Table of Contents

• Sebastian Gongora (LHP, BAL)

• Anderson De Los Santos (1B/3B, BAL)

• Brett Callahan (OF, DET)

• Quick pearls

It was a long weekend. My daughter had softball practice on Friday and Saturday. She got to play catcher for the first time. 

And, yeah, right after that we discovered she had lice. Tons of them, like an eleventh biblical plague. Fun text to send to the parents whose kids shared the catcher’s mask with her. But – good news here – turns out you really shouldn’t worry about inanimate objects with lice. I found a systematic review of lice academic literature, and as a certified sicko you bet your last little bloodsucking ectoparasite that I read through it. Turns out Australian¹ researchers tried their best to get lice from infested kids’ heads onto hats, and they couldn’t manage it. Not a single louse on any hat. So don’t worry too much about bedding or hats or helmets when your kids get lice, that’s not how they spread. Instead, it’s via touching heads to heads and hair to hair, which seems to be a uniquely human behavior – I read an evolutionary psychology paper, of which I’m admittedly a little skeptical, theorizing that humans, unlike our great ape cousins, started head-to-head touching specifically to spread harmless head lice. This is because head lice trigger an immune response that provides a degree of prophylaxis against body lice infestations that can spread disease, though those diseases like epidemic typhus and relapsing fever have largely been eradicated in the developed world by hygienic practices and antibiotics.²

Don’t you dare let anyone tell you the Dynasty Dugout doesn’t do educational content.

Suffice to say, by Sunday, I was ready for some baseball. It was my first Chesapeake Baysox game of the year, and they were playing the Erie SeaWolves whose bats have been red hot to start the Double-A season. I was pumped. New year, renovated stadium with a brand-new playground for kids in right field, including new bar-style seating installed so the kids can play (and spread infestations to each other) while you watch the game.

Unfortunately, though, the game was lousy.³ Everyone looked like they were trying to get through it to the off-day on Monday, and some of the more exciting Baysox prospects (Aron Estrada and Thomas Sosa) got the day off. On to the players that caught my eye on both teams.

Sebastian Gongora (LHP, BAL)

As of 4/13: 2 GS, 9.1 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 13 K, 1.93 ERA, 0.54 WHIP, 33.6% CSW

Gongora isn’t a pitcher who’s been on my radar. I didn’t have him anywhere near my top-30 in the system to start the season and really didn’t even think about him in a system that seems infested with mid-level upside or better. An 11^th round pick of the Orioles out of Louisville in 2024, he posted a 5.00 ERA across 68.1 innings in Single-A and High-A last year, with a 16.7% K-BB%. That said, his FIP was 3.01 and he seems to have been a victim by poor batted ball luck. In any case, he certainly got my attention on Sunday, ending the game with 6 strikeouts, no walks, and just three hits given up.

The first time he went through the order, I didn’t really understand what was up with the guy. He was exclusively using a four-seamer that sits around 94 that he located well and a bullet slider that didn’t seem particularly spectacular. While he didn’t get much help from his defense early, he gave up a couple hits and a run early and looked like he was in for a long day. I fired off a message to an Orioles prospect discord where I said “Gongora looks like an org depth guy.”

My bad, was totally wrong on that one. Goes to show that things happen behind the scenes in minor league games that we aren’t privy to.

It soon became apparent that the narrow pitch selection he used those first couple innings was probably a limitation forced on him by the coaching staff for developmental reasons. As soon as the order flipped back around, he started tossing a very nice mid-80s changeup and a big, high-70s curve with strong horizontal movement. In fact, he relied on those two pitches extensively from then on, generating a ton of whiffs and making every at-bat uncomfortable. The fact those pitches were so good may be why the development staff had narrowed his pitch choices and had him working on the fastball and slider! He waspulled after 5.2 innings and 65 pitches but didn’t look like he was laboring at all; he retired the last fourteen batters he faced without allowing a baserunner. Here is his pitch plot, which shows him peppering the ball everywhere in the zone against right- and left-handed batters.⁴

Gongora’s the latest in what seems like an assembly line of Baltimore pitchers to monitor for fantasy purposes. He has a nice arsenal, and at 6’5” with good extension his fastball will play up, especially if he can command it as well as he did on Sunday. The stuff doesn’t scream high-level upside, but he represents an archetype of mid-rotation pitcher that’s en vogue at the moment, the command-oriented lefty with a nasty changeup and workable breaking stuff — call it the Trevor Rogers toolbox. Credit to the Orioles pitching development staff, for they seem to have uncovered yet another diamond in the rough.

