During my recent conversation with Matt Blood, the O’s vice president, player development and domestic scouting, we spent much of the time discussing what happened on the O’s farm in 2024.

He was honest to say the club was, to use his words “not celebrating” the farm offense from last season.

Sure, a lot went right and players like Samuel Basallo and Coby Mayo and others had plenty of special days and nights on the farm.

But overall, Triple-A Norfolk’s team OPS of .752 rated 13^th of 20 teams in the International League. Double-A Bowie (now Chesapeake) had a team OPS of .667 (ninth of 12 in the Eastern League). High-A Aberdeen was at .684 to finish seventh of 12 in the South Atlantic League. Low-A Delmarva, at .641, ranked 11^th of 12 in the Carolina League.

Like the big league club making some changes and adjustments on offense, the farm system may do some of the same moving forward.

Under the Mike Elias regime, Matt Blood has played a prominent role for the Orioles. He was hired first as director of player development in September of 2019. On his watch, the O’s farm system became the first to be ranked No. 1 in five straight rankings by MLBPipeline.com. 

Blood was promoted to his current role, vice president, player development and domestic scouting in October of 2023.

He was involved in the recent hiring of Triple-A Norfolk manager Tim Federowicz, someone he knows since both were students and involved with the baseball team at the University of North Carolina.

When Buck Britton was hired to move to the O’s big league coaching staff, the club interviewed several candidates for their Triple-A opening before the recent hiring of Federowicz.

Federowicz had a 13-year pro career and played parts of eight season in the majors as a catcher with six teams. He retired in December of 2021.

As the Orioles added several players in deals at the trade deadline – including two starting pitchers and two for their bullpen – some promising prospects left the organization.

No doubt for coaches, managers, trainers and all staff on the O’s farm and in their player development system, some players they liked and worked hard to help improve, walked out that door. Relationships were developed and now continue, but the players are no longer with the Orioles.

The O’s traded Connor Norby, Kyle Stowers, Seth Johnson, Moisés Chace, Jackson Baumeister, Matthew Etzel and Mac Horvath, among others, during this process.

On a conference call to announce they had signed top draft pick Vance Honeycutt on Thursday, vice president of player development and domestic scouting Matt Blood was asked if some of the top draft picks the Orioles added this year somewhat offset losing some of the prospects they traded.

“I don’t think they’re related," Blood replied. "We’re just very excited to have been able to select Vance. He’s a player that we’ve liked for a long time. He’s a player that we know is a fantastic person and has a chance to make a big impact at the big league level.”

The Orioles this morning announced that they have signed their top draft pick, University of North Carolina outfielder Vance Honeycutt, taken No. 22 overall in round one. Today is the final day for clubs to sign 2024 MLB Draft selections.

According to MLB.com’s Jim Callis, Honeycutt signed a $4 million dollar bonus. The listed slot amount for the No. 22 pick was $3,802,200.

Orioles vice president of player development and domestic scouting Matt Blood, said the club has signed 20 of 21 drafted players.

The lone unsigned selection is 17^th rounder, Cowley County (Kan.) Community College lefty pitcher Iziah Salinas.

“We have one more to go,” said Blood on a team Zoom call, with the deadline to sign picks at 5 p.m. ET today. “Our goal is to sign as many players as we can. We’ll see what happens here.”

The latest MLB Draft has come and gone. The Orioles, since Mike Elias and his staff took over, are known for scoring well in the draft.

Once again this year they showed they tap into the college ranks much more than the high school ranks, getting 17 of 21 drafted players from college.

But that is actually twice the number of high school players the club drafted in the last two years, when they took just two high school players among 22 selections in 2022 (including Jackson Holliday) and two last year. Their first high school pick last year came in round 15 and they did not sign Qrey Lott.

This year they selected prep players in rounds six, 12, 16 and 19. They seem quite high on sixth rounder, DJ Layton, the shortstop from Charlotte. He hit .449 and also is said to have a big arm.

From 2019 to 2023, the O’s selected just nine high school players among 91 draft picks in the first 20 rounds. But a few of those nine were high picks and are premium prospects with the likes of Holliday, Gunnar Henderson and Coby Mayo. No one is putting this kid in that class, but he sounds promising. Catcher Creed Willems was another high school pick and he is a top 30 O’s prospect.

