SARASOTA, Fla. – Cade Povich received a mound visit from his catcher this afternoon after only 14 pitches.

Povich issued back-to-back walks to Tampa Bay’s Jonathan Aranda and Curtis Mead with one out in the first inning and fell behind 2-0 to Junior Caminero, prompting Adley Rutschman to call time and offer some counseling.

It worked.

Povich missed the zone again, Caminero fouled off the next pitch, and the Rays’ designated hitter flied to center fielder Cedric Mullins. Jose Siri struck out, and Povich escaped the jam with his pitch count at 21. Only nine strikes, but also no runs.

The organization’s No. 9 prospect per Baseball America tossed two scoreless innings on 31 pitches, 16 strikes, for the split-squad Orioles. He walked two and struck out two.

Recently I wrote here about some players that were surprises this year for the Orioles as they made their way to an AL East title. On the farm there always seem to be a few surprises, if for no reason other than we have more teams and players to choose from.

This year was no different, but I think two of the biggest surprises on the farm were two players that both ended their years with Double-A Bowie in outfielder Billy Cook and right-handed pitcher Alex Pham.

Both ended the year in the O’s top 30 via MLBPipeline.com with Cook at No. 27 and Pham at No. 29. Cook is currently unranked by Baseball America, but Pham made it all the way to No. 17 via BA.

They were players on the rise during the 2023 season and both are hidden gems no more. They’ve found their way onto the radar and will be watched closely in 2024.

Both were college draft selections in the 2021 MLB Draft – Cook out of Pepperdine in round 10 and Pham in round 19 out of San Francisco. So, neither will need to be added to the 40-man roster to be protected from the Rule 5 draft until the Rule 5 draft in 2024.

The Double-A Bowie Baysox have a record that is under the .500 mark at 43-47. But they are just a ½ game out of first place in the second half. And since May 19, they have been playing .589 ball at 33-23.

Infielder Coby Mayo was a big reason for that. He had an OPS of 1.027 in 78 games with Bowie until his recent promotion to Triple-A Norfolk. On July 14, the Baysox added shortstop Jackson Holliday, now ranked as the No. 1 prospect in the sport by both Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com.

But as the Baysox have played better since a slow start, three somewhat unheralded position players with varying levels of success on the stat sheet, have been fixtures in the lineup. Billy Cook, who can play all over the diamond on defense and outfielders John Rhodes and Donta' Williams have all had some nice stretches of play for Bowie. All three are members of the Orioles’ 2021 draft class.

After a slow start – and he was hitting under .200 well into May, Cook’s bat has heated up big time. Baltimore’s 10^th-round pick out of Pepperdine in that 2021 draft, Cook posted an OPS of .885 in May, .909 in June and it’s 1.017 in July. So yeah, that bat is hot.

“He started out with some struggles and now he is one of our top offensive producers,” manager Kyle Moore said in a recent interview. “Made some good adjustments. I feel like this staff was doing some of our best coaching earlier when our team was struggling. John Rhodes has done tremendous making some adjustments, Donta Williams, OPS over .800 in June and earlier he scuffled badly.

As MLBPipeline.com’s No. 1 prospect, Jackson Holliday moved to Double-A Bowie on Friday for his first game at that level. It was the next challenge for the 19-year-old shortstop that was drafted No. 1 overall by the Orioles almost exactly a year ago today.

But Bowie manager Kyle Moore, while acknowledging the challenges the kid will face hitting Eastern League pitching, also looks at a steady stream of top prospects the last few years that found their way to Bowie and had their bats meet the challenge. In some cases more than meet it.

In 2021 for the Baysox, Adley Rutschman had a .900 OPS in 80 games and Kyle Stowers was at .938 in 66 games. In 2022 at Bowie, Colton Cowser was at 1.037 in 49 games, Gunnar Henderson 1.025 in 47 games, Connor Norby .960 in 64 games and Jordan Westburg had an .817 OPS in 47 games.

This year, on their way up to Triple-A Norfolk, Coby Mayo was at 1.027 in 78 games, Heston Kjerstad .959 in 46 games and César Prieto .882 in 58 games.

“It’s a long list over the last two to three years, and so I think we are all proud of that. I certainly am,” Moore said, throwing some props to his coaches. “It’s the third No. 1 prospect this organization has seen in three years, with Adley and Gunnar and now Jackson. And Grayson Rodriguez was the No. 1 overall pitching prospect, so there is a lot to be proud of. Jackson being on that list now, and a true shortstop and the No. 1 overall pick, we are ecstatic to have him. I just can’t wait to watch him play. Watch a kid that talented go about his business.”

Once Heston Kjerstad started hitting, he didn’t stop.

