With minor league seasons winding down, prospect watchers don’t have to give up on baseball just yet for the season. The Arizona Fall League is still yet to come in October. On Wednesday afternoon, the league announced which players from each team will be joining AFL rosters this year. These seven prospects are headed out to Arizona for October and part of November: Outfielders Enrique Bradfield Jr. and Thomas Sosa, infielder Ethan Anderson, and pitchers Carson Dorsey, Andy Fabian, Zach Fruit, and Tanner
Smith.
This year’s Orioles prospects will be playing on the Peoria Javelinas alongside of minor leaguers from the Mariners, Padres, Reds, and Twins. There are six teams in the AFL, with five MLB teams contributing to each of the teams. They rotate each year.
As the highest-level of these players, Bradfield is the most notable. He will probably be facing lesser competition in the AFL than he’ll be facing in the final stretch of the season with Triple-A Norfolk. The 2023 first round pick is probably headed here because he missed a chunk of this year due to injuries, so the team just wants to get him some more reps against any kind of competition. He’s hit a combined .253/.366/.361 in 67 games this season, including rehab assignments, and has stolen 34 bases.
Sosa, 20, has made it to Double-A in time for the end of Chesapeake’s season. He joined the Orioles organization as an international amateur. The O’s gave him a $400,000 bonus in the 2022 signing class. Sosa also missed a lot of time this year, having played in 64 games to date. Most of that time was spent with High-A Aberdeen, where he batted .222/.309/.407. Those aren’t good numbers in general, but they do count as good numbers by Aberdeen standards.
Anderson, who will turn 22 before the AFL season begins, was a second round pick by the Orioles last year. The catcher/first baseman was one of many who scuffled with Aberdeen, hitting .257/.338/.355. Those aren’t good numbers either. They’re acceptable on the Aberdeen curve. Anderson has been bumped up to Chesapeake for the last month or so of the season. Early on, the batting line is not improved there.
For the pitchers, Dorsey, 22, was a seventh round pick by the Orioles last year. The Orioles have had him with Low-A Delmarva all season, where he’s old for the level. There are some good things going on there, including his strikeout rate (12.3 K/9) and home run rate (1 HR allowed in 42.1 IP).
Fabian, 22, is a reliever who arrived in US-based leagues just this season. The Dominican native combined for a 1.59 ERA in 26 games between the Florida Complex League and Delmarva. There’s an incredible strikeout rate, with 62 strikeouts in 39.2 innings. However, there are also major command problems: 27 walks in that time.
Fruit, 25, is the oldest of any of these prospects. Most of his games this season have been with Chesapeake, and they have mostly been bad: He sports a 7.01 ERA and 1.763 WHIP. This is a player who had some good buzz after last season with Aberdeen who has not been able to do anything to sustain it this season.
Last but not least, Smith, 23, arrived in the Orioles organization in the big Laureano/O’Hearn trade with the Padres. The Harvard-educated 15th round pick has been almost exclusively a reliever in his first pro season. Smith ended the minor league season at Aberdeen, where he had a 0.00 ERA across four outings.
There were eight Orioles minor leaguers in the AFL a year ago, of whom the most interesting was Creed Willems. Pretty much none of the others have done much good in 2025. Hopefully, this year’s crop of AFL Orioles has a better 2026 than last year’s group did.