For the fifth time in six years since his first draft in 2019, O's executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias took a college bat with his first draft selection.

With the No. 22 overall pick in round one, the Orioles selected University of North Carolina outfielder Vance Honeycutt, a right-handed batter and thrower from Salisbury, N.C.

In 62 games this season for the Tarheels in his junior season, Honeycutt hit .318/.410/.714/1.124 with 13 doubles, two triples, 28 homers, 88 runs, 28 steals and 70 RBIs. His 28 homers is a UNC single-season record. 

He was ranked by Baseball America as the No. 13 player in this draft and was rated No. 22 by MLBPipeline.com.

In three seasons at UNC, over 176 games, he hit .293/.412/.638/1.050 with 65 homers and 170 RBIs. He hit 25 homers and stole 29 bases as a freshman. He had four multi-homer games this season.

It is not an exaggeration to say the Orioles have done very well in the MLB Draft. They have high picks near the top of the board they like, players like Adley Rutschman, Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser, and some that came a bit later that are now All-Stars, like Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg.

They have the No. 1 farm system in baseball, and that farm is a big reason they lead the American League East.

But as another draft is set to begin tomorrow night, the Orioles are confident, but not cocky, that they will do well again.

“I think we have some humility. We can’t just turn anything into gold. That is just not the reality,” the O’s vice president of player development and domestic scouting, Matt Blood, said Friday at Oriole Park in a predraft update with local media. “I think that good scouting makes good player development and good player development helps make good scouting. I like to think that our two departments are very in sync and aligned. I would really hope so now, since I am overseeing them both.

“But it is something we take a lot of pride in, is our efficiency of development. We are going to look for players we feel like we can help and players that, if they come to our system, they will have an even better chance to be major league contributors.”

When the Orioles make the No. 22 overall selection Sunday night in round one as another MLB Draft day arrives, their outlook for acquiring amateur talent is not really different than when the club was a losing and rebuilding organization.

There is no urgency, just because now the Orioles are a winning team that could go deep in the postseason, to select players for instance who could get there quicker to help the big league team in Baltimore.

“I don’t think so,” said Orioles vice president of player development and domestic scouting Matt Blood, as to whether the draft approach has changed. “Again, our job is to make the best bet we can. And our job is sort of to predict the future, which is very hard to do. We’re going to stick with our process and will try to get the best major league value that we possibly can with every single pick.”

The Orioles have four of the draft’s first 97 picks. They have selections at Nos. 22, 32, 61 and 97. The draft runs through the first two rounds and Competitive Balance Round B on Sunday night. Selections in rounds three through 10 are Monday with rounds 11 through 20 on Tuesday to wrap up the three days.

The draft begins at 7 p.m. ET on Sunday night and at 2 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday.

NASHVILLE – In late October, coming off a season that produced 101 wins, an American League East championship and a top-rated farm that produced the No. 1 prospect in the sport for the third straight year, the Orioles made several promotions in their scouting and player development departments.

Matt Blood was promoted from director of player development to vice president of player development and domestic scouting. Joining Blood to help head up player development now will be Anthony Villa, 29, who has been with the Orioles since the 2020 season. He is Blood's replacement as director of player development. Villa was first an O's minor league hitting coach, then a minor league hitting coordinator for the lower levels of the farm and last year he was hitting coordinator for the entire system.

His promotion was first reported here on MASNSports.com.

A 19th-round draft pick of the White Sox in 2016, Villa played in the minors for three seasons. He's been a fast riser in the O's organization. Now he'll have even a larger role in player development. 

“First of all, Anthony and I have been working closely on running this player development system for a while," said Blood. "He’s one of the leaders of our hitting department, but he also has great energy just toward the well being of players and their development. He has always had great ideas and thoughts on how we can do better by our players.

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.

Part of the ripple effect from the Orioles’ wave of promotions today within the scouting department is a change in roles for Anthony Villa.

Villa is replacing Matt Blood as director of player development, according to an industry source. Blood has been promoted to vice president of player development and domestic scouting.