The No. 2 overall pick by the Orioles out of Arkansas in the 2020 MLB Draft, a player that went 27 months between his last college game and first pro game, he has been making up for lost time since late last season.

The myocarditis diagnosis he dealt with kept him on the sidelines for a long time and it took him time last year – he played his first game for Low Single-A Delmarva on June 10 – to get his stroke back. But now it is back with full force.

He was starting to really swing it late last season for High-A Aberdeen, then was named MVP of the Arizona Fall League. In the first O’s spring training game in March, he homered twice and then he went on to produce an OPS of 1.219 in big league spring training. And now Kjerstad, 24, has quickly, become a handful for Double-A Eastern League pitchers.

“Really, really exciting,” Bowie manager Kyle Moore told me Friday at Prince George’s Stadium. “Got off to the same start that he did in spring training and as he did in the Fall League. It carried over. He looks like a middle of the lineup big league bat. Knows the strike zone as well as anyone I’ve ever seen. That’s exciting.”

How does a player batting .206 with an OPS of .596 at the end of June last year at Double-A end up several months later ranked among Baseball America’s top 100 national prospects?

For Orioles shortstop prospect Joey Ortiz, it took a lot of hard work, a few swing adjustments and belief in self.

He went from a player that had left labrum surgery end his 2021 season in June to one struggling a year later on the farm. And then to one that was tearing up the sport in the last half of last year. His second half tear meant he would rise from No. 28 on Baseball America's O’s top 30 preseason last year to their No. 8 prospect at the end of the year, and now he’s top 100 at No. 95 on the list released last week.

When I talked to a pair of O’s minor league skippers about the club getting eight prospects ranked in Baseball America's top 100, it was clear that Ortiz’s rise may have meant the most to a few people in the Baltimore organization.

“I love this kid and can’t say enough good things about him,” said Double-A Bowie manager Kyle Moore. “He overcame the injury. That could have been it for him. He went through surgery and rehab just to get back to the field and have a chance in ’22 and he worked so hard and put himself in such a position to play with guys like Westy (Jordan Westburg) and Gunnar (Henderson). And then he breaks out. It almost makes you emotional. He was behind the eight ball a few times.”

The 2016 season was a good year for the Orioles. They won 89 games and they made the playoffs before one swing in the American League wild-card game ended their season in Toronto. But the calendar year began with the Baseball America release of its top 100 prospects list. There were no Orioles among the top 100. Zero.

The year before, only two were ranked, with Dylan Bundy at No. 48 and Hunter Harvey at No. 68. The year after, 2017, the O’s had just Chance Sisco on the list at No. 57.

So maybe now, looking back, that was insight into the mounting losses that were ahead for the club. But now things are vastly different on the Baltimore farm. The Orioles led all clubs, with eight players on the new Baseball America top 100 prospects list this week. Evaluators see others who could be on the list.

Three players in three years and eight in one year. The Orioles never before had more than five on this offseason Baseball America listing of the best young talent in the sport. Now they show the way.

What happened to make this so?

When I conducted a two-part interview and series on the Orioles farm system recently with director of player development Matt Blood, I asked a question about the Orioles' minor league managers. I inquired how the minor league skipper’s job differs from that of a big league manager.

And the answer was not unexpected for anyone that has followed the minors for any stretch of time. It is very different, and this is where the concept of winning comes into play. You play to win the game, yes that is true, as one once famously said. But on the farm you play first to develop players – this is truly job one.

Here is what Blood said on that topic.

“Well, the major league manager’s job is to win games, do as well as he can to get the team to the playoffs and to, ideally, win the World Series. There is still development going on at the MLB level, but the strategy is to win games. In the minor leagues it’s the inverse of that. In the minor leagues, the No. 1 job is to develop players, so when they make the majors they are ready to contribute. You know winning, trying to win, comes secondary to development. We definitely want competitive teams and players that are trying to win baseball games, but we’re not going to sacrifice development for winning in the minor leagues.”

I asked Blood if the O’s minor league managers make out the lineups or, for development reasons, there is front office input.

The playoffs begin in several leagues around Minor League Baseball tonight. For the Orioles high Single-A affiliate, the Aberdeen IronBirds, they travel to Brooklyn for Game 1 of a best-of-three league semi-final series in the South Atlantic League.

Aberdeen (78-54) advanced by virtue of winning its division in the first half, going 43-23. Brooklyn (70-62) won the second-half going 40-26. This series winner will play the Rome-Bowling Green winner for the league championship. Aberdeen will host Game 2 with Brooklyn Thursday at 7:05 p.m. at Ripken Stadium and Game 3, if necessary, will be Friday in Aberdeen.

