When Orioles fans think about an exciting young outfield prospect with tons of speed and defensive upside, their minds understandably drift toward 2023 first-round pick Enrique Bradfield Jr. However, after
taking a big step in 2025, Austin Overn is entering that same conversation.
Overn came to the Orioles organization as a third-round pick out of USC in the 2024 draft. Ranked as the 131st best player in the draft by MLB.com, the O’s drafted him with the 97th overall pick and signed him for above slot value. The reason for selecting Overn was plain to see on the scouting report: speed, speed and more speed.
Mike Elias has built a reputation for loving toolsy outfielders with speed to burn, and Overn is just the latest iteration. The promise of that speed and his overall athleticism—he played both football and baseball at USC—and a promising first professional season had FanGraphs ranking Overn as the top outfielder and No.4 overall prospect in the Orioles system at the beginning of the past season. Back in April, FanGraph’s Eric Longenhagen described Overn’s growth like this:
After slashing .280/.398/.467 in his inaugural professional campaign, Overn came into the 2025 season looking to build on his gains toward being a five-tool player. Instead, the 23-year-old got off to a slow start with the Aberdeen IronBirds. Across April and May, the left-handed-hitting outfielder only managed to hit .224 with a .323 OBP and .358 SLG.
The speed was still there, as Overn swiped 16 bases across the opening two months of this season. However, the burgeoning power he displayed in 2024 had seemingly been sapped, as his slugging percentage dropped more than 100 points from the numbers he put up in 21 games last year.
Overn finished his first half with 53 hits, 4 home runs, 15 total extra-base hits, 41 BB, 84 K and 32 SB. His numbers better reflected the outfielder most saw throughout his college career. The .226/.348/.342 triple slash presented a light-hitting outfielder who could get on-base and wreak havoc on the base paths, but someone who offered little in the power department.
The former Trojan started the second half of the season on a tear and looked much more like the player Longenhagen praised at the beginning of the year. In his first 13 games after the All-Star break, Overn hit .326 with a .464 OBP and .628 SLG. The outfielder noticeably cut down on his strikeout rate (posting 12 Ks and 12 BBs over those 13 games) while equalling his first-half home run total in just 43 ABs.
That hot streak earned Overn a promotion to the Chesapeake Baysox on August 5th, where he’d play his last 30 games of the 2025 season. The power output from his last two weeks at High-A partially carried over after his promotion to Double-A. In 30 games with the Baysox, Overn launched five home runs and five doubles en route to .427 SLG.
However, his high strikeout rate popped back up (34 Ks in 124 ABs) and he was not longer the same on-base threat as he adapted to a higher level of competition. Despite hitting .266 with the Baysox, Overn’s OBP dipped from .367 with Aberdeen to .326 with Chesapeake. A lot of the dip in his on-base numbers was due to a significant drop in his walk rate, going from 15.5% at High-A to 6.6% at Double-A, suggesting he was pressing to try and prove himself after the promotion.
Overn finished the season with a triple slash of .249/.355/.399 to go along with 1o0 H, 74 R, 13 HR, 13 2B, 4 3B and 64 SB. His .754 OPS and 64 steals in 114 games compared extremely well to the numbers Bradfield put up in 2025 (.696 OPS and 36 SB in 74 games), albeit against a lower level of competition. After not being among the Orioles’ top 30 prospects at the end of the 2024 season, Overn now checks in at No. 30 on MLB.com’s rankings.
The speedy outfielder will head into the 2026 season as still somewhat of an unknown commodity. The worst-case scenario is he’s a speed-first outfielder who doesn’t hit enough to distinguish himself from the other promising outfielders in the Orioles organization. The best-case scenario is that he continues to show improved power and begins to rival Bradfield and other prospects like Vance Honeycutt and Nate George for the honor of being the next outfielder to reach Baltimore.
