Maybe it is the end of an era. For the first time since the 2021 preseason farm system organizational rankings by MLBPipeline.com, the Orioles are not the No. 1 team.

In the midseason ranking, released Aug. 15, the Tampa Bay Rays are back on top followed by Minnesota, the Orioles now third, then Cleveland and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

MLBPipeline has been publishing organization rankings twice per calendar year since the preseason of 2015 and no team had been first in six straight rankings until the Orioles did it through the 2024 preseason rating.

Before the O’s run of six straight, Tampa Bay was first three times in a row and before that San Diego four in a row.

The O’s had that amazing run of three straight years of No. 1 ranked players with Adley Rutschman and then Gunnar Henderson and then Jackson Holliday. But now via trades where they dealt some talent and highly ranked players making the majors, the farm ranking is taking an evitable hit.

For the first time since they drafted him No. 1 overall in 2022, you hear fans open to trading one of baseball’s best prospects in Jackson Holliday.

I don’t have a vote or say here in anything and neither do fans, but I do have an opinion. And I still see Holliday as an untouchable.

While he may have lost his No. 1 prospect status with some outlets, that is fine. He did go 2-for-34 with 18 strikeouts for the Orioles in April.

Once it started going south for him with the O's, it stayed that way.

He looked overmatched for whatever reason. This will sound like an excuse but some players coming up from Triple-A Norfolk agreed with an opinion that while Holliday was getting every pitch out of the zone called a ball against him in Triple-A with the ABS system, that changed in the majors. He seemed to be down 0-2 every at-bat. He took some pitches that may have been called balls by the computer but were strikes in the bigs. 

After drafting with a top five pick every year from 2019 through 2022 – twice selecting No. 1 overall – Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and his staff this year will draft lower down the board for the second year in a row.

With the No. 17 pick in round one last year, they selected Vanderbilt outfielder Enrique Bradfield Jr., who now plays at High-A Aberdeen. Tonight, as another the three-day draft begins, they will have three selections at Nos. 22, 32 and 61.

The draft is heavy in college bats, scarce at the top in high school talent and not considered a great draft.

“It’s kind of a mess to be honest,” said MLB.com’s Jim Callis, who will be on MLB Network's coverage tonight. “This draft is kind of a slightly below average draft. The strength of the draft is college hitters. There is just not depth in terms of everything else.

“By the time we get to pick 22, there are about 10 guys on the first tier of the draft and they will all be gone. There could be 20 college hitters taken the first round. That is the strength of the draft. So that reflects the strength and that the other demographics are not particularly strong.”

Orioles infield prospect Joey Ortiz, who made his major league debut in the 2023 season, may have finally shed that “glove-first” label. While his glove is still strong and he gets 70 fielding grades and 55 for arm strength by Baseball America, he also produced an .885 OPS in 88 games at Triple-A Norfolk last summer.

“Yeah, definitely, I feel like my whole career I’ve been labeled as glove first,” Ortiz said Friday at the Warehouse during Birdland Carvan. “Now for my bat to finally come through is nice. Been a lot of work, trusting in the coaches and what they are helping me with and me believing in myself as well.”

Ortiz hit .212 in 34 plate appearances over three stints with the Orioles. A true shortstop who has also played some second and third base, he said he’s up for it if the club needs him in a utility role this coming season.

He put up a batting line of .321/.378/.507/.885 for the Tides with 30 doubles, four triples, nine homers and 58 RBIs.

Rated as the No. 95 prospect in the 2023 debut of the Baseball America top 100, he is now the O’s No. 7 prospect. They have six players in the new top 100, so Ortiz just missed making the list.

The Orioles have the best farm system right now in Major League Baseball. This according to several outlets ranking them that way. And if one big standard in determining that is most prospects on a top 100 list, the Orioles last night matched their Baseball America performance by getting eight ranked on the latest MLBPipeline.com list.

Gunnar Henderson, still prospect-eligible and eligible for the American League Rookie of the Year award this season, was ranked No. 1 by both outlets, and by Baseball Prospectus as well recently.

MLBPipeline.com places three O’s in the top 12, four in the top 40 and eight among the top 99.

Pitcher Grayson Rodriguez is No. 7, Jackson Holliday No. 12 and Colton Cowser No. 40. Jordan Westburg comes in at No. 74, Heston Kjerstad at No. 80, DL Hall at No. 97 and Joey Ortiz at No. 99.

The list doesn’t even include Kyle Stowers, Coby Mayo or Connor Norby, who might well have merited consideration. The Orioles ended the 2022 season with six on the MLBPipeline.com top 100, and Henderson was No. 2 to end the season.

They are going to be a great 1-2 punch in the Orioles lineup next season and quite possibly for many seasons to come.

A case could be made that the Orioles' two best hitters going into next season are catcher Adley Rutschman and infielder Gunnar Henderson.

And while that talented young duo combined for 602 plate appearances last year, they might get a combined 1,100 or more next season.

Among Orioles with 100 or more plate appearances in 2022 - a list of 14 players - Henderson and Rutschman were first and second on the team in walk rate. They were 1-2 also in on-base percentage and OPS. They were first and third (with Terrin Vavra in the middle) in walk-strikeout ratio.

Both players last year were ranked at one time as the No. 1 prospects in baseball.

