In this column

• Yaqui Rivera (RHP, BAL)

• Aron Estrada (2B, BAL)

• Ethan Anderson (C/1B, BAL)

• Jaison Chourio (OF, CLE)

• Devin Fitz-Gerald (SS, WAS)

• Quick Pearls

• Tagging Up

Last night, I got to attend the Baysox annual season ticket-holder cookout. The best part is getting to go down on the field to take batting practice, shag flyballs and grounders, and throw pitches in the bullpen.  I haven’t hit with a wooden bat since I was a kid, so it was fun to get the chance to take some swings… in sandals, of course. I cranked a couple balls pretty hard. Unfortunately, nobody from the Orioles approached me to sign me to a contract less than a week after my 39^th birthday. Sad, I was really thinking this was the start of my The Rookie moment.[1]

On the other hand, my son’s really got a cannon for a four-year-old. He was throwing hard in the bullpen. Then he was making good contact with the bat. Should start putting him on the open universe watchlists.

Okay, on to what you’re really here for, the prospect breakdowns. Today, we’ve got some of the most interesting players I saw in Eastern League games across May and June. Unfortunately, a lot of the games were bores, so it took me a while to scrape together enough content to justify a column. But here it is, with deep dives on one really interesting pitching prospect who’s not on anyone’s radar and a bunch of switch-hitters, including some who are inside the top-100.

Yaqui Rivera (RHP, BAL)

Rivera has been in the Orioles system since 2022, when they acquired him as a player-to-be-named in a deal that sent Tanner Scott and Cole Sulser to the Marlins. As with all international free agent prospects, it feels like they’re a lot younger than they should be – Rivera doesn’t even turn 23 until mid-July, but he’s already reached Triple-A after spending all of 2025 and early 2026 with Chesapeake. Some of that is simply that the Rule 5 timeline necessitates pushing these guys or else losing them; but a larger part of it is that Rivera has been masterful this season. Across 50.1 innings this year spanning Double-A and Triple-A, Rivera has posted a 2.32 ERA with a 2.41 FIP and 2.74 xFIP. He’s also being allowed to face more batters, averaging 10.6 batters faced per outing (and over 12 in June), up from 5.9 in 2025.

The sea change with Rivera this season, the one that should have him on everyone’s radar, has been measurably improved command. A spray-and-pray pitcher up until this season, he’s cut his walk rate nearly in half this year while maintaining high strikeout rates.

The first thing you notice watching Rivera is his funky 20-degree arm slot, which imparts a lot of horizontal movement on his pitches. He leads with a 93 mph sinker that doesn’t look remarkable but tunnels well with his other pitches. He does throw a four-seamer about 20 percent of the time that sits 95 and can touch 97, but he comes more over the top to throw it, and the arm angle is seven degrees higher than the rest of the arsenal. His low-80s slider and changeup are both strong offerings. The slider has more cut than sweep movement. The changeup has generated whiff rates in Triple-A close to 50 percent at time of writing. He also has a lightly-used curveball which looks a lot like the slider but is about 5 mph slower. The movement chart is fascinating, since it really shows how Rivera’s pitches overlap despite serious differences in velocity. Only the four-seamer really stands out, and you wonder if he could even add a cutter to the arsenal to further bridge the fastball and the breaking balls.

It’s tough to gauge whether the Orioles now see Rivera as a starter or merely a multi-inning reliever. Prior to this year, he seemed like a pure relief prospect, but the improved command and wide arsenal may have the Orioles hedging their bet. On the other hand, his funky arm slot may play up if he only has to face batters a single time. He’s eligible for the Rule 5 draft and will need to be added to the 40-man after this season, so there’s a decent chance he makes his MLB debut as soon as this season.

In terms of value, he’s probably behind several Orioles prospect arms like Dzierwa, German, Gibson, and De Leon because of the role uncertainty, but his ability to generate whiffs (he’s currently in the 95^th percentile in Triple-A) may be second to none in the system. If he does make it as a starter, his ceiling is as high as any of them. Unfortunately, the accelerated timeline means he might have to join the Major League bullpen sooner in his development than the Orioles might otherwise prefer. In fantasy, he should be on the deeper-league radar with other Orioles names like Gongora, Bateman, Cartaya, and Hunter. If the pitch counts continue to creep up as the summer goes on, and he remains as dominant as he has to this point in 2026, he might shoot up rankings.

Aron Estrada (2B, BAL)

Estrada was a helium guy late last season, shooting up rankings across the prospect space. He faded a bit early in the season as he posted pedestrian numbers and the new hotness overtook him, but a June return to 2025’s late-season form – he thumped six homers in June and added a grand slam on July 2, and is up to 14 on the year. Estrada’s exit velocities are in the plus range considering his size and that he’s only 21 years old, and he’s capable of catching up with higher-velocity pitches despite a funky swing.

