Down on the Farm – August 2, 2021

Welcome to ‘Down on the Farm’, a minor league spin-off of my weekly article ‘3 Up, 3 Down’. Every week I will highlight the three hottest and three coldest players in the Orioles minor league system from the previous week. Hopefully this will help in keeping track of the progress of the prospects playing for the Norfolk Tide, Bowie Baysox, Aberdeen Ironbirds, and Delmarva Shorebirds. Also be sure to check out my threads on the message board that are tracking both pitching and hitting statistics for the Orioles top prospects.

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

On Fire

Cody Sedlock – 2-0, 2.45 ERA, 11 IP, 12 H, 1 BB, 13 K, 1.18 WHIP (AA Bowie)

The season started off on the wrong foot for Sedlock when he allowed three runs in his first start of the year while only recording one out. Its really a story of two halves for him. Over his first eight appearances he had a 4.45 ERA over 28.1 innings with 25 strikeouts and 21 walks. Since then, over seven appearances, he has a 4.05 ERA over 26.2 innings with 34 strikeouts and only four walks. That last number is what stands out. At 26 years old the former first round pick is in Dillon Tate territory. He had a great comeback season in 2019 after being counted out as a prospect following injuries and poor performance. He bought into the Orioles new pitching development program and had a 2.84 ERA between A+ and AA over 95 innings with 100 strikeouts and 46 walks at 24 years old. The missed 2020 season really effects someone like him who quickly aged out of prospect status without getting a chance to pitch his way up to AAA at 25 years old. Like Tate his ultimate destination if he makes the majors is pitching out of the bullpen but for now it makes sense to give him bulk innings. I would expect a promotion to AAA Norfolk in the coming weeks and it is guys like him, Ofelky Peralta, and Blaine Knight that I think Orioles fans are underestimating in their ability to help the pitching staff over the next few years coming out of the bullpen. There are only five rotation spots but the bulk of talented arms in the Orioles farm system should be able to fill out a major league bullpen for the foreseeable future.

Jordan Westburg – .318/.500/.818 (1.318), 6 R, 2 doubles, 3 HR, 6 RBI, 6 BB, 9 K, 22 AB (A+ Aberdeen)

Westburg is like a snowball rolling downhill. As he gets more comfortable at a level, first with A Delmarva and now with high A Aberdeen, he just does more and more damage with his bat. A college bat that the Orioles took 30^th overall out of the 2020 draft, the 22 year old is already making a great case for a second promotion up to AA Bowie. Out of the draft the reports were that Westburg had great exit velocities and a lot of raw power that he hadn’t really been able to access in games. You can see that he hits the ball very hard to all fields and the Orioles are getting him to tap into that power with 19 doubles, three triples, and 10 homeruns between the two levels with an ISO over .200. I was told he is kind of like an infielder version of Austin Hays with the way he is aggressive early in counts which sounds good to me as long as he doesn’t inherited the injury bug from him as well. Also, Hays never approached the 13% walk rate that Westburg has had this year at any point in his career. Its exciting to forecast a 30 double, 20-25 homer bat that can play all over the infield adequately into the Orioles lineup as soon as 2023 but the big jump is coming soon in AA. If he continues to perform at that level the way he has in A ball, whether it be to close out this season or in 2022, then you will start to see Westburg popping up on top 100 lists. Part of me thinks he will replace Adley Rutschman’s bat at the top of the Baysox lineup whenever he inevitably makes the move to AAA but time will tell.

Felix Bautista – 0-0, 0.00 ERA, 2 SV, 4 IP, 0 H, 4 BB, 10 K, 1.00 WHIP (AA Bowie)

Don’t sleep on Felix Bautista like I was until he was promoted to AA a few weeks ago. Some major league relievers are made out of failed or transitioned starting pitchers but some are just guys who have been dominating out of the bullpen all the way up the minor league ladder. Bautista would fall into the latter as long as he keeps up with what he is doing. He is 26 years old and it has taken him a lot of time to finally reach AA (signed by the Marlins in 2012) but now that he is here its time to see what his triple digit fastball can do. His only weakness is the inability to consistently throw strikes (pretty big weakness, I know) but he is almost unhittable this year, literally. He has only allowed one hit over 11.1 innings with the Baysox and only eight hits over 26.1 innings total between A+ and AA. He has walked 19 batters over those same 26.1 innings but has struck 48 batters as well. Bautista is rule 5 eligible this offseason and I can easily see him as the type of guy a team would take a flier on to stick in their bullpen so it will be interesting to see what the Orioles do with him. It is a very interesting group of players that need to be added to the 40 man roster following the season or be exposed to the rule 5 draft and I’m not sure that Bautista will be one of the ones protected. Maybe they rush him up to the majors at the end of this season to give him a tryout or just hope they’re able to bring him back to pitch in AAA to start 2022.