Villa was put in charge this year of overseeing the entire system as minor league hitting coordinator after working at the lower levels. He played in the White Sox system from 2016-18 and came to the organization prior to 2020 as hitting coach at Aberdeen before the pandemic forced the cancellation of the minor league season.

Among the announced promotions is the following:

Koby Perez is vice president of international scouting and operations. Mike Snyder is senior director of pro scouting. Gerardo Cabrera is director of Latin American scouting. Kevin Carter is manager of pro scouting. Hendrik Herz is manager of domestic scouting analysis. Chad Tatum is manager of domestic scouting. Will Robertson is special assignment scout. Alex Tarandek is a senior analyst in scouting. Michael Weis is a senior data scientist of draft evaluation. And Maria Arellano is senior manager of international operations and baseball administration.

It has been quite a season for the Orioles’ Triple-A Norfolk Tides affiliate. They broke out of the gates this year going 7-1 and were 11-4 after 15 games. After 29 games in early May they were 22-7.

Last night they rode that strong start all the way to the first-half championship of the International League. With an 8-3 win at Nashville, Norfolk (46-23) has clinched a playoff berth for the first time since the 2015 season.

Colton Cowser got the scoring started in the first inning with a 109 mph solo homer to right for the Tides. Connor Norby tripled in two runs and later hit a sac fly. Cesar Prieto, in his Triple-A debut, went 1-for-3 with a sac fly. Maverick Handley singled in a run and Cedric Mullins' two-run homer capped the Norfolk scoring in the ninth. 

On his rehab assignment Mullins went 1-for-5 and Ryan Mountcastle went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts. 

Starter Grayson Rodriguez allowed two runs (one earned) in 4 1/3 innings on 92 pitches. Darwinzon Hernandez got the win in relief while Dillon Tate allowed one run in one inning and Mychal Givens threw a scoreless inning. 

We probably might have believed the Orioles would be a good team this year and maybe even make a playoff run. But thinking they would play .660 ball the first 50 games or .632 ball the last 19 games against winning teams might have been a stretch.

But the Orioles are indeed 12-7 in the last 19 against Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, the Los Angeles Angels, Toronto and New York. They are indeed 33-17 and that win percentage would produce 107 wins over the full season.

The Tampa Bay Rays are the only team that can keep them out of first-place right now.

But while they trail the Rays by three games, they are now four games better than the Yankees, seven ahead of Boston and 7.5 up on Toronto. They are two games better than Atlanta and 2.5 better than the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

They have won four straight AL East series for the first time since June and July of 2016. And they have won back-to-back series in the Bronx for the first time since the 2016 season. They are 9-3 in their last 12 AL East contests and 11-7 (.611) for the year within the division.

The switch began a few days before Heston Kjerstad left major league camp in Sarasota. Ground balls and other drills at first base, a position he hadn’t played except for three games in college before the 2020 draft. Nothing as a professional.

The activity increased over at Twin Lakes Park, and Kjerstad, normally a right fielder, played first base twice with Double-A Bowie last week and spent one game as the designated hitter.

The Baysox were off the past two days, and Kjerstad could return to the outfield tonight when they begin their first homestand against Akron. Or maybe he's slipping his hand inside a mitt again.

“We had this plan all along, for him to get exposure to first base,” said Orioles director of player development Matt Blood. “He just adds another club in his bag, for a metaphor, so that he’s got more options to play on the major league team. Whether they need him in the corner outfield or if they need him at first or to DH, it’s just going to give him another slot of opportunity for the major league team. But that was the plan all along.

“We weren’t going to put him in his first game in a major league spring training game. But as soon as he got out of major league spring training, he started playing in minor league games there at first base. You’ll see him playing at first base and in the outfield in Bowie.”

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.

Recently here we discussed how the Orioles handle their minor league managers and some other topics with Orioles director of player development Matt Blood. Executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias hired Blood in September 2019.

On Blood's watch the Orioles have become the No. 1 farm system in baseball. He would be the first to say he is one cog in the system. But I would add he is a very important one, and some of his hires have been a big part of that ranking.

Here are some questions from me and answers from Blood on some other topics within player development for the Orioles.

Q: What are some things the Orioles have now been built up that make your pitching development and pitching program good?

