Mike Elias’ favorite time of the year is here, and so far, things seem to be going well.
The Orioles entered the start of the 2025 draft with a rare chance to redefine their minor league system. They were equipped with the largest signing bonus pool ever, four picks in the top 37 and seven picks within the top 93. No other team possessed anything close to that arsenal.
After Sunday night, those first seven picks are in the books. With them the O’s have—barring any unforeseen signability issues—added two college catchers, two college pitchers, a college shortstop, a high school outfielder, and a college outfielder to the organization at a time where the farm system could use a boost.
It will be years before we know how well the Orioles did with these early draft picks, and there are 17 more rounds of picks to go today. But it’s never too soon to gin up some content and start making judgements anyway. So let’s do that and generate a few takeaways from the team’s picks through the first three rounds.
The major draft publications and writers like what the Orioles have done
Many of the major baseball publications put out ordered lists of the top draft prospects every year. As you get deeper into these lists, where players are ranked can change a lot, even though that may not mean that the various outlets view them all that differently. So take all of this with a boulder of salt, but based on those sorts of lists, the Orioles got really good value.
Starting at MLB.com. The selection of Ike Irish meant nabbing the 11th ranked player with the 19th pick. Wehiwa Aloy was ranked 17th; the Orioles grabbed him at 31. And Slater de Brun was ranked 24th, but got selected 37th.
Baseball America posted that the Orioles selected five of their top 50 prospects. That is not all that crazy. After all, they have five picks in the top 58. But still, slightly better than you would expect based on rankings. Aloy stood out the most there, being ranked 16th but going 31st.
The folks over at The Athletic really liked the Orioles draft. Keith Law mentioned them among his “favorite classes.” He had Irish ranked 5th, Aloy ranked 13th, de Brun ranked 18th, and Bodine ranked 20th. And Jim Bowden mentioned the Orioles as “the clear winners of Day 1.” However, he attributes a lot of that to volume of picks rather than value, per se.
It’s also worth perusing the pre-draft rankings at places like ESPN and FanGraphs once the draft is underway. In both instances, the O’s ended up getting a few players to “fall” to them in the draft.
The same old Orioles
Getting rave reviews for their picks is not new for this era of Orioles leadership. In general, Mike Elias’ theory on how to build out a minor league system is in lockstep with the industry at large. And a poor major league season in 2025 does not seem like it has changed how Elias approaches these things.
Elias continued to lean on college bats. His first three picks of this draft were from the college ranks, and they were at “up the middle” positions.
In Aloy they picked another player with questionable swing decisions. Law called out that this “was also true of several of Baltimore’s top picks from 2024,” a class that has gotten off to a slow start as pros.
And while the team did make two pitching selections, Joseph Dzierwa at 58th overall and JT Quinn at 69th overall, it still was not their main priority. They are college arms, taken outside of the top 50 with less risk than their high school counterparts, but potentially lower ceilings as well.
Have they deployed their “extra” bonus pool money yet?
The $19,144,550 bonus pool that the Orioles have is the largest ever. It gives them flexibility to be aggressive, draft players viewed as tough signs to get them out of other commitments or offers.
Over at The Athletic, Law was giving pick-by-pick analysis throughout the draft. Included in his feedback about Aloy he says “I’m still wondering where the Orioles’ money is going — are Irish and Aloy over-slot guys, or were these just opportunistic picks of guys who fell?”
It’s a reasonable question to ask. Most often, although not always, it is high schoolers that are viewed as over slot options. They have a college offer on the table—which nowadays does usually come with a financial (NIL) offer as well—and if you are picking them outside of the 20 or so picks, they have reason to think they can make a lot more money several years from now instead.
But college players can go overslot as well, especially if they go lower than where the consensus has them. There are often backroom dealings on this. For example, say the Orioles really liked Aloy, but they need to float him down to 31. They could tell him that they will give him a bonus similar to that of the 20th overall pick. Then his representatives can tell every team between 20 and 31 what sort of number they need to hit. If they don’t hit it, he stays on the board and the Orioles take him.
Of course, we have only seen three rounds of the draft. There are 17 more rounds to go, and rounds four and five can often be chock full of over-slot offers. So it possible that the Orioles still have some wiggle room here to pull off a great value addition on day two.
July is about to be an organization-defining month for Baltimore
The Orioles’ 2025 season went so far sideways early on that it seemed like everyone was on the chopping block. Brandon Hyde got fired back in May, and it was anyone’s guess as to what Elias’ future held. But the evidence lately suggests that he will be calling the shots for the foreseeable future.
Elias is not acting like a GM that has to win at all costs in 2025. He dealt Bryan Baker for the 37th overall pick last week, which turned into de Brun on Sunday, and he told reporters that the move was “a step in [the] direction” of selling.
Pair that with comments from David Rubenstein recently where he said that “You’ve got professional baseball players, managers, general managers, and they know what they’re doing. Baseball is a game of some injuries and so forth, but we have a very good team. We have good players.”
It’s not the clearest quote in terms of what direction the team will go. But Rubenstein also doesn’t seem worried about the club. He likes the players. He likes the GM. Injuries have stunk. Moving on.
What the team does in the draft is just one part of it. Rubenstein won’t really be able to judge how that goes right now any more than we can, reading composite lists, etc.
The trade deadline is another major piece. If the Orioles are sellers, like we expect, then it will be important to evaluate Elias’ return. Is he getting a bunch of lottery tickets? Is he getting players that can impact the 2026 team? Rubenstein could care on the direction.
And of course, there is the consideration of how the team is playing by month’s end. Continuing to play winning baseball, as they have since late May, should give Elias, Rubenstein, and the fan base encouragement than the team has sorted out their issues from July of last year through May. Maybe it was injuries, maybe it was something else, but the dark cloud has passed.