Orioles Rule 5 Options

If the lack of big name free agent news and action surrounding the Baltimore Orioles at this year’s Winter Meetings in San Diego has been disappointing, get ready to buckle your seatbelt and hang on tight. On Thursday morning (9 am PST), the Winter Meetings will conclude with an Orioles favorite, the Rule 5 Draft.

The Orioles have selected at least one player every year since the 2006 draft and 19 overall since 1997, including three in the 2017 draft. The success stories that come out of this draft process are few and far between, but it is an opportunity for teams to fill various needs, depending on their current situation.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Every team has their own philosophy for how to attack the Rule 5 draft. For some teams, the Rule 5 process is an opportunity to find a lottery ticket with a loud tool and a bit of promise to develop into a future major leaguer, stash him away on your active roster for a year, and hope he can return in a few seasons after some additional seasoning in the minor leagues. With active rosters expanding to 26 players in 2020, you have to wonder if more teams utilize the Rule 5 draft for this purpose than may have in previous seasons. We will find out on Thursday.

For teams like the Baltimore Orioles, it’s an opportunity to find guys who may need a few tweaks in their game, but are largely ready to compete at the major league level. It fills a void at a cheap price, and who knows, maybe something clicks and another Anthony Santander story comes along. The fact that there is no one right way to approach the Rule 5 Draft is just one aspect that makes the process intriguing. That and it’s the middle of December and many of us are starving for anything baseball related.

Let’s play General Manager for a moment. You have the second pick in the 2019 Rule 5 Draft, who do you select? Using the strategy of finding a player who can contribute now on a likely 100+ loss team while also bringing enough intriguing qualities to offer hope that maybe, just maybe, they can stick around and provide value for a few more seasons, let’s look at five players who the Orioles could consider.

These five players are not ranked in any particular order and they aren’t the top five available names in the draft, but they do fit as a potential pick of the Orioles. There are a handful of middle infield guys I really like and wanted to add to this list, but I decided to stay away from middle infielders coming out of A-ball. I don’t really see the point in wasting a 26-man spot for someone destined to barely crack a .120 average next season while we wait around for him to serve his time and go back to the minors (see Richie Martin).

RHP Sterling Sharp (Washington Nationals)

Do you enjoy extremely athletic pitchers who are masters at inducing ground balls? If so, then Sterling Sharp is your guy. Currently ranked as the 13th-best prospect in the Washington Nationals organization, Sharp was a 22nd-round pick of the 2016 draft and is quickly becoming one of the bigger steals of that draft.

Now 24, Sharp missed most of the 2019 season with an oblique injury, but was impressive in his nine starts at the Double-A level. He finished at 5-3 with a 3.99 ERA, a 2.59 FIP, and a career-high 8.15 K/9 IP rate. He also produced an impressive ground ball rate of 63%. Overall, he’s 25-21 with a 3.71 ERA and 1.33 WHIP across 75 minor league appearances (69 starts) and hasn’t produced a ground ball rate lower than 55.8% at any stop along his minor league journey, above rookie ball.

Sharp doesn’t have impressive velocity (high-80s/low-90s fastball), but his fastball has heavy sink to it and helps to produce a high amount of of weak contact and ground balls. Mixing in a slider and a changeup, Sharp has a bit of funk in his delivery and has been working on disrupting hitter’s timing by throwing in a few kinks to his delivery. He has a future in the major leagues and would be a smart pickup for the Orioles.

Despite working as a starter for the vast majority of his minor league career, the Orioles could use Sharp out of the bullpen in 2020 and if they like what they see, they have an in-house rotation candidate for 2021 to go along with a long list of prospects who are expected to be competing for a rotation slot at the time, including Zac Lowther, Alex Wells, Michael Baumann, Dean Kremer, and others.

RHP Trevor Megill (San Diego Padres)

One of my favorite things about spending a full year writing about the San Diego Padres back in 2018 was learning about their exhilarating minor league system and watching quality baseball from Triple-A down to short-season ball on a nightly basis. Thanks to my odd fascination with random relievers, RHP Trevor Megill quickly became someone I watched with intrigue.

Standing at 6’8” and 235 pounds, Megill spent most of last season with the El Paso Chihuahuas, the Triple-A affiliate of the Padres in the Pacific Coast League. Making 32 appearances, Megill struck out 71 hitters across 50 innings, allowed just five home runs in the war zone that is the PCL, and produced a 4.47 ERA but a 3.46 FIP.

Now 26, Megill has allowed only 15 home runs in 157 career minor league innings, while striking out 216 and holding opponents to a .236 average. He’s a fastball, curveball, slider guy who can sit in the mid-90s (touched 97 in a game down in Mexico I watched just a few weeks ago) with his fastball and produce plenty of swing and miss with his secondary offerings.