So, what’s the catch? Well, Estrada’s a switch-hitter. In theory. He hits from the left side against right-handed pitchers. Against southpaws, he stands on the right side of the plate and sort of flails feebly at everything. I mean, look at this:

Compare it to this, a beautiful home run swing from the left. There’s no way that’s the same guy!

Estrada’s swing rate overall is around the 90^th percentile in Double-A, so he’s pretty free-swinging. Against left-handed pitching, it’s in the high-50s – it would be in the top-three among all qualified MLB hitters this year. It’s not like he doesn’t make contact on those pitches, because he does (though he makes more contact against righties). You’d just rather he didn’t make contact against lefties. Against right-handed pitching, his OPS is .939. Against southpaws? A dismal .500, including zero of those fourteen home runs. His ground ball rate against right-handers is in the mid-40s – not great, but workable. Against lefties, it’s in the 60s; his pull-air rates are about 20 percent against righties and 3 percent against lefties. The heat maps[2] are a stark display of contrasts – he covers the plate well from the left side and punishes pitches in the heart of the zone, while from the right… well, there’s nothing good to say.

To me, this says it’s past time for the Orioles to pull the plug on Estrada’s switch-hitting. He might never be a plus batter against left-handed pitching, which is fine, but a Major Leaguer simply can’t be this awful. And don’t get me wrong, Estrada has a Major League bat… from the left side.

On the plus side, Estrada appears to now be sticking permanently at second base in Bowie after some worrying experiments in the outfield. He probably tops out as an average keystone defender, but he looks perfectly fine there and is no longer a player without a clear defensive home. He’s likely to spend the whole season in Double-A and I expect he’ll return next year with a promotion to Triple-A sometime in late spring 2027, but if the bat heats up through the end of the summer, maybe he’ll spend September in Norfolk.

Ethan Anderson (C/1B, BAL)

Catchers are, in my opinion, supposed to look a certain way. These are – and I mean this in the most loving way possible, as a former one myself – weird freaks who willingly ruin their knees just to get hit in various body parts, including the most sensitive ones, over and over again. They should necessarily be at least a little off. Over the last few years, the Baysox have had a steady circuit of catchers who have looked the part. First we saw Samuel Basallo, a hulking superhuman who looks (and hits) like Dr. Hammond spliced some dinosaur DNA in him. Then you had Creed Willems, a Hells Angel crossbred with the world’s most adorable teddy bear. This year, we’re treated to Ethan Anderson, a switch-hitting, bearded redhead who looks like he jumped out of the Táin Bó Cúailnge.[3]

In any case, Anderson was a second-round pick in 2024 after his junior year at Virginia – he didn’t catch much until that season because he was stuck behind Kyle Teel in the hierarchy. When he was drafted, he was more of an on-base contact guy than a power presence despite a powerful frame. His 2024 and 2025 seasons were pretty much in line with expectations, as he ran OBPs in the mid-350s with a plethora of walks and singles, not a lot of strikeouts, but just five home runs total over 119 games played. That may be okay for a top-level defensive catcher, but Anderson’s catching was considered pretty raw and fringy, and it simply wouldn’t do for a first baseman.

The Ethan Anderson of 2026 is a changed man. On July 2, he batted his seventeenth homer of the season. There’s a slight caveat here, as most of those were hit at Prince George’s County Stadium, a homer-friendly bandbox, but he’s routinely lifting the ball and posting respectable exit velocities against good Double-A pitchers. In addition to notable home/away splits, he’s a much better hitter from the left side of the plate than the right, though it’s not nearly as extreme as Estrada. All but two of his home runs have come against right-handers, and his OPS is .948 from the left and just .695 from the right. As you can see in this pitch-value plate coverage heat map, he also appears to have some trouble with right-handed pitches at the top of zone, and you worry about higher-level pitchers being able to exploit that:[4]

Will Anderson stick at catcher? I would have said no when I saw him in April, as he couldn’t control the run game well and looked slow on low blocks. In June, he flowed behind the plate much more naturally, a reminder that he’s still relatively raw as a catcher. He has good enough arm strength but could be a little more accurate in his throws to second. He’s probably not going to get substantially better as he lacks the athletic talent of a top-end catcher, but at this point I think he has a substantially better shot at sticking at catcher than does, say, Creed Willems. In that case, he projects as a time-splitting MLB catcher and occasional first baseman and designated hitter; Victor Caratini has managed a lengthy career with a similar switch-hitting profile. That’s probably a better real-life than fantasy profile, but I would put Anderson above similarly situated prospects like Thayron Liranzo at this point simply because he’s more polished. He should probably be rostered in leagues with 400 or more prospects, especially two-catcher leagues in which 24 or more catchers are started.

