When the Orioles traded away two-thirds of an outfield ahead of the July 31 trading deadline, that seemed like it had to be prime territory for the team to call up outfield prospect Dylan Beavers. They didn’t do it. A week later, when another two-thirds of an outfield landed on the injured list simultaneously, they still didn’t do it, fielding an outfield of Ryan Noda, Greg Allen, and Dylan Carlson. Putting up with that for any length of time was more frustrating by the day.
Anyone could surmise that
the lack of a Beavers promotion was entirely aimed at preserving his rookie status going into the 2026 season, in hopes that Beavers might qualify the team for a bonus draft pick down the road. This required waiting until there were fewer than 45 days remaining in the regular season. General manager Mike Elias did not even wait a day after that threshold had passed to get Beavers up to the major league team, surprising everyone with a 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning press release announcing the promotion while the team was in Houston.
The idea of doing all of this just in hopes of the draft pick seemed silly to me as we ticked through the first half of August. The other important part of possibly qualifying for the draft pick involves Beavers being named on two out of three of these top 100 prospect lists heading into next season: Baseball America, ESPN, and MLB Pipeline. Beavers had never been on any of these lists before.
While Elias was making us wait out the intervening days with an outfield of misfits, this seemed ridiculous, all on the off chance of Beavers making the lists and then maybe, just maybe, having a Rookie of the Year-caliber season. I thought that strategizing around a bank shot like that for a 24-year-old player was not worth it, and that the Orioles would be better served by just getting Beavers up to the team and letting him start to adjust to major league competition.
Give this much to Elias: As of yesterday, he’s pulled off the first part of this longshot strategy. Or at least, the signs are positive that he’s going to pull it off in four months time. By now, all three of those prospect lists have put out updated midseason top 100 rankings, reflecting movement for players who’ve graduated to MLB since the preseason lists, updates based on player performance, and new additions to lists in the form of fresh draftees.
Beavers had put himself in a good position to get himself onto the lists with how he was playing in Triple-A this season. The outfielder began the season with Norfolk, and over 94 games, he batted .304/.420/.515 with 18 home runs. Beavers was already doing well in April and May, posting OPS numbers over .820 in each of those months, and starting in June, he took it to another level, OPSing over 1.000 in each of June and July, as well as in August before his major league promotion.
It takes a lot for a player who has not previously been ranked highly to break in after a few years in the minors. Beavers doing so was not guaranteed, even with as well as he has been hitting. He’s done it, though. Baseball America now has Beavers at #82, joining catcher Samuel Basallo, younger outfielder Nate George, and pitching prospect Esteban Mejia. Pipeline has left Beavers off for the time being. However, ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel updated his list earlier this week and Beavers is there at #92.
Elias has his two out of three lists. It’s not locked in yet, because it’s the preseason lists for next year that will determine the potential for future prospect promotion incentive draft picks. Beavers will have the inside track to stick on the two lists he’s already made and possibly even push even higher on them, just based on his Triple-A performance this season.
Only an absolute flop over the remaining Orioles games might knock Beavers off, and even then, list-makers don’t tend to penalize players too much if their early games late in a season go poorly. For one demonstration of this, see Coby Mayo, who remained high up most of the 2025 preseason lists even after a tough 17-game introduction to the MLB level last season.
Elias did not choose to play the “maybe he’ll get a draft pick” game with Mayo, which probably would have required clearing the way by trading Ryan Mountcastle last offseason. Not that Mayo was likely to play into the ROY race if he had spent the whole season on the roster this year. He’s had more downs than ups, and even if he’d played consistently better, not-Oakland’s Nick Kurtz seems to be running away with that race.
The hardest part yet remains. Beavers would have to play well enough and stay healthy enough to get serious ROY consideration next year. This is not guaranteed for even the most promising prospects, as we learned last year with Jackson Holliday. Nor is it guaranteed when a player plays well, as we also learned last year: Colton Cowser deserved to be the winner and the voters were paying attention to something else.
Put those two things together and the Orioles didn’t get a PPI bonus pick in 2025. This did not hurt their quest to have a bunch of draft picks in the late first round area of the draft, since they had compensation picks for Corbin Burnes and Anthony Santander signing elsewhere, and they got an extra competitive balance pick by trading Bryan Baker to the Rays just days before the draft. They certainly won’t be able to count on any free agent-related picks in next year’s draft.
For Orioles fans who have not yet had the concept of hope driven out of them, the biggest hope for 2026 is surely that Beavers, along with Basallo, will be playing well enough to be the only two real ROY contenders next year. Elias also played the same games with Basallo, calling him up literally one day later than Beavers. That was less of a surprise, and was more justifiable, with Basallo being younger and reports generally agreeing he has some more development to do at his primary position, catcher.
Will all the shenanigans have been worth it? I remain skeptical, just because there’s so much that could stand in the way of winning the ROY. It’s tough to remain as frustrated about it as I was a week ago before Beavers arrived. I’m not dealing with “Beavers is in the minors while Allen and Daniel Johnson are in the Orioles outfield.” We’ll still get a solid month-plus of Beavers playing for the 2025 Orioles, minus a game here or there to make sure he stays under the 130 AB threshold as well. Beavers and Basallo might even play well enough to rekindle a little bit more excitement for 2026 than we all had a month ago.