When it comes to the young talent in a big league club’s organization – the prospects – there are several ways they can help you. The most obvious one would be to make the team and help you win games. That is the first goal. But they can also help bring talent to a team via trades.

Sometimes when we take a look at how a winning or championship team was built, a story will list the home-grown players, but they seldom list players that were acquired through trades of home-grown talent.

In my recent conversation with MLBPipeline.com’s senior writer Jim Callis, he pointed out yet another way those prospects help. Young talent with little service time is often at the lower end of the salary spectrum. So amassing such talent can save the big league club money to spend elsewhere on other needs.

So yeah, young talent is quite important and coveted. Maybe now more than ever. 

“The teams with the very best farm systems almost always contend about a year earlier than you expect,” Callis pointed out in our recent interview. “And the Orioles did that this year. Sometimes they take a step back the next year and then they are good to go, smooth sailing from there. The Astros are a team that comes to mind. The Cubs come to mind. It happens a lot.

For young Jackson Holliday, a lot was expected and a lot was delivered. The player the Orioles took No. 1 overall in the 2022 MLB Draft had a pretty solid 20-game pro debut.

It started with him tearing it up in the Rookie-level Florida Complex League for eight games and followed with 12 games at Single-A Delmarva where he certainly held his own.

Between the two levels at just age 18, Holliday showed a great batting eye and he walked 25 times with just 12 strikeouts. He ended the year ranked as the Orioles' No. 3 prospect behind Gunnar Henderson and Grayson Rodriguez, and in national top 100s, he is rated No. 13 by MLBPipeline.com and No. 38 by Baseball America.

In his first season after being a high school drafted player in 2019, Henderson played in 29 games in the Rookie-level Gulf Coast League and batted .259/.331/.370 with a .701 OPS, 11 walks and 28 strikeouts. He had a 9.1 walk rate and 23.1 strikeout rate.

Holliday in eight FCL games batted .409/.576/.591 with a 1.167 OPS, 10 walks and two strikeouts. In the FCL, he had a 30.3 walk rate and 6.1 strikeout rate. Then in 12 games with the Shorebirds, he hit .238/.439/.333 with a .772 OPS, 15 walks to 10 strikeouts, producing a 26.3 walk rate and 17.5 strikeout rate.

On the first night of play in the Arizona Fall League, Orioles outfield prospect Heston Kjerstad crushed a homer to right-center and he’s been hitting ever since. Today it seems quite likely that he will be selected to play in the AFL’s Fall Stars game this Sunday. He is taking part in the AFL Home Run Derby on Saturday.

Through Wednesday in 19 AFL games, Kjerstad has hit .353/.385/.624 with a 1.009 OPS, eight doubles, five homers and 17 RBIs. He was tied for the AFL homer lead and ranks sixth in the league in OPS.

Jim Callis, senior writer for MLBPipeline.com, saw Kjerstad play in person earlier in the AFL season.

“On opening day, I saw him hit a massive home run at Scottsdale Stadium,” said Callis. “The good news for Orioles fans is he looks like the guy, the No. 2 pick in the draft from a few years ago. He looks like the guy I thought was the best left-handed college power hitter in that draft. I had seen him at the College World Series in the past and he’s got big left-handed power. It's power over hit (tool). He’s got about a 30 percent strikeout rate in the Fall League. He’s always had some strikeouts but still managed to hit for average if that makes sense.

“He looks like the type of guy that could hit .260 with maybe 30 homers. He’s not a blazing runner or anything, but he moves well enough. He’s got a strong arm. I haven’t talked to the Orioles since I’ve seen him, but I have to think they are quite pleased with how he’s looked.”

On Sunday night, probably not long after 7 p.m., the Orioles will officially be on the clock to make their third overall No. 1 MLB Draft selection in team history. They selected pitcher Ben McDonald 1/1 in 1989 and 30 years later it was catcher Adley Rutschman. Now for the second time in four years, the Orioles will make the first pick in the draft.

And it remains true today and may hold true until we get the actual pick – no one knows which direction the Orioles will go. They are as usual, not tipping their hand in any way and if they have made or even narrowed their decision, there is just no credible information out there on what the Orioles might do.

We know the same five names that have apparently been on their short list for a while now – high school outfielders Druw Jones and Elijah Green and high school infielders Jackson Holliday and Termarr Johnson with college shortstop Brooks Lee.

MLBPipeline.com ranks them this way: Jones, Holliday, Green, Johnson, Lee.

Baseball America ranks them this way: Jones, Lee, Holliday, Johnson, Green.

We are now less than two weeks away from the First-Year Player Draft, where for the third time in draft history the Orioles will have the No. 1 overall pick. They selected pitcher Ben McDonald out of LSU No. 1 in 1989 and catcher Adley Rutschman No. 1 out of Oregon State in 2019.

Now for the second time in four drafts, they again pick 1/1.

Here are the latest top five player draft rankings, which includes four high school players at the top, by MLBPipeline.com:

* No. 1 – Georgia high school outfielder Druw Jones. He is the son of five-time All-Star and 10-time Gold Glove winner Andruw Jones. The 18-year-old Jones gets 70 tool grades for running and fielding, and he could grow into plus power, too.

* No. 2 – Oklahoma high school shortstop Jackson Holliday. Yes, another son of a famous father, his dad is a seven-time All-Star outfielder. The younger Holliday has an impressive advanced hitting approach, and added size and strength this year.