Prospect list season continued on Monday with the release of Keith Law’s top 100 list at The Athletic. His list joins recently-published ones by Baseball America and MLB Pipeline. Five Orioles minor leaguers made the cut for Law’s list this year, headlined by Samuel Basallo at #8. Basallo has been a top ten prospect in the game on all of this year’s list that have been released by now.
The other Orioles prospects ranked on Law’s list: shortstop Wehiwa Aloy at #73, outfielder Nate George at #78, catcher/outfielder/?
Ike Irish at #85, and outfielder Enrique Bradfield Jr. at #97. Dylan Beavers ranked pretty highly on the BA list at #21 but is absent from Law’s list entirely.
By the same token, Law has rated a few of these players who weren’t on either of the other two top 100s so far: Aloy, Irish, and Bradfield are, so far, only top 100 guys for Law. He liked the Orioles use of their high draft pick capital in the 2025 draft. The Orioles traded two more high picks from that draft to the Rays for Shane Baz. At this juncture, Caden Bodine and Slater de Brun have not cracked any top 100s.
There’s a good amount to be exciting about this group of players, with Basallo at the top:
(Basallo is) easily the best catching prospect in the minors right now, who hits and has significant power, and reached the majors just four days after his 21st birthday … Heʼs got power to all fields, peaking at 116 mph and hitting a third of his Triple-A homers the other way, and his Barrel rate was 21 percent. Only two MLB hitters last year topped that, and each won his respective leagueʼs MVP award.
When I copied that last sentence into this article, I made a “Whoa!” sound. That’s just incredible company for such a young player. The profile also includes praise for Basallo’s arm strength, though Law does note that Basallo is going to need to do some work on improving his swing decisions particularly once he falls behind in the count, and that he has more development to do to be able to handle a full-time catching workload. The Orioles are in a position where they don’t need Basallo to shoulder that load as long as Adley Rutschman is around.
It’s a ways down the list before Aloy comes up at #73. I was excited when the Orioles were able to draft him because he’s a player with some high upside even if he also comes with strikeout risk. Law on Aloy:
Aloy is a true shortstop with power, showing plus defense as an amateur with good lateral range and plenty of arm for the left side of the infield … He has 20-plus homer upside in a shortstop who should be at least a 55 defender — or a 60-plus if he ends up at third base — with his ultimate value coming down to whether he can pick up spin and cut down on the chase.
If this was the first player the Orioles chose in the draft, it would have felt like another possible Vance Honeycutt kind of “too many strikeouts” risk. They took Irish before going back around to Aloy, though, so all the eggs are not in this basket. Speaking of Irish, here’s what Law writes:
(Irish’s) upside is all about the bat: He makes very hard contact, works the count well and uses the entire field, with the potential for 20-25 homers if he trades some contact to try to pull the ball more. … Heʼs about a 40 defender in right, but if that even gets a 45 he should hit enough to be an above-average regular.
Also in this scouting capsule, Law included a note acknowledging that Irish has fallen below some other players from the 2025 draft who Law had ranked lower in his pre-draft rankings. There were some teams before the draft and some pro scouts after the draft whose opinions on Irish were lower than others, and that information has been incorporated into Law’s analysis now that Irish is in the pro ranks.
Last year’s out-of-nowhere surprise Nate George also cracks this ranking along with the other two that have been released. Law took note of George in a scouting report last summer with George getting the memorable description “plays like his hair is on fire,” which reappeared in this writeup. On George’s potential:
George plays like his hairʼs on fire, and while that phrase gets thrown around a lot, in his case it seems to make him a better player in every aspect of the game. Heʼs a twitchy athlete with quick hands at the plate and he shoots line drives to both gaps, with fringy power right now. Then he runs like a madman out of the box and doesnʼt stop until he reaches third base. Heʼs the kind of runner whoʼll throw his helmet off because itʼs slowing him down.
Sounds awesome. Law goes on to say about George that this is a player with “All-Star upside,” though he notes that mostly would involve George being able to develop above-average home run power that he doesn’t have yet.
Lowest on this list but still included in the top 100 is Bradfield, a player who has not gotten as much attention from other outlets because many evaluators aren’t convinced he’ll hit enough to make the most of his other tools. Those concerns remain somewhat even for Law, but he really likes what Bradfield can do:
Bradfield is still an 80 runner and a 70 or 80 defender in center field … with enough command of the strike zone to see a high floor for him as a second-division regular who generates 2 WAR in many seasons just on defense, speed and contact. … Heʼs going to save a ton of runs with his glove, as he combines good instincts with elite speed to cover a huge amount of ground.
A player who could do all that and didn’t have any hit questions would be consensus on every top prospect list and much higher-ranked than this. Law’s writeup includes the note that Bradfield’s “swing is still a work in progress,” not really the best phrase to hear about a first round pick from 2.5 years ago.
Other big rankings still to come include Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, and ESPN. It seems like a safe guess that Basallo will remain highly-ranked on all lists. I’m curious to see where the consensus starts to come together on some other Orioles prospects, and particularly whether any list other than Baseball America is putting top 100 rankings on any O’s pitching prospects.
