In an Orioles system that has brought a slew of top young players to the majors in recent years, Enrique Bradfield Jr. is a different kind of prospect.
He doesn’t have the #1 overall pick pedigree of Adley
Rutschman or Jackson Holliday. He doesn’t have the power potential of Colton Cowser, Jordan Westburg, or Coby Mayo. He isn’t an all-around star like Gunnar Henderson. But with two elite skills in his toolkit that are sorely lacking elsewhere on the O’s roster, Bradfield can infuse the club with a refreshingly new dynamic.
Bradfield joined the Orioles in the 2023 draft, the first time in Mike Elias’s Orioles career that the team didn’t hold one of the top five overall picks. Still, at #17, the O’s were plenty happy to nab Bradfield out of Vanderbilt, envisioning him as the club’s center fielder of the future. His outstanding speed and defense were already major league caliber; the question was whether his bat would develop enough to keep pace.
After three professional seasons, Bradfield hasn’t fully answered that question. Bradfield has played at every stateside level in the Orioles’ organization, from the Florida Complex League in 2023 up to Triple-A Norfolk this season, and has a career minor league batting line of .264/.369/.359. He’s flashed the on-base skills that saw him post a .425 OBP in three seasons for Vanderbilt, and — unlike some recent O’s prospects we can think of — he doesn’t have a lot of swing-and-miss in his game. Bradfield makes good swing decisions and generally puts the ball in play.
What he does with those balls in play, though, could determine how productive a major leaguer he’ll ultimately be. And so far, there hasn’t been a lot of pop in that bat, with only 50 of his 197 career hits going for extra bases, including just seven dingers. “If we look at all of the center fielders across the last half decade or so, you don’t really see players who slug under .400 end up north of the average everyday player line,” writes FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen. “That doesn’t mean Bradfield is bad, it just means he’s more likely to land somewhere closer to the 20th-30th range among big league center fielders.”
Granted, home runs aren’t really part of Bradfield’s game, and never have been. The Orioles knew that when they drafted him. Still, collecting a few more doubles and triples is an achievable goal, and would go a long way to boosting his offensive profile. MLB Pipeline writes that Bradfield “can be an impact offensive player if he consistently hits line drives rather than rely on his legs to turn ground balls into infield hits.”
Bradfield is never going to be a slugger. But what he does well, he does exceptionally well — namely, running the bases and playing center field. The stat line speaks for itself when it comes to stolen bases, where Bradfield, in his 209 minor league games, has racked up a stupendous 135 steals while being caught just 19 times. That’s a success rate of 88%, which will certainly play.
That SB total would be higher if not for injuries that ravaged Bradfield’s 2025 campaign. Just six games into the season with Double-A Chesapeake, Bradfield landed on the injured list with a left hamstring strain, costing him nearly a month. And in July, while playing in the MLB All-Star Futures Game, Bradfield aggravated his right hamstring, sending him to another month-long IL stint. Between missing time and perhaps being a little more cautious with his legs, Bradfield finished the year with 36 stolen bases — an impressive total in its own right, but a far cry from the eye-popping 74 he had the previous season.
The Orioles, who entered 2025 with veteran center fielder Cedric Mullins an impending free agent (and who ended up trading him midseason), appeared to have Bradfield lined up as his successor. Had Bradfield stayed healthy, the O’s might have been able to move him up to Norfolk by midseason, with the outside chance that he’d make his MLB debut in September and compete for the starting CF job in spring training next year. The injuries scuttled that schedule a bit; Bradfield didn’t wind up in Triple-A until September, and will almost certainly start 2026 at that level. All told, Bradfield was limited to 76 games this year, hitting .242/.348/.348 across four minor league stops.
To make up for lost time, the O’s sent Bradfield to the Arizona Fall League this offseason, where he’s hitting .278 with a .770 OPS in nine games for the Peoria Javelinas so far. True to form, he is 9-for-9 in stolen base attempts, leading all AFL players in steals. And the AFL is where Bradfield has been showing off his other elite skill: his defense.
MLB.com’s Sam Dykstra caught Bradfield in action earlier this month and marveled over a pair of leaping catches at the wall that robbed extra bases. (Highlights are included in the article, though the video quality isn’t the best.) Pipeline touts Bradfield’s “Gold Glove potential,” noting that his exceptional speed “allows him to cover large swaths of ground in center field, where his ability to track down well-struck gappers makes him an elite defender despite a below-average arm.” That description isn’t far off from an in-his-prime Mullins, and Bradfield could continue the recent O’s tradition of excellent center field defense.
“Pretty much every ball that I see go up in the air, I feel like I’m going to catch it,” Bradfield told MLB.com’s Dykstra. “I’m always moving. I know I can go get anything over my head, so I want to see if I can take away those low percenters in front of me.”
Bradfield, who turns 24 in December, still has some things he needs to work on at the plate in the minors. But barring a total offensive collapse, he is primed to make his MLB debut next season. With his speed and defense, he figures to be a contributor, possibly a major one. “He’s a winning player who impacts the game in a myriad of ways,” writes Longenhagen. And winning players are certainly something the Orioles could use more of.
