The Orioles completed another Winter Meetings without selecting a player in the major league phase of the Rule 5 Draft.

It used to be tradition.

The club passed again with the 24^th pick in the first round, extending its streak to two consecutive years. The Orioles had a stretch of 18 drafts in a row with a selection prior to the 2023 Winter Meetings.

The most recent choice was reliever Andrew Politi, who returned to the Red Sox as a late camp cut.

The Orioles lost their No. 8 prospect today to the Padres, right-hander Juan Nuñez, who hasn’t pitched above High-A ball and appeared in only seven games this summer due to a shoulder injury.

CLEVELAND – Nine Orioles minor league players and one coach are included on the Mesa Solar Sox roster in the Arizona Fall League, which begins Oct. 2.

The organization is sending pitchers Carter Baumler, Zack Peek, Trey McGough, Carlos Tavera and Peter Van Loon, catcher Connor Pavolony, infielders TT Bowens and Billy Cook, and outfielder John Rhodes to Mesa. Double-A Bowie pitching coach Forrest Herrmann is on the coaching staff.

MLB Pipeline ranks Rhodes as the organization’s No. 20 prospect, Baumler No. 22 and Cook No. 27.

Rhodes was the 76^th-overall pick in the 2021 draft who appeared in 108 games at Double-A Bowie this season and batted .228/.323/.422 with 22 doubles, three triples, 17 home runs and 69 RBIs in 108 games.

Baumler, a fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft, has undergone Tommy John and right shoulder surgeries. He appeared in seven games between the Florida Complex League and Single-A Delmarva and allowed six earned runs with nine walks and 21 strikeouts in 17 innings.

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.

The Orioles' high Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds affiliate, at 28-12, has produced one of the best records in minor league baseball this year. There are obvious reasons for that, to include one of the best offenses in the South Atlantic League. The IronBirds score, on average, 5.56 runs per game through Wednesday’s contests.

Then there's a team ERA that ranks third in the league at 3.84 with an unheralded but solid rotation.

And there are more hidden reasons for Aberdeen’s success. Like the club’s tremendous ability to steal bases.

They have stolen a whopping 74 bases this year and have been caught just 13 times for an 85 percent success rate. They rank second in the league in steals, and the “go-go” IronBirds have four players with 11 or more steals and 14 players with at least one stolen base.

In the minor leagues, pitchers can only make a pickoff move toward a base twice per plate appearance. On a third try, the runner will be awarded second base if not picked off. That helps, but manager Roberto Mercado said the club's success in swiping bases comes mainly from talented players employing a good process, not from a rule.

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