With the promotion Sunday of infielder Max Wagner from High-A Aberdeen to Double-A Bowie, the Orioles now have their first four picks from the 2022 MLB Draft all together at the Double-A level with Jackson Holliday, Dylan Beavers, Wagner and Jud Fabian. 

Holliday was the No. 1 overall pick in that draft with Beavers at No. 33, Wagner No. 42 and Fabian No. 67. The last three are all college draft picks but Holliday, who is baseball's No. 1 prospect, is the 19-year-old phenom having a sensational season. 

Beavers has put up some very solid numbers in his own right and just got to Bowie last week, going 8-for-20 in his first five Double-A games. His bat is hot now, but it wasn’t always that way in 2023. He began the year with Aberdeen and after 45 games was batting just .214 with a .664 OPS.  But then in his next 40 games with the IronBirds he had this line - .343/.443/.580/1.023 with 29 walks and 21 extra-base hits.  

Now ranked as the No. 10 O’s prospect by MLBPipeline.com and No. 22 by Baseball America, his bat was smoking. He is a player that gets some 60 grades from scouts for his power, running and arm.  

Beavers told me over the weekend in Bowie that when his bat was slow to get going this year, he tried not to overly stress about it and instead draw on experience from college ball at the University of California. There he began his career as a two-way player and later as a power-hitting outfielder was good enough to be the No. 33 overall selection. 

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.

MINNEAPOLIS – He is less than a year removed from being selected as the No. 1 overall pick by the Orioles in the 2022 Major League Draft. And today, as a new draft arrives tonight, shortstop Jackson Holliday is headed to Double-A.

MASNSports.com has learned via a team source that Holliday, who played in the All-Star Futures Game Saturday, going 0-for-1, will play his next game for the Double-A Bowie Baysox moving up from High-A Aberdeen.

Holliday, 19, is ranked as the No. 1 prospect in the sport by MLBPipeline.com and No. 2 via Baseball America. He had set a goal to get to Bowie this season and now he has achieved that. 

This move comes with other promotion news as infielder Coby Mayo will move up from Double-A to Triple-A Norfolk and right-hander pitcher Chayce McDermott is also moving from Bowie to Norfolk.

Holliday began this year with Low Single-A Delmarva, but after 14 games there moved to High-A Aberdeen. In 71 games between those clubs, he batted .331/.466/.523/.989 with 17 doubles, six triples, seven homers and 51 RBIs. He controlled the strike zone very well with 64 walks to 67 strikeouts and scored 67 runs with 20 stolen bases.

BOWIE, Md. – Most teams in pro baseball use a five-man rotation, sometimes six, but 10 is a bit much. However the Orioles like to sometimes essentially use two starting pitchers or bulk inning pitchers in one game and that has been on display often this year at Double-A Bowie.

And while the Baysox have not gotten off to a great start at 6-13, it has not been about shaky pitching. The opposite has been true. Bowie was rained out Sunday but ranks third in the Eastern League in team ERA at 3.43

But the Baysox lead the Eastern League in rotation ERA at 2.60 and also rank first among starter WHIP at 1.06 and batting average against by starting pitchers at .191.

And the Baysox have had nine different pitchers start games this year and nine times have had games where two pitchers threw three innings or more. There was another game or two where they just missed as a second pitcher went 2 2/3. And 10 pitchers on their staff have had at least one outing of three innings or more.

The "bulk innings" pitchers, my term not theirs, are getting their work in, developing their pitches and thriving on the stat sheet.

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.”

BOWIE, Md. - Adley Rutschman was the clutch man again for the Orioles.

The Orioles are now 5-0 this year in series-opening games after posting a come-from-behind 6-3 win over the White Sox in Chicago. Rutschman’s bases-loaded double to left center field in the seventh inning provided Baltimore a 4-3 lead and the O’s bullpen combined for 3 2/3 scoreless after Tyler Wells exited.

Nice start to a road trip and the Orioles, at 8-6. are two games over the .500 mark for the first time. They have won four of five games.

Rutschman now in his career with the bases loaded is 3-for-8 with two doubles and nine RBIs.

“Adley just doing what he's been doing, just getting huge hits for us," said manager Brandon Hyde. "Getting an 0-2 mistake and putting the ball in the gap."

His name may not dot many of those top prospects lists just yet, but as of last Sunday right-hander Garrett Stallings has his name in the record book for the Double-A Bowie Baysox.

In Game 1 of a doubleheader versus Harrisburg at Prince George’s Stadium, Stallings threw the first six innings of a seven-inning combined no-hitter. Right-hander Morgan McSweeney got the last three outs as Bowie blanked Harrisburg 4-0. Over the six frames, Stallings walked two, fanned five and threw 75 pitches. He didn’t get to finish it out but he did get to be a part of Baysox history.

“It was very, very special,” Stallings told me this week on my WBAL Radio Orioles postgame show. “It doesn’t happen every day and definitely had the right mix going and handed the ball off to Morgan, who finished it out. Very cool being part of the 11^th no-hitter in Baysox history.”

With that win, Stallings, who pitches again tonight for Bowie, improved to 2-2 with a 2.63 ERA over five games. He has walked eight and fanned 23 in 24 innings with a WHIP of 0.75, allowing an opponent batting average of .125 and OPS of .508.

A strong start to his season and a great outing for the fifth round pick out of the University of Tennessee by the Los Angeles Angels in 2019.

Paul Mancano sits down with Bowie Baysox manager Buck Britton in Sarasota.

They're out there. You might have even heard of someone getting one. And you wonder how they did... Seasonal internships and part-time positions are currently available with the Bowie Baysox, Frederick Keys and Delmarva Shorebirds in the Orioles' farm system. Think you'd love to work in baseball and want to give it a try first? Intern with the marketing department, fan services, or stadium operations and find out how it all works. Interning in the minors, you're likely to have a broad...