Anderson De Los Santos (1B/3B, BAL)

As of 4/13: 31 PA, 3 2B, 1 HR, 1.148 OPS, 32.3 BB%, 16.1 K%, 200 wRC+

Chris sent up the bat signal for De Los Santos this weekend, noting his scorching hot start to the year, so naturally I made him my chief scouting target at Sunday’s game. De Los Santos is a young 22 year old corner infielder who's been in the Orioles system since 2021 and is getting his first taste of Double-A this year. He posted a 121 wRC+ in High-A last season but has been something of a forgotten man. He’s taken a walk on nearly a third of his plate appearances this year. He has swung on only 10 percent of pitches outside the zone, including just a handful in the shadow zone immediately outside the strike zone, suggesting he has really good, maybe elite, pitch recognition skills.⁵ To put this in perspective, the lowest chase rate among qualified MLB hitters is Taylor Ward at 16.8%.

When he does get to the ball, he’s hit it pretty hard, like on this line drive home run that ended up in the woods behind Prince George’s Stadium:

Unfortunately, he had a game to forget on Sunday. He went 0 for 4 at the plate with a strikeout. In one particularly egregious sequence he grounded into a zero-out fielder’s choice with a hard hit ball to the left side of the diamond and just barely avoided getting doubled up as he lollygagged to first, seemingly unaware that everyone else on the field was still playing baseball after he didn't hit it well. He was involved in a double-steal immediately after, and while the umpire called him safe, I’m pretty sure he was out.

Put mildly, De Los Santos moves around like a Cold War-era main battle tank that got pulled out of storage in an emergency and sent to the front lines without applying any oil or lube. Earlier in the game, he grounded out on a lightly hit ball to third that any ballplayer with average footspeed would've converted into an infield hit. Slow feet definitely aren't an asset for a guy who hits a lot of grounders (half of his hits have been grounders this year, and 42.7% last year at High-A), though if he managed three doubles with that footspeed then he must be really cranking the ball – or else maybe he gets to full speed somewhere between first and second base.⁶

The lack of speed also limits him defensively. He played third base on Sunday; he's got a big arm but he just can't get to balls reliably enough. He feels almost certain to be limited to first base as a right-hander, putting all the more pressure on the bat.

I'd like to get another look or two at De Los Santos on a good day, but there are enough nits to pick here for me to be too excited despite the scorching start. The path to success for a guy with this athletic profile feels pretty narrow, and he’s part of a crowded class of 2026 Rule 5 eligibles for the Orioles that includes, among others, the aforementioned Aron Estrada and Thomas Sosa, as well as many of the exciting pitching prospects. Still, if he continues to put up numbers with his bat like he has been thus far, it may simply not matter.

Brett Callahan (OF, DET)

As of 4/13: 36 PA, 2 HR, .933 OPS, 8.3 BB%, 22.2 K%, 153 wRC+

One of the fun parts of early season minor league baseball is trying to figure out if fast starts from unheralded minor leaguers are simply small sample sizes in action or if there's a real breakout going on. Like with Anderson De Los Santos, the early 2026 returns on Brett Callahan, a left-handed outfielder who Chris had at #32 in his offseason list of Detroit’s top prospects, had me thinking there might be something there.

