Today in this space a few more comments from 2024 Double-A Bowie manager Roberto Mercado on a few of his players with the Baysox this year.

I interviewed Mercado after the Arizona Fall League season when he led Surprise to the AFL title game. During that interview we talked about his Fall League experience but also about several of his 2024 Baysox players.

One pitcher that impressed him was right-hander Cameron Weston, the club’s round eight pick in 2022 out of the University of Michigan.

He had solid stats pitching in four games at the start of last season for High-A Aberdeen before he moved to Bowie and pitched in 23 more games with 14 starts.

Despite his good 2024 and career numbers, Weston is not ranked in the current MLBPipeline.com O’s top 30 prospects list.

During my interview in this space recently with Orioles Double-A Bowie (now Chesapeake) manager Roberto Mercado, he spent some time talking about his work in the Arizona Fall League and the O’s players he managed there.

But he also spent some time talking about his 2024 season with Double-A Bowie and some of the notable players he managed there this year. We’ll feature this in two parts and check in on a few players today and more in a few days.

Right-handed pitcher Alex Pham, age 25, was not added to the O’s 40-man roster and was available to any team in the recent Rule 5 draft.

Pham, a 19^th-round draft pick from the University of San Francisco, had a solid year for Bowie and he spent all of the 2024 season with the Baysox, making 27 starts.

Pham, who pitched to an ERA of 2.57 in 2023 between High-A Aberdeen and Bowie, went 7-4 with a 4.24 ERA for the Baysox this season. Over 119 innings he allowed 97 hits, had a 1.24 WHIP with a .221 average against and .669 OPS against. He walked 3.78 per nine and fanned 10.44.

The turkey will be the star today in many households, but I’m more of a sides guy. They can make or break a meal.

Trading for or signing a starter the caliber of Corbin Burnes, if not actually him, would be baseball’s turkey. The same goes for a big right-handed bat.

Three more minor league signings on Monday were sides.

The Orioles didn’t make any bold moves last November, their final transaction of the month a minor league contract for left-hander Jakob Hernández. They claimed outfielder Sam Hilliard on waivers from the Braves and gave right-hander Adrian Heredia and left-hander Andy Tena minor league deals.

The most important business this month has involved restructuring the 40-man roster, with relievers Danny Coulombe and Jacob Webb unexpectedly entering free agency, and finalizing the coaching staff. Those are the primary sides. We’re talking stuffing, potatoes and casseroles. The minor league stuff, while necessary to build depth, is more like the relish tray.

For eight players from the Orioles organization, the 2024 Arizona Fall League provided some nice high-level additional experience. Not only did they play on a Surprise Saguaros team that had the best record in the six-team league at 18-10, they played in the AFL championship game.

Salt River beat Surprise 3-2, but players got in extra work the last few weeks that could benefit them down the road.

The Fall League experience was also nice for Surprise manager Roberto Mercado, who managed the Orioles High-A Aberdeen teams in 2022 and 2023 and was skipper this past season at Double-A Bowie.

The Baysox were 62-75 this season. Aberdeen went 147-120 in his two seasons there, advancing to the playoffs in a 2022 season which ended with Mercado being named the O’s Cal Ripken Sr. Player Development Award winner.

A former head coach at New Britian High School in Connecticut, who has several years' experience also coaching in the Cape Cod League, Mercado managed an AFL team featuring prospects from the Orioles, Astros, Guardians, Royals and Rangers.

BOWIE, Md. – You won’t find his name on those top 30 prospect lists. He doesn’t throw a blazing fastball. He played college ball at the Div. 1 level and was not a high draft pick. 

But what Bowie bullpen right-hander Dylan Heid does have is very impressive stats and a very unique pitch he throws on rare occasions, a pitch not seen much anymore in pro baseball.

The O’s selected Heid (pronounced Hyde-like the O’s skipper) in Round 11 out of Pitt-Johnston of the 2021 draft. There he was a starter with big stats then too. As a senior in 2021, he went 7-2 with a 1.37 ERA. Over 59 1/3 he walked 15 and fanned 105 and had a seven-inning no-hitter on his resume.

This season with Double-A Bowie, Heid, 26, is 4-2 with a 1.11 ERA in 25 games. He pitched three hitless, scoreless innings earlier this week versus Richmond and added 1 1/3 scoreless in Bowie's extra-innings loss last night. For the year over 40 2/3 innings, he has allowed just 22 hits with 14 walks to 40 strikeouts, along with a 0.89 WHIP and .157 average against. Lefty batters are hitting .154 off him and right-handers are at .169.

