The Orioles have a number of interesting and exciting prospects who are now in their system. However, if you’ve been following my contributions to Camden Chat’s minor league coverage through this season, or if you read the title of this article, you already know that there’s only one prospect who is my guy: 21-year-old switch-hitting infielder Aron Estrada, who spent most of this season with Double-A Chesapeake. My guy Aron Estrada had a pretty good year there.
A prime qualification for a prospect
ending up as “my guy” is that he starts out as a not-super-heralded prospect who just keeps performing at every level he plays. Estrada, a $175,000 signing from the 2022 international amateur class, has inhabited this role very well. He’s under six feet tall and his listed weight (probably from when he signed as a 16-year-old) is 142 pounds, so there are a lot of comments about his being “undersized” in scouting reports. Those kinds of players always get the “He’ll have to prove himself at every level” label.
Estrada is proving himself with how he’s hit for at least three years. That’s the fun thing. Starting two years ago in Delmarva, on through Aberdeen last year, and now in Chesapeake this year, he has done well, particularly for a player who is as young as he has been at each of those levels. The Double-A assignment this year saw Estrada facing competition that was, on average, two and a half years older than he is, and he responded to that by hitting .281/.325/.482 over 128 games, with a handful at Triple-A Norfolk over the last week of that season.
New to the results for Estrada this season was home run power. He hit nine homers in 2024 and ten in 2025. Estrada finished this season with 25 home runs. Although this power increase did come with a slight bump in his strikeout rate, we’re still talking just a 17.9% strikeout rate for the season for the Venezuelan infielder. The major league Orioles, as a team, have struck out 24.8% of the time with several once-promising prospects well above this.
My guy though he may be, this home run surge does come with a bit of a caveat. Minor league home run totals were up all across the board this season. Baseball America’s JJ Cooper noted that a year ago, all minor leagues had 18 players hit at least 25 homers, the same number Estrada hit this season. This year, there were 75 players to reach that plateau.
It’s good that Estrada was one of the 57 “extra” guys, but it does remain to be seen how much was durable improvement on his part and how much he may have benefited from some kind of fluke year of offense-friendly baseballs that won’t carry over to next year or to the majors. One way this is illustrated in the statistics is that over the previous two seasons, he had wRC+ numbers of 129 and 135. (That’s weighted runs created, a park- and league-adjusted stat where 100 is average and higher is better.) That’s good! In 2026, despite superficially better batting, Estrada “only” had a 100 – that is, exactly a league average bat for the level.
That’s also good! Keep in mind that Estrada’s primary position has been second base. If the Orioles had a league average bat at second base, the Orioles would be doing a lot better and we’d feel better about them for the future as well. Instead, you know, Jackson Holliday’s whole deal.
There is a long way from success in Chesapeake to success in Baltimore, as O’s fans have become accustomed to with prospects not turning into medium-term quality major leaguers. It’s no guarantee that Estrada can continue to perform at least acceptably at the plate at Triple-A, where he’ll almost certainly start next season. Or at least, once next season starts for him. Estrada becomes Rule 5 Draft eligible this offseason, which means the Orioles must (or at least should) add him to the 40-man roster in November, just in case there is a Rule 5 on the far side of the lockout. As such, he’ll be locked out along with all other 40-man players on all teams and unable to participate even if Triple-A baseball begins as scheduled.
In a belated “preseason” prospect list published in mid-May, FanGraphs rated Estrada as just the #25 Orioles prospect, writing that “the swing itself is scary,” with particular concerns that his lefty-batting swing will be challenged when facing average-or-better velocity high in or above the strike zone. That ranking noted Estrada’s early struggle in Double-A this season.
It is the case that Estrada struggled in April, posting just a .624 OPS for the month, however, he went on to post OPS numbers of .850 or better for each of the next four months. That looks like a guy who made a successful adjustment to the level as the year went on, to me, and perhaps that list engaged in some recency bias by overindexing the April struggles.
The switch hitter batted much better from the left side than he did the right this season. Batting as a lefty and facing righties, Estrada OPSed .873, hitting 22 of his 25 homers. When batting right-handed and facing southpaws, he had a .662 OPS and just three homers. For me, if your weak side is lefties, that’s preferable, because there aren’t as many of those, and a .662 OPS is playable against lefties, unlike how Samuel Basallo and Colton Cowser have performed at the majors this season. Who knows how the fanatical platoon “advantage” weirdos running the Orioles will look at it if it comes to that.
That FanGraphs report thinks Estrada will end up in left field rather than second base. Most other rankings seem to believe Estrada will be fine staying at second base, which is why he was much higher than 25th on our composite prospect ranking before the year – Estrada was 13th on the Camden Chat combined list.
Up until this season, the Orioles moved Estrada around the diamond a lot, but in 2026 he only played at second or as a designated hitter. That seems to suggest that the team believes that he can stay at that position and they shouldn’t pretend he has “versatility” that maybe he doesn’t actually have. Defense in the minors is one of those largely opaque things for even engaged fans. There aren’t any kind of public metrics. You just have to go off the scouting reports and hope for the best.
Role for 2027
Estrada is going to have to prove himself at Triple-A before he can really be considered on track for an MLB job. It shouldn’t be hard to get him playing time at second base at Norfolk next year, though for those who want to see Holliday demoted, that would make things a bit more complicated for my guy Estrada. If he can play well at the highest minor league level in his age 22 season, he should be in line for a big league role by Opening Day 2028, if not sooner. I’m excited to see what he has to offer next season.
