top bonus pool. 

Baumann isn’t in an argument with those guys because of how bad he looked for most of this year.

I guess Baumann would make my top 20 but not sure where and I don’t think it’s a slam dunk.  Definitely don’t think he’s top 15.

I like Peek a good amount. 

[LookinUp]

8 hours ago, sportsfan8703 said:

I’m going with Vavra here. He was off to a really good start before the back injury. Good OBP and showed power. Son of a MLB hitting coach. Even played 9 games in CF before the injury. Norby is in play here because I think despite the three year age difference that they will likely start only one level away from each other.

After watching pretty much all of our “pitching prospects” fail the last two seasons, it’s just too hard for me to get behind Bradish, Rom, Pinto, Baumann, Lowther(I think he’s still eligible), etc…, this early when we have so many good bats. A “run” on pitching is coming, but I still think Vavra, Norby, Trimble, Rhodes, and Basaillo, could all be in front of them. 

While I'd place Vavra at the bottom of this list for me, I think this is a sneaky excellent post in laying out a lot of the names that are coming in 10-20.  

The next 4 for me are Bradish, Norby, Pinto and Rom and I think the order is anyone's guess. I'm going with Bradish because I think his stuff profiles as powerful enough to succeed at the ML level and I think he has already worked through the AAA ball issues, whereas Rom and Pinto have not. I really like Norby a lot too, but Bradish is my guy here. And with all of that said, if Tony pops Pinto on us out of nowhere, I wouldn't be shocked. Guy has upside.

I don't have a ton of faith in Vavra. I feel like he has a bat looking for a position. Seems like a UTI guy for me. Maybe a Ryan Flaherty type who's probably less useful on the left side of the infield. If Tony says his bat profiles significantly better, I'd get it, but I don't love the position value as much as some solid-average bat value. That's just my mostly uninformed take though.

[Ruzious]

With Rom, I guess the question is his fastball.  Is it going to be the same issue with him as it is with Alex Wells?  I think there's some projection left - with his lean frame and still just 21.  He stands out as far as production, level, and age.  It's also a plus being a lefty.  Succeeding at 21 at Bowie - and everywhere else - with a tremendous K/W ratio.  Melewski had an interesting aritcle in May on some of the O's pitching prospects - this was a quote he got from Kyle Moore - who coached Rom in at least one level. 

Quote

Moore on Rom: “I love Rom. I saw him pitch all season in 2019. A super-athletic lefty with a bunch of different pitches and commands all of them. So when you are standing there, you have no idea what arm slot he’s coming out of, and he’s got five pitches and at some point of the game he threw them all for strikes. Really nasty split-finger. So that is his real nasty swing-and-miss thing. His velocity is 92, 94 (mph). He’s got sneaky velocity. You think he’s a normal lefty and you go back to the dugout saying, ‘That thing really jumped on me.’ Really like Rom’s pitchability. He’s young, a high school kid from Kentucky. But he has outstanding feel for his pitches for a young kid.”

So, when he says his velocity is "92, 94" - he probably means his max velocity.  If he can get his average velocity to 93, he's the O's #10 prospect, imo - like a poor man's Max Fried.     

[Sydnor]

I also voted for Pinto. My recollection is that Tony called him the most intriguing non-Rodriguez and Hall arm in the system. For purposes of this exercise, I suspect he also views him more highly than a radish because of his upside (as do I). I also think Norby lacks the upside of Pinto and has a lot of pressure on the bat.