It may not mean much now, but Aberdeen was 13-5 in the regular season against Brooklyn, a New York Mets affiliate.

“I feel confident,” Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado, in his first season as a pro skipper, said yesterday. “We had a chance to see a bunch of their guys they recently added, and they have some good arms, but we’ll be ready for them. It should be a great series.”

Right-hander Jean Pinto (4-6, 3.83 ERA) gets the opening game start for the IronBirds against right-hander Luis Moreno (8-7, 2.84) for the Cyclones. Pinto’s ERA was 1.13 his last six Aberdeen games.

He may have gotten off to a slow start with Triple-A Norfolk - he was 3-for-31 there through Wednesday - but O’s 2021 top draft pick Colton Cowser had a heckuva run during his 49-game stint at Double-A Bowie before the outfielder moved up.

To say the least Bowie manager Kyle Moore was impressed with Cowser and his entire game after he joined the Baysox June 28 and had three hits and a homer in his first game.

Before he left recently with his promotion to Norfolk, Cowser hit a walk-off, two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth to provide a Baysox win on his way out the door. That happened Aug. 28 – exactly two months after his first game with Bowie.

“It was special,” Moore said of Cowser’s play with the Baysox. “He completely dominated offensively. You can look at any number you want, and it was super impressive. Almost to the point where you can compare him with Gunnar Henderson when he was here. They are actually very similar through about the same number of at-bats, so that just tells you how good Cowser was here. Because Gunnar did the same thing. They both dominated this league.’

And Moore has a real point there.

It was a nice honor for an Orioles prospect that might be flying a bit under the radar this year. This despite being tied for the organization lead in home runs with 23.

But Connor Norby, Double-A Bowie second baseman, got some recognition yesterday when he was named the Eastern League Player of the Month for August.

Over 26 games during the month, Norby batted .339/.405/.661 with nine homers and 26 RBIs to go with an OPS of 1.066. He led the league in hits, homers, RBIs and total bases in August and ranked second in slugging and OPS.

The 22-year-old Norby is rated as the Orioles’ No. 12 prospect by both Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com.

“Really has the look of a pure hitter,” Bowie manager Kyle Moore said of Norby before Tuesday’s game at Prince George’s Stadium. “Can really drive the ball to right-center. He can hit a homer to right-center off a really good arm. And so, that puts him in position to hit the best stuff. If you have a mid-to-upper 90s fastball, he can take you deep to right-center. If you have a little wrinkle with off-speed, he can take you deep to left-center.”

BOWIE, Md. – For the second week in a row on the farm today, Birdland was treated to a battery that we could see in the big leagues as soon as later this year. Catcher Adley Rutschman, the top overall pick in the 2019 draft, caught lefty DL Hall, the Birds' top pick from 2017 as Double-A Bowie hosted Harrisburg.

And Hall was dominant at times, although his final line will show two runs that scored after he left the game.

He had several pitches touch 99 mph and a few reach triple digits. It was a treat for fans at Prince George’s Stadium, including a large group of school kids, that were on hand for the 11:05 a.m. start. They got to see two top 100 prospects at pitcher and catcher for the home team and the Orioles' No. 1 and No. 3 prospects per Baseball America.

After the game, the Orioles confirmed Rutschman and Hall will move up to Triple-A Norfolk on Friday, joining the Tides in Nashville. Rutschman will be in the lineup tomorrow.

Hall, 23, threw 3 2/3 innings allowing three hits and the two runs with one walk and six strikeouts. He truly dazzled early on, fanning six batters the first time through the Harrisburg lineup as he faced a 13-10 team that is third in the Eastern League in runs scored.

The Orioles are in New York for a three-game series that wraps up a long road trip. Three cities, one terrible piece of news regarding ace John Means and one significant update on catcher Adley Rutschman.

Rutschman is in Aberdeen tonight, where the high Single-A IronBirds open a six-game series against the Jersey Shore BlueClaws. The usual Monday off-day is followed by six more home games against the Brooklyn Cyclones.

It’s highly unlikely that Rutschman sticks around for a dozen games, but the Orioles aren’t laying out an exact plan. He’s going to dictate how quickly he moves through his injury rehab assignment.

DL Hall also is reporting to Aberdeen this afternoon, but he isn’t returning from a recent injury. The Orioles have him on a progression after he made only seven starts last summer with Double-A Bowie due to a stress reaction his left elbow.

Hall already proved that he made a full recovery by firing fastballs at 98-100 mph in Clearwater while retiring the Phillies in order with two strikeouts. He’ll get back to Double-A Bowie, eventually pitch at Triple-A Norfolk and, assuming he stays healthy, debut with the Orioles this summer.