The Orioles had a flurry of picks in the 30s on Sunday night that are probably going to go a long way to determining whether or not their 2025 Draft is a success. When the dust settled on a run of picks starting with two in a row at 30 and 31 plus another at 37, the Orioles came away with these players:<\/p>\n
Caden Bodine, a catcher from Coastal Carolina University<\/p>\n
Wehiwa Aloy, a shortstop from the University of Arkansas<\/p>\n
Slater de Brun, a high school outfielder from Oregon<\/p>\n
This is a stronger set of players than anybody could have hoped that the Orioles would be able to get going into this Draft. These guys all might have easily been drafted before they could choose twice at 30\/31 or down at 37, and they all made it to the O\u2019s picks. They didn\u2019t mess around when players with value fell. They grabbed them because they\u2019ve got the signing bonus pool available to make it work.<\/p>\n
Aloy, a Hawaiian-born player whose first name is pronounced \u201cVe-hee-vah,\u201d is a player who, in mock drafts, wasn\u2019t even lasting until the Orioles picked in the first round, let alone at #31, where they took him. This is the #11 player on the FanGraphs ranking of the class, #15 at ESPN, #16 at Baseball America, and #17 at MLB Pipeline. He\u2019s a righty batter who\u2019s fresh off a junior season at Arkansas where he batted .350\/.434\/.673 with 21 home runs in 65 games.<\/p>\n
FG\u2019s Eric Longenhagen on Aloy:<\/p>\n
Aside from a concerning amount of chase, Aloy does at least a little bit of everything. He\u2019s a plus athlete with an athletic build, plus arm, above-average range, and average hands. He struggles some with hot shots, but otherwise looks like a pretty clean shortstop fit. Aloy also has plus bat speed and power to all fields … he\u2019s a threat to go deep from pole to pole, which he\u2019s demonstrated with wood bats. It takes big effort and it comes at a cost: strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Compared to the Orioles\u2019 first round pick, Ike Irish, the strikeout rate is higher: 20.6%. It\u2019s also a lot lower than the rate of last year\u2019s Orioles first round pick, Vance Honeycutt, as a college junior. Honeycutt struck out 27% of the time in his third college season. Nobody\u2019s guaranteed to make it, but there\u2019s some real positives going on there from a player with demonstrated performance against tough competition. I\u2019m pumped that they got Aloy.<\/p>\n
Bodine\u2019s Coastal Carolina is not as well-known of a program as the SEC blue bloods, but in terms of this year\u2019s college play, this was one of the best teams: The Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (it\u2019s a rooster) were the team that made it to the championship and lost to the LSU Tigers. Again, value compared to where the Orioles got him: FG rated him 18th, and ESPN had him 23rd. Others had him right around this spot in the draft.<\/p>\n
MLB Pipeline, which had Bodine ranked 32nd, had this on the player:<\/p>\n
A switch-hitter who\u2019s equally proficient from both sides of the plate, Bodine has some of the best contact skills in the Draft. He has tremendous feel for the barrel and doesn\u2019t try to do too much, focusing on controlling the strike zone and drilling line drives from gap to gap.<\/p>\n
Again thinking about the strikeout rate, and keeping in mind that the Sun Belt Conference probably isn\u2019t SEC quality, Bodine struck out just 24 times in 313 plate appearances this season. There are questions about whether he\u2019ll be generating much in the way of power as a pro, as Bodine hit only five homers this season. If he\u2019s able to be productive with strong contact skills, there\u2019s value to be found there. Defensively, the draft analysts all seem to agree that he has work to do in blocking errant pitches but has done well with other aspects of catcher defense to date.<\/p>\n
de Brun, the high school player drafted 37th, is a Vanderbilt commit who\u2019s probably not going to end up playing for the Commodores after being taken by the Orioles here. He\u2019s a familiar archetype for Elias in that he\u2019s a lefty-batting outfielder, though Elias has not taken any high school outfielder so high in the Draft in his tenure to date. He was regarded in the late first-to-early second round talent range and ultimately that\u2019s where the Orioles popped him.<\/p>\n
From Baseball America, who had de Brun as their #30 prospect in the class:<\/p>\n
de Brun is the top prep outfielder. … De Brun pairs a good understanding of the strike zone with above-average contact ability thanks to a short-levered swing that is direct to the ball. … there\u2019s no reason why he couldn\u2019t become an above-average pure hitter who gets to 10-15 home runs per season and surprises people with the impact of his best-struck balls. … He\u2019s consistently a 70-grade runner who gets out of the box quickly and should be a basestealing threat. He has great range and solid instincts in center field and, unlike many undersized speedsters (5\u201910\u201d), also has an above-average arm.<\/p>\n
It does seem like the Orioles have perhaps adjusted their thinking on always drafting contact-challenged players, with three of their top four picks now for 2025 being players who are said to be good at contact, two of whom have some questions about power. We\u2019re going to see how it works out as the years go by.<\/p>\n
The slot values for these picks are:<\/p>\n
#30 overall – $3,113,300
\n#31 overall – $3,042,800
\n#37 overall – $2,631,400<\/p>\n
Remember, teams can choose to allocate money across their entire Draft class as they like. I think it\u2019s likely that there will be some overslot money relative to the 31st and 37th picks paid out to Aloy and de Brun.<\/p>\n
The Orioles have ended up with the largest-ever bonus pool because of having these three picks. 30 and 31 came as compensation for losing qualifying offer free agents Corbin Burnes and Anthony Santander. The Orioles acquired the 37th pick just within the last week when they traded Bryan Baker to the Rays.<\/p>\n
The Orioles have another three picks to make on Day 1 of the Draft, with their second round pick, a competitive balance round B pick, and third round pick still to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orioles had a flurry of picks in the 30s on Sunday night that are probably going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[3603,7936,5,32336,28583,968,969,1164,356,181,176,4,8130,28582,125,13839,898,9428,1984],"class_list":{"0":"post-174577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-aloy","9":"tag-baltimore-orioles-news","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-bodine","12":"tag-brun","13":"tag-camden","14":"tag-chat","15":"tag-de","16":"tag-draft","17":"tag-front-page","18":"tag-in","19":"tag-mlb","20":"tag-mlb-draft-baltimore-orioles","21":"tag-mlb-july-updates","22":"tag-orioles","23":"tag-picks","24":"tag-s","25":"tag-select","26":"tag-with"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114849479705079758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}