Over his past 14 games, Heid has allowed two earned runs in 25 2/3 innings for an ERA of 0.70 in this span.

BOWIE, Md. - From the day they signed him to a big bonus, the largest in their international signing class in January of 2021, the Orioles envisioned this for catcher Samuel Basallo from the Dominican Republic.

Big arm and big power.

He’s thrown runners out as a catcher and mashed homers with big exit velocity with his massive raw power. He has done all that and more on the O's watch. Last year he flew up prospects lists. He began the 2023 season as the No. 15 prospect on the O’s top 30 team list. Now that is the area he is ranked in on a top 100 list.

Basallo ended the 2023 season, one where he produced a .953 OPS between Low-A Delmarva, High-A Aberdeen and Double-A Bowie, ranked No. 46 in the top 100 by both Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com. Right now, he is No. 12 by MLBPipeline and No. 16 via Baseball America.

Everyone in the industry knows he’s one of baseball’s top prospects. And he is taking his talents to Arlington, Tex. on July 13 to represent the Orioles in the All-Star Futures Game.

Earlier this week when I was in Bowie, Md., to cover Kyle Bradish's first injury rehab start, I spent some time with Double-A Bowie manager Roberto Mercado to discuss his team's solid start to the new season.

It has been some weekend in Bowie with the Baysox winning Friday 5-4 over Altoona on a walk-off on John Rhodes' single in the 10th. Last night, Jud Fabian's grand slam in the last of the ninth was a walk-off winner 6-2. It was Fabian's second homer of the season and he's now batting .310 with a .944 OPS.

Bowie drew 7,159 fans on Friday and 7,988 on Saturday to Prince George's Stadium. 

Between the 2022 and 2023 seasons, the Baysox's increase in average home attendance was among the best in all of the minors and they are off to a good start at the turnstile this year.

Bowie is now 8-6 and through Friday's games had a plus-12 run differential ranked third-best in the 12-team league thus far. Bowie led the league with 77 runs scored and also with an .817 OPS. Bowie's team ERA of 4.34 was eighth-best in the Eastern League.

If the Orioles want to win their third straight series to begin the new season, they'll have to win this afternoon in Pittsburgh after a very tough loss there on Saturday.

The clubs have split the first two games and the Orioles lost 5-4 in 11 innings on Saturday. The Orioles were not doing much with Pirates' lefty Bailey Falter, who threw six scoreless on one hit but was pulled after throwing 78 pitches. The O's immediately got it going against the Pirates bullpen and when Jordan Westburg hustled home safely on a grounder to first base, the O's had tied it 3-3 in the ninth.

They went ahead 4-3 in the tenth on Adley Rutschman's sac fly. But Mike Baumann struggled to throw strikes as Pittsburgh tied it and the game went to the 11th. Oneil Cruz singled in the winning run to even up the series for the Bucs.

A tough, tough loss for the Orioles who got five innings with no earned runs allowed from their bullpen. 

But while the bullpen faltered late, the Baltimore offense produced just four hits in 37 at-bats and the hitters went 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position.

It was not a tough call. There was no protracted debate. There was no brief debate. There was no debating at all. 

Catcher Samuel Basallo, signed to a $1.3 million bonus, the largest bonus in the Orioles' 2021 international class, is once again the club’s No. 1 ranked international prospect. He tops our third annual MASNSports.com ratings of the top 20 O’s international prospects.

Basallo was No. 2 on this list in 2022 and was No. 1 last year before he had even played one game of full season minor league ball. Before he went out and had a sensational season on the farm, one that took him as far as Double-A Bowie and also took him toward the top of several national top 100 prospect rankings.

He is the shining star of the O's international program, but far from the only top talent.

The wave of O's international prospects is now closer to crashing the shore than ever. To be a top team for an extended period, an organization has to be good in international scouting and signing players. The Orioles now are.

None of the trio pitched for a big-time SEC school or were a high draft pick. One reaches the backend of a top 30 O's prospects list. But in an organization without a lot of touted, high-draft pick pitching, they are trying to make their way to Baltimore.

And with the starts that right-handers Alex Pham, Jean Pinto and Ryan Long have gotten off to for High-A Aberdeen (28-28), they might have that chance.

Pham, 23, selected in round 19 in 2021 out of the University of San Francisco, was recently named the Pitcher of the Month for May in the South Atlantic League. He went 2-0 with a 1.54 ERA over five starts allowing just 10 hits in 23 1/3 innings with 12 walks, 34 strikeouts, a .128 average against and 0.94 WHIP for the month.

