Anyone could be forgiven for having written off Vance Honeycutt heading into the 2026 season. His was a familiar story: Late first-round pick runs into a speedbump in his development and never recovers. In Honeycutt’s particular case, the speedbump was one that any draft evaluator would not have been surprised to see in the road. The guy struck out too much. He’s always struck out too much. Surprisingly, even in the middle of a season where he spent most of it failing in predictable ways, Honeycutt ended
up having a 2026 campaign that’s at least worth some discussion.
The interesting part started in spring training. Although the Orioles did not invite Honeycutt to major league camp, they kept bringing him over to hang around as a “just in case” guy who might get an at-bat later in games, especially early in spring training. They put him in a game and he hit a homer. Fast forward some days and they put him in and he hit a homer.
This didn’t happen just once or even twice. Honeycutt took ten at-bats over ten spring games and he hit four home runs, leading all O’s in Grapefruit League action. Even a hard-hearted non-believer like me couldn’t help but wonder, what if something interesting clicked over the offseason?
The Orioles assigned Honeycutt to High-A Frederick to start the season, the same level that he played all last season while striking out an eye-popping 40.9% of the time. It was apparent that nothing had changed. By the end of June, he was batting .190/.282/.360 with a 42.4% strikeout rate. Nothing much else to see here. Right? Bust. Move on. Maybe think harder about drafting such a high-risk guy with a first round pick next time.
Except, actually, some things had changed. That’s an ugly batting line. There’s no getting around that. It was better than 2025 in this way: Honeycutt was actually hitting home runs for the first time as a professional. He cracked ten homers in 63 games with Frederick after hitting just five in 101 games with Aberdeen a year ago. Add in continually intriguing speed – he stole 28 bases in 32 attempts – and reports on his defense that remain incredibly positive about his being able to play center field at a high level.
What’s interesting about this compared to before is that, before he wasn’t even showing some of his strengths while having terrible overall numbers. There was nothing redeemable at all. Now, he’s at least putting a good foot forward, sometimes, which creates more of a tantalizing possibility of, what if he can mitigate his flaws just enough to be a good player?
It’s hard to quit on a guy like that, especially at a point in his pro career where there’s little downside to letting him keep trying. If only there could be something figured out to cut down the swing-and-miss… the Orioles player development people must have been thinking about this a lot. As they should have been! Developing Honeycutt into a 20/20 HR/SB center fielder – if you could ever be optimistic enough, maybe even 30/30 – who plays strong defense would be a huge coup for the team.
In July, Honeycutt was placed on the injured list with an oblique injury. I figured that was probably the end of it. He would come back from that, nothing would be different, and he could be written off.
The Orioles thought otherwise. Not long after Honeycutt returned from the injured list, despite absolutely nothing about his overall High-A performance seeming to warrant it, the team gave Honeycutt a promotion to the Double-A level, giving him the chance to play the last month with Chesapeake. There, in defiance of everyone who gave up on him, Honeycutt made things interesting again. Over 20 games with the Baysox, he hit five homers and batted .288/.381/.616, with a perfectly-livable strikeout rate of 25%.
What the heck was going on there? Could there be any possibility of that being something real? The Athletic’s Keith Law wrote a little later that Honeycutt had apparently done some work with a hitting instructor outside the organization when he was on the injured list. So, maybe something did get figured out, something that the Orioles development people were incapable of figuring out. Or maybe it has nothing much to do with anything. I am very curious what newly-hired general manager Jared Banner, and the people Banner helps to hire, is going to make of this situation.
I’ve put off writing about Honeycutt until last for me in this prospect series, because Honeycutt is out in the Arizona Fall League. Maybe there would be something interesting to say about him! Alas, he has only played in eight games. That’s a small sample size even by AFL standards. He’s homered three times and stolen three bases in those games, which is nice for him. He is striking out a lot, though less than his times of total failure. It adds up to a .217/.457/.652 batting line.
The AFL schedule will be ongoing through November 14, so maybe there will be a little more worth saying about Honeycutt by then. Or maybe he will continue roughly on this path: A low batting average while walking a lot, hitting for power, and striking out a lot.
What a confusing guy. That he’s at least become interesting to be confusing is, actually, an improvement for him compared to what Honeycutt was before this season. It still doesn’t mean he’s on track to be a real prospect, or even a half-decent prospect. There are a lot of outfield prospects coming up from below. If they catch up and start going by him, there probably won’t be anything to say about Honeycutt beyond right now.