Callahan was a 2023 13th round pick out of St. Joe’s, a college much better known for basketball than for baseball. Since then, the lowest wRC+ he posted at any level was 123 last season. He stole just six bases last year in High-A but has already grabbed seven in his first eight games this year. His 2024 was injury-plagues and he missed two months with an injury last season (the best information I can find says a dislocated finger and/or pulled quad), then after a couple weeks rehabbing at the complex, hit five home runs in 124 plate appearances from mid-July to early September.

The first thing you notice about Callahan⁷ is that he's very aggressive. He's never posted a swing rate below 50%, and he's at 51.6% so far this season. That would be in the top decile of MLB players, and his contact rate would be in the bottom third, with a reasonably high whiff rate. Using the experimental approach I used for the above players, his zone swing rate is 66.7%, zone contact rate is a relatively low 79.2%, chase rate is a middling 30.4%, and he does swing a lot at pitches in the shadow zone. So his approach is not ideal, though his strikeout rate isn’t too concerning at around 20% at every stop, but you’d have to worry about this ballooning as he faces better pitching.

Still, when he gets to contact, he’s done some damage on balls in play. He posted two home runs in the first three games of the season, adding to two he hit in spring training that recorded 107 mph exit velocities. Like De Los Santos, he managed to put up his first oh-fer game of the season (they had identical statlines) when I was there to watch him, so I didn’t manage to get any good data on exit velocities or footspeed. In limited spring training plate appearances, he went 4 for 8 with two homers at 107 mph, one impressively hit off one knee and scooped off a well-located Owen Murphy slider sitting at the very bottom of the zone.

He whacked another ball 112.2 mph in one of those spring training games, and his early regular season home runs punished the heck out of some middle-middle fastballs. Like many aggressive guys with power he’ll make pitchers pay for mistakes. He’s a solid mass of muscle and has the look of a guy who just needs to make contact to do damage, and the spring training homer shows his aggressiveness can lead to good outcomes even on tough pitches. He does strike out more against lefties, yet he’s posted reverse splits in OPS over the last two seasons (.813 OPS vs. LHP to a .785 vs. RHP in 2025; .968 vs. .909 this year).

The bat’s been everything you could ask of it, and Callahan also looks to me like a plus center fielder. The public reports on him talk about solid corner defense, but he was certainly rangy enough to patrol center field on Sunday, coming over from distance on one play to catch a ball in left field. And Erie’s best defensive play of the day belonged to Callahan, gunning down the relatively speedy Brandon Butterworth with a dart from the outfield as he tried to take second on a deep flyout. That was Callahan’s second double play of the young year, and he hasn’t recorded an error since 2024.

If there’s one reason to be skeptical of Callahan’s prospecthood, it’s that he’s a bit older than most Double-A prospects at 24 and is only now getting his first taste of the level, probably a byproduct of last year’s injuries. And while Detroit would seem to have plenty of room for outfield talent at the moment, even putting the ghost of Javier Baez in center at the moment, they also have a younger and much more heralded left-handed center field prospect awaiting his call-up in Triple-A in Max Clark, albeit one with a more limited glove. Still, I think Callahan’s a real prospect with a good combination of power, speed, and glove and a workable hit tool. I think he has a good chance to be a big league fourth outfielder. If his zone recognition gets a little better, he might be more than that.⁸