“Everything has been working for him,” said Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado of a pitcher with a fastball in the 92, 93 mph range that has touched 95.8 this season. “The velocity is up a little bit. His cutter has been excellent and so has his curveball. He’s really been getting ahead of hitters and letting his stuff play in the zone. Done a tremendous job for us and big props to our pitching coach Austin Meine who has done a great job creating pitching plans for each pitcher and working on goals that each pitcher has here.”

Pham over 11 games and nine starts for the year overall, is 3-2 with a 2.58 ERA that ranks fifth-best in the league. Over 45 1/3 innings he has allowed 28 hits with 23 walks, 67 strikeouts and a 1.13 WHIP. He’s just been solid and in his most recent outing pitched five hitless and scoreless with 11 strikeouts. 

Young Jackson Holliday played his first game for High-A Aberdeen on April 25, moving up from Low Single-A Delmarva after producing an OPS of 1.182 in 14 games there.

It was fast, but not unexpected from the player that is so skilled, has such a strong background in the game and was taken No. 1 overall in the 2022 MLB Draft.

But it was a few weeks after that promotion, that Holliday’s immense talent was on full display. On May 16-17 at Winston-Salem, he went 8-for-9 over a two-game stretch with two doubles, three triples, a homer and 11 RBIs for the IronBirds.

It was a stunning two-game display.

“It was like watching 'MLB: The Show,'” Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado told me this week of those games for the IronBirds. “Talk about hitting the ball all over the park and he was hitting the ball with power too. Along with that he was and has been playing great defense and has a great baseball IQ. All season he has played really, really well.”

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.

You have to have a pretty strong year to beat out Gunnar Henderson for an O's farm award this year, and Jordan Westburg sure had one.

Today he was named the Brooks Robinson Award winner as the Orioles Minor League Player of the Year. Right-hander Ryan Watson won the Jim Palmer Pitcher of the Year award while High-A manager Roberto Mercado was named winner of the Cal Ripken, Sr. Player Development award. Scott Walter is the Jim Russo Scout of the Year.

The winners will be recognized in an on-field ceremony before Tuesday's game with Toronto at Camden Yards. 

Westburg spent time between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk and batted .265/.355/.496 (144-for-544) with 39 doubles, three triples, 27 homers, 96 runs scored, 106 RBIs, 70 walks and 12 stolen bases in 138 games.

He led all O's minor league players in doubles, extra-base hits (69), total bases (270) and RBIs. He also finished second in the organization in hits and home runs. After being promoted to the Tides on June 6, he led the International League with 74 RBIs, tied for the league lead with 25 doubles, while also ranking second in the IL with 46 extra-base hits, 184 total bases and 64 runs scored through the end of the season.

ABERDEEN, Md. – After they had scored 13 runs on 13 hits Tuesday night in a huge win, High-A Aberdeen loaded the bases in the last of the first last night. It looked like they might pick up where they left off the previous game.

But the IronBirds would leave the bases loaded. A big chance ended with no runs. We didn’t know it then, but that would be their best scoring chance of the night as they lost 4-0 to Bowling Green. The Hot Rods won the South Atlantic League championship series in front of 1,548 at Ripken Stadium.

They held Aberdeen to four hits in the shutout win in the third and deciding game of the SAL championship. After they failed to cash in on the early chance, Aberdeen got just one runner to third base, and that was Max Wagner after a two-out triple in the sixth.

And the IronBirds got a tough break on the mound. Right-hander Peter Van Loon was pitching a gem, a one-hitter through four innings on 45 pitches. Then he was out of the game due a blister.

“He developed an issue with his hand, and that was the reason we had to yank him. He was pitching great,” said Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado. “Trust me, we were going to keep him out there a little longer. But we’re not going to put a guy out there and have that finger be an issue or impact his offseason. He was outstanding as he was for us all year. Phenomenal job today.”

ABERDEEN, Md. – Seeking their first-ever league championship and the first by an O’s farm team in seven years, the high Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds came up short tonight at Ripken Stadium.

Bowling Green, a Tampa Bay affiliate, got the lead on a bases-loaded balk call and later added three more runs as they beat Aberdeen 4-0 to win the South Atlantic League championship series, two wins to one.

The IronBirds had a strong regular season, going 78-54 and then beat Brooklyn in three games in a semifinal playoff series. But they lost tonight’s third and deciding game to the Hot Rods for the SAL championship.