Ice Cold

Brandon Young – 0-1, 16.88 ERA, 2.2 IP, 4 H, 3 BB, 6 K, 2.63 WHIP (A+ Aberdeen)

There is something about the jump from low A to high A this season that seems bigger than the jump from high A to AA. That is solely going off of the evidence of Orioles minor leaguers so I’m not sure how true that is leaguewide. We saw it in an extreme example with Gunnar Henderson (1-31 start) but even Jordan Westburg started slow with Aberdeen before catching up to (and surpassing) the competition. We’ve seen it consistently on the pitching side as well. Grayson Rodriguez, Blaine Knight, Kyle Brnovich, and now Drew Rom (One run over five innings with six strikeouts in his AA debut) have all not missed a beat going from Aberdeen to Bowie. Meanwhile Ignacio Feliz, Ryan Watson, Xavier Moore, Zach Peek, and Shelton Perkins have all performed noticeably worse in high A than they were in low A (some with more sample size than others). You can add Brandon Young to that list too after he struggled in his Aberdeen debut. He gave up five runs on four hits and three walks over 2.2 innings. He did continue to strike batters out at a high rate with six (60 over 47.1 innings with Delmarva). In low A he had a 3.23 ERA with a 30% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate. I expect all of these guys to get adjusted but with the re-shuffling of the minor leagues coming into this season it is worth keeping in mind that the jumps between levels may not all be the same still. Low A might be lower competition than usual, high A might be higher competition than usual, or a combination of both.

Rylan Bannon – .000/.316/.000 (.316), 3 R, 1 RBI, 6 BB, 5 K, 1 SB (AAA Norfolk)

Nobody has done more to kill their prospect status than Rylan Bannon in my eyes. Nope, not even Yusniel Diaz. Coming into the season we had him ranked as the 25^th best prospect in the system and all he has done is bat .141 with a .528 OPS over 154 plate appearances with AAA Norfolk. That is good for a 41 wRC+… He was also injured in the early stages of the season and one hit over 23 plate appearances in a rehab stint with A+ Aberdeen. In our recent mid-season top 50 prospects update Bannon had fallen to 36^th but I was lower on him than my ‘On the Verge’ podcast co-hosts. I recently dropped him off of my top 50 altogether. As much as I would love to be proven wrong – he does have a ridiculously low .150 BABIP, a solid 11.7% walk rate, and a not too bad 20.1% strikeout rate – I just can’t see him overcoming this giant setback at a time where he could’ve capitalized on the poor play at second and third base at the major league level. He has some pop in his bat, he can take a walk, and can adequately play defense at third and second base but he doesn’t have any one exceptional skill (like a Ryan McKenna, who can survive not hitting with his speed and defense) to make him valuable to the major league team. He could easily be a 40 man roster casualty at some point with numerous players needing to be added this offseason. Maybe they give him a try out in September despite the poor performance but between Bannon, Diaz, Dean Kremer, and losing Zach Pop in the rule 5 draft it has not been a good year for the returns from the Manny Machado trade in 2018.

Lamar Sparks – .182/.250/.273 (.523), 4 R, 1 triple, 1 RBI, 22 AB (A Delmarva)

Sparks was a fifth round pick in the 2017 draft, a projectable athlete playing the outfield out of high school. He impressed over 42 games in the GCL to end that year with a 18.2% walk rate, 11 steals, and 115 wRC+. He came into the 2018 season as the Orioles 25^th rated prospect according to Baseball America but missed the season due to injury. He repeated the GCL in 2019 but struggled to a .621 OPS. Now 22 years old he finally made his full season debut in the middle of June after starting the year in extended spring training. He has held his own overall after starting slow, carrying a .702 OPS on the season with a 12.6% walk rate and even showing more in game power than ever with three homeruns and a .145 ISO. My concern with him having a cold week here is the influx of outfield talent that the Orioles brought in through the draft. Guys like Colton Cowser, Reed Trimble, John Rhodes, and Donta’ Williams are signed and heading to the FCL before quickly getting promoted to A Delmarva as long as things go well. I’m curious where that will leave Sparks. Are the Orioles high enough on him to keep giving him playing time alongside those guys? Or will they have him languish on the bench or bounce around the affiliates as needed (which is a surefire sign that a release is coming)? I currently have Sparks just clinging on at the back of my personal top 100 so it obviously wouldn’t be the biggest lost to the system but I would like to see him stick around a bit longer.