A: “I would say we have a combination of talented players, very smart and hard-working coaches and really good resources from our research and development department. The coaches are provided with information as good as you can get anywhere. And they are really skilled at providing that information effectively to the players.”

Matt Blood just completed his third season as the Orioles' director of player development, and the minor league system he oversees is now ranked No. 1 in the majors by a few outlets.

Blood's first season included having to deal with a pandemic that caused the cancellation of all minor league baseball in 2020.

He came to the Orioles from the Texas Rangers, where he held a similar position. He previously spent three years as the director of USA Baseball’s 18 and Under National Team program and seven years before that as an area scout for the St. Louis Cardinals. With that club he worked with both Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal. Now they are all together in Baltimore.

“Matt has an unrivaled network when it comes to identifying up-and-coming coaching talent, and his knowledge of the latest trends in the player development sphere will help to keep us on the forefront of this critical area,” Elias said when he hired Blood in September 2019.

I've interviewed Blood many times since he joined the Orioles, talking mostly about players on the farm. But recently we talked more about process and how the O's player development department works closely with the minor league managers.

A new week begins with the Orioles trying to land another veteran starting pitcher while choices are narrowed by a market that’s paying inflated salaries.

Left-handed bats for the corner outfield and first base also remain winter priorities, part of the vision to rotate players in the designated hitter spot. A backup catcher on a major league deal also could get done. A veteran for the bullpen is on the back burner but expected to happen.

The Orioles also would like to find a left-handed hitting second baseman to replace Rougned Odor, though it isn’t as high on their list as a starter.

“If we don’t, I think we’ll be OK,” executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias said last week during a Winter Meetings interview with "MASN All Access."

“We’ve got Terrin Vavra, we’ve got Joey Ortiz, who we just added to the 40-man roster, we’ve got some other players that aren’t on the 40-man yet but are really good-looking prospects that are in Triple-A, so we’ve got options in the infield. But it is an area where there’s a fit for a veteran to come in just because (Ramón) Urías, Gunnar (Henderson) and (Jorge) Mateo, they can cover all those spots, but not all three of them are going to play 162 games, so we’ve got some more timeshare to be had at a minimum.”

Once he finally got on the field this past season in June, O’s outfield prospect Heston Kjerstad was tearing it up at Single-A Delmarva, batting .463 in 22 games. He didn’t produce similar numbers when he moved up to High-A Aberdeen – yes, that would have been hard to do – but had another great run in the Arizona Fall League.

Kjerstad won the Joe Black MVP Award in the AFL, putting him in the same company as previous winners such as Nolan Arenado (2011), Kris Bryant (2013) and Ronald Acuña Jr. (2017). And Kjerstad’s strong AFL showing could mean he will begin the 2023 season with Double-A Bowie and not return to Aberdeen.

“I would say that would be an intelligent guess,” O’s director of player development Matt Blood said recently about Kjerstad moving up to begin next season.

In 43 games with the IronBirds in the regular season, he batted .233/.312/.362 with a .674 OPS, but his bat heated up in the final games of the season, and that carried over both into the South Atlantic League playoffs and into AFL play.

In 22 games in Arizona, Kjerstad, taken second overall by the Orioles in the 2020 MLB Draft, hit .357/.385/.622 with a 1.007 OPS, nine doubles, a triple, five homers and 17 RBIs. He led the AFL in hits (35), doubles, extra-base hits and total bases (61). He tied for third in homers and RBIs, and was sixth in OPS.

The Orioles Adley Rutschman did not win the AL Rookie of the Year award. That was expected. Manager Brandon Hyde did not win the Manager of the Year award, which went to Cleveland's Terry Francona.

That was probably a bit less expected but certainly Francona was the favorite heading into last night. To have five of the 30 votes not place Hyde among the top three is a bit unexpected.

But Hyde was a reasonably close second losing out to Francona in points by 112-79. Francona got 17 first-place votes and Hyde got nine. 

So, he fell short last night. But for me, I think there are many reasons that Hyde has been and will continue to be the right manager for the Orioles. And ranking high among them in my opinion is his ability to work well with and get a lot of out of young players.

That fits so well with a rebuilding organization. Hyde seems to have an ability to get close with his players yet maintain a management relationship. He is open and honest with them, telling them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.