Aberdeen was searching for its first title since becoming an O’s farm club in 2002 and first by a Baltimore affiliate since Double-A Bowie won the Eastern League in 2015.

The balk call came in the top of the fifth with two outs and the bases loaded. Right-hander Connor Gillispie started the inning for Aberdeen and Logan Driscoll drilled a leadoff double. After a pop out, Bowling Green loaded the bases with a single and walk. Then Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado called for righty Kade Strowd to try and pitch out of the jam. He just about did.

ABERDEEN, Md. – In the minor leagues it’s like the equivalent of playing a Game 7 of the World Series. For the O’s high Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds affiliate tonight, it’s the final game of a series and the season.

Aberdeen hosts Bowling Green, a Tampa Bay Rays farm club, in Game 3 of the best-of-three South Atlantic League championship series at 7:05 p.m. Bowling Green won 5-3 Sunday and Aberdeen won at Ripken Stadium 13-6 last night. Tonight’s winner will be the 2022 SAL champions.

The last two O’s farm teams to win championships were the Single-A Frederick Keys in 2011 with Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop in the Carolina League and the Double-A Bowie Baysox in 2015. With a team that included Trey Mancini and Mike Yastrzemski, the Baysox won the Eastern League title.

Aberdeen, an O’s affiliate since 2002, had never even won a single playoff series until this year.

Ahead of tonight’s winner-take-all game, some notes and quotes from Aberdeen.

ABERDEEN, Md. – It was certainly much more than a three-man show. But on a night when high Single-A Aberdeen had to win to save its season, the Orioles' second, third and fourth selections in the 2022 MLB Draft came up big.

Dylan Beavers, taken No. 33 overall from Cal, Max Wager, drafted No. 42 from Clemson and Jud Fabian, taken No. 67 overall from Florida, combined to go 6-for-11 with two doubles, a homer, five runs and seven RBIs as Aberdeen beat Bowling Green 13-6.

The win evens the South Atlantic League best-of-three championship series at one win each. The teams play at 7:05 p.m. tonight at Ripken Stadium in a winner-take-all game. The game 3 winner will be SAL champs.

The last farm team for the Orioles to win a league championship was Double-A Bowie in the Eastern League in 2015. Seven years later, Aberdeen can join them.

The IronBirds offense was cooking early and often.

The Orioles’ high Single-A Aberdeen affiliate needs to win tonight to extend its season. Tuesday night the IronBirds lost 8-1 at Brooklyn in Game 1 of a best-of-three South Atlantic League semifinal series. Should Aberdeen win tonight at 7:05 p.m. at Ripken Stadium, the teams will play a third and deciding game tomorrow night in Aberdeen.

Aberdeen reached the SAL playoffs by going 43-23 and winning the first-half division title. Brooklyn won the second-half, when Aberdeen went 35-31 for an overall record of 78-54 under first-year pro manager Roberto Mercado.

Outfielder Heston Kjerstad was the only IronBird with a multi-hit game Tuesday, going 2-for-4 with a pair of singles. Kjerstad ended the regular season with a four-game hitting streak, going 7-for-16 with a double and homer. He batted .290 in September.

But overall in 43 games with Aberdeen, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 draft batted .233/.312/./362/.674 with eight doubles, two triples, three homers and 20 RBIs. This was after he tore it up for low Single-A Delmarva, posting an OPS of 1.201 in 22 games.

Mercado said in a recent interview that Kjerstad was indeed swinging it better later in the year.

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.

The Orioles are hatching their plan for Tyler Wells, arranging a bullpen session for him in Baltimore and sending him out again for another minor league start. Maybe just one. Maybe two.

The reports came back from high Single-A Aberdeen that Wells looked and felt good Friday night, with no lingering issues related to his strained left oblique. He threw 31 pitches in 2 1/3 innings, the only run against him scoring after he left.

“He looked outstanding,” said Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado. “Commanded all of his pitches really well, put any pitch where he wanted. I know he talked about wanting to command the fastball on the outside part of the plate, and he’s dotting it right there on the black. Pitched really, really well. Retired the first seven guys and was in complete control the whole time.”

The Orioles had pitch counts in mind for Wells and Grayson Rodriguez, who started the previous night on his rehab assignment and also threw 31.

“We had to pull him there,” Mercado said of Wells. “Trust me, I’d love to keep him in. Similar to Grayson. I wish I had the chance to leave him in a little longer. He’s got electric stuff and it was great to see him back on the mound after being out since June.”