Megill is major league ready, keeps the ball in the yard (even in the dangerous PCL), and is the type of high strikeout/low walk guy Mike Elias has frequently added to the organization (48 walks in 157 minor league innings).

OF Buddy Reed (San Diego Padres)

From a purely athletic standpoint, Buddy Reed may be one of the more intriguing names in this year’s class. A former hockey player, Reed brings elite speed, plus-defense, and a little bit of pop to the table, but the former second-round pick has yet to put it all together at the plate since moving up to Double-A in 2018.

The Orioles already have an athletic center fielder with elite speed in Ryan McKenna, but Buddy Reed is worth a serious look. He can play all three outfield positions, has a highly regarded arm, and can be a valuable asset off the bench for the Orioles in 2020 while prospects like McKenna and Yusniel Diaz spend the season in Triple-A.

Reed had a breakout first half of the year in 2018 in High-A ball with the Lake Elsinore Storm, hitting .324 with a 145 wRC+, 33 stolen bases, 12 home runs, and a .371 on-base percentage. He stared at the 2018 Future’s Game and earned himself a promotion to Double-A, where he struggled to finish out the season. In 43 games at the AA level, Reed posted a wRC+ of 24 and hit just .179 to close out the year.

Reed spent all of 2019 back in Double-A, slashing .228/.310/.388 with 14 home runs, 23 stolen bases, and a wRC+ of 93. He was still below league average across the board, but he showed improvements and increased his walk rate from 6% to nearly 10%.

Reed can contribute in the big leagues now on defense and on the basepaths, but his bat is a major question. If the bat doesn’t work out, he’s a low-cost option for a season, you can move on from him, return him to San Diego, and give Mason Williams another chance until, hopefully, McKenna or another prospect steps up.

RHP Zack Brown (Milwaukee Brewers)

Currently ranked as the third-best prospect in the Milwaukee Brewers organization, Zack Brown is the highest-ranked prospect available in the Rule 5 draft, but he was left vulnerable to the draft process for a reason. Regardless, he is sure to draw interest among a few teams, maybe even the Baltimore Orioles.

He isn’t my favorite available prospect, but there’s still some potential in the soon-to-be 25-year-old’s arm. Drafted in the fifth round of the 2016 draft out of Kentucky, Brown was the Southern League (Double-A) Pitcher of the Year in 2018, but struggled to tame the beast that is the Pacific Coast League with a promotion to Triple-A last season.

A fastball/curveball/changeup pitcher, Brown went 9-1 with a 2.44 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, .207 average against, and a 116/36 K/BB ratio in Double-A during his impressive 2018 campaign, but was 3-7 with a 5.79 ERA, 1.73 WHIP, and a .298 average against this season with the Triple-A San Antonio Missions.

Personally, I don’t like Brown as a starting pitching prospect, but I am interested in him as a fastball/curveball reliever out of the pen, especially if he can sit in the mid-90s with his fastball and bring his elite curveball with him to the major leagues. It’s a video from 2018, but you can get a taste of his curveball here. Over the last two seasons, he’s produced ground ball rates of 56% and 53%, which is always a plus at Camden Yards.

RHP Ljay Newsome (Seattle Mariners)

If the Orioles decide to make two picks on Thursday, I’d like to throw in Ljay Newsome’s name into the ring. Currently ranked as the 28th best prospect in the Seattle Mariners system, per MLB Pipeline, Newsome had a breakout year in 2019 while splitting his time between High-A and Double-A this past season.

Standing at 5’11” and 210 pounds, Newsome is a La Plata, Maryland native and a former 26th-round pick of Mariners back in 2015. Used predominantly as a starter throughout his five minor league seasons, Newsome went 6-6 with a 3.75 ERA and a 124/9 K/BB ratio across 100 innings. That’s not a typo. Newsome struck out more than 30% of hitters face and walked just 2.2%

He would go one to make nine starts at the Double-A level, posting a 2.77 ERA and maintaining an impressive walk rate of 3.7%. His strikeout rate took a big hit, dropping to 18%, but opponents hit just .227 against him, almost 40 points lower than what High-A hitters were able to put up against him. Across 499 career innings, Newsome owns a 473/62 K/BB ratio and a 1.16 WHIP.

Newsome won’t blow you away with his fastball velocity (typically sits in the upper-80s but has added a few ticks according to multiple reports), but his impeccable command is something to take note of. He’s undersized, doesn’t have elite secondaries or impressive fastball velocity, and his strikeout rate barely eclipsed 20% in his first two full seasons of professional ball (‘16 and ‘17), but he’s found success. He’s a prime example of why I have a strange fascination with relievers and fringe prospects. With just 10 innings of experience above Double-A, he’s a bit more of a stretch to stick in the majors, compared to the other names on this list, but he can fill the role of spot-starter/long relief in the big leagues, if he sticks.