Quick pearls

Ethan Anderson (C/1B, BAL) has reached base on a remarkable 60 percent of his plate appearances this year and added a 102 mph homer last week for good measure, bringing his wRC+ to an otherworldly 216 after posting an 81 in twenty Double-A games last season. I’m torn on whether he can stay at catcher, since he doesn’t control the running game that well and tends to throw the baseman off the bag, but he’s at least a pretty decent blocker, and the former is easier to fix. The good news is there’s no rush; the Orioles have so many catchers in the system that they can afford to let him take his time, and he’s not Rule 5 eligible until 2027.… Dariel Fregio (RHP, DET) is a funky sidearmer who the Tigers signed out of the Frontier League last year after playing Division II baseball. He’s almost 26 and couldn’t locate any of his pitches – he walked 5 and struck out only 1 – but the Baysox seemed to have a tough time with the delivery, managing only a single hit against him and failing to bring home any runs. His A-ball stats look pretty good from last year, but he may have hit his ceiling at Double-A… Brandon Butterworth (SS, BAL) has a thin and wiry frame, solid shortstop glove and exceptional arm, good speed, and makes good contact, albeit without much power. In other words, he looks like a ballplayer more suited to the 1920s than the 2020s. He hasn’t done much with the bat so far this year, but the defensive ability gives him a lot of leeway… Izaac Pacheco (3B, DET) is a classic case of “looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane.” If he ever managed to make contact, look out, but he doesn’t make contact and his swing mechanics are a nightmare. He’s had his first taste of Double-A this year as a Rule 5-eligible 23 year old and is striking out on nearly half of his plate appearances. I had some passing interest in him before the season, but watching him in-person really got the bug out of my hair… Carter Young (SS, BAL) was an unlikely signee out of Vanderbilt in the same draft that the Orioles drafted another stretch signee, a young two-player from Oklahoma State named Nolan McLean, who (unlike Young) they failed to sign. Young’s a non-prospect at this point because he can’t hit, and his pro baseball career seems likely to be drawing to its end, but he played really impressive defense on Sunday and deserves some plaudits for doing yeoman’s work in the org… Griff O’Ferrall (SS, BAL) has an argument to be first among equals with all the strong defensive middle infielders on the Baysox; on Saturday night he made an unbelievable play to throw a runner out at home and save a run. Unfortunately, O’Ferrall’s exceptional college hit tool hasn’t really ported over to the professional ranks, and he hasn’t managed to add meaningful pop to his bat. Things could still turn around, but he looks increasingly like the heir to the apostolic succession of Anthony Servideo and Carter Young as middle infield org depth that should probably just buy a house in Bowie, have kids, raise them in Prince George’s County, and catch lice from my kids at school… Thomas Sosa (OF, BAL) didn’t play on Sunday, but it’s worth noting that he scorched at least two balls at more than 112 mph in this series, with the highest at 114.4 mph. His strikeout rate is down at 16.7% and his OPS is at 1.079, with a 170 wRC+. He just turned 21. Strap yourselves in, the Sosa train might be about to leave the station… Aron Estrada (2B, BAL), who turned 21 right before Sosa and was the subject of a heaping helping of helium this summer, also got the day off on Sunday. Estrada has gotten off to a slow start this year but finally got going with a 108 mph round-tripper on Friday evening. More importantly – because the bat’s not really in doubt – he’s been sticking at second base despite the plethora of plus defenders in the middle infield in Bowie rather than being pushed into the corner outfield as they hinted he might last season.

1  Australia seems to have a real problem with lice. I read an article suggesting a third of Australian kids have lice at any given time. A third! Which, to be fair, is a lower percentage than the proportion of Conor McGovern’s kids who have lice at the moment, so g’day to them.

2  Rózsa L, Apari P. Why infest the loved ones--inherent human behaviour indicates former mutualism with head lice. Parasitology. 2012 May;139(6):696-700. doi: 10.1017/S0031182012000017. Epub 2012 Feb 6. PMID: 22309598.

3  You didn’t think I’d miss the chance for some puns, did you?

4  The Baysox have a Hawkeye system that records pitch locations, so this is relatively accurate (after converting from Gameday’s locations), but it’s experimental so approach with some caution. The R script to produce these plots is Script 1 in this GitHub repo.

5  I derived this using the same method as Gongora’s pitch plot, so approach with caution since its reliability depends on the availability of Hawkeye systems in Double-A ballpark. We think they have them in most Double-A parks at this point, but I only know about Bowie for sure. The script that produces these estimates is Script 4 in the GitHub repo.

6  Even a T-64 has a max off-road speed of about 20 mph, it just takes a while to get there.

7  Other than his name, which my wife told me “sounds like a ballplayer.” Guess she likes Irish names. Surprise!

8  It’s fun to do these back to back, because if you took Callahan and De Los Santos and mashed the best parts of each together, you’d have a five-tool superstar.