Like Willems before him, Anderson is also a household favorite, gleefully signing autographs for kids after catching an entire game. That’s always a thumbs up from me for a player.

Jaison Chourio (OF, CLE)

One of the best things about seeing players in-person is contextualizing stats. Jaison Chourio, younger brother of Jackson, only has two glaring statline weaknesses, and one may not even considered as such. His ground ball rate is just above 50 percent, which is my heuristic for being a problem. He’s also very passive, with a 40 percent swing rate across High-A and Double-A this year. But everything else looks good, with an OPS around .875, a 131 wRC+ in his time in Akron, an 80^th percentile walk rate and strikeout rate, and a fair amount of power (seven overall, with five in 184 plate appearances in Double-A despite having played in parks that give him a blended 82 HR park factor at the level – that is to say that the parks he’s played his games in suppress home runs pretty significantly). On top of that, he’s a good defensive center fielder and should stick there as he moves up the ladder.

But when I saw him in person, I decided I really don’t like this swing. It’s a huge, sweeping uppercut that makes him look like he’s Sephiroth swinging the Masamune. Don’t get me wrong, that type of swing will do damage when it connects – as it has, often enough, in the lower minors, where the pitching simply isn’t as good – but is going to get increasingly difficult to justify as he moves upwards and faces better pitching. Here it is from behind, on a lightly hit groundball:

And here from the side, on a big whiff:

How do you cover the whole plate with a swing like that? You don’t. Instead, you really crush stuff at the bottom of the zone and get beat up top. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing, along with pretty noticeable splits depending on the side of the plate. I didn’t get to see Chourio bat from the right, and maybe his swing is completely different there, but the results have been pedestrian.

Players can certainly tweak their swings, and Chourio’s only 21, but this profile leaves me cold. A samurai-sword swinger whose power output is only above-average? It’s a big pass for me.

(Speaking of which, every switch-hitter we’ve seen so far seems to have this donut hole in the lower left quadrant – towards third base -- against right-handed pitching. I’m assuming that’s coming from right-handers who throw changeups, but it’s curious how it’s there for all of them – with one exception, who we’ll see below.)

Devin Fitz-Gerald (SS, WAS)

Fitz-Gerald, a (lest it need be said) switch-hitter out of the Florida prep ranks in 2024, was one of five prospects in the deal that sent MacKenzie Gore to Texas in the spring. Last season, he got off to a nuclear start in the complex then met a bit of resistance in a month’s worth of games in Low-A before an injured shoulder in early July caused him to miss the rest of the season. The Nationals chose to start him in High-A Wilmington in 2026. Maybe he took some kind of secret chemical compound from DuPont, or maybe he just loves the months of April and May. Whatever it was, Fitz-Gerald went ballistic in Delaware, blasting 12 home runs in just 51 games, prompting every prospect ranking to push him up aggressively and the Nationals to promote him to Harrisburg in early June.

Since then, it’s hardly been smooth sailing for the 20-year-old with the memorably hyphenated version of an old Norman-Irish name made famous in the United States by the matriarch of the Kennedy family. At this writing, his wRC+ at Harrisburg is a cool 14. In Double-A, he has managed just one homer, a .145 batting average, and has walked just five times to 24 strikeouts in 90 plate appearances. There just isn’t much going right in his swings, as you can see from his heat maps. The ice-cold lower quadrant when he’s facing lefties suggests real problems chasing or missing breaking pitches, while the blue in the upper-center against righties and the slightly better corner is really the inverse of how that map should look.

Truth be told, the eye test matches the results. In the plate appearances I saw, Fitz-Gerald looked uncomfortable and swung at practically every offering. Too often, he looked like he was pressing, trying to swing his way back into his springtime vibe as we enter early summer… and it’s not working. He struck out twice, both ugly and uncompetitive plate appearances (see the video below)

Fitz-Gerald won’t turn 21 until August, and by all accounts he’s a viable middle infielder defensively (the Baysox offense was moribund on the day I saw him, so he didn’t have much to do). The jump in talent from High-A to Double-A is more exponential than linear, and probably the biggest leap in difficulty until you go from Triple-A to the Majors. For the first time, he’s facing pitchers with good stuff and the command necessary to routinely throw strikes. He’s facing adversity and he’ll need to overcome it. But he’s still young – eight months younger than Aron Estrada, who is also still young. And unlike Estrada, who now has a sufficient Double-A sample size for me to start wringing my hands in worry, Fitz-Gerald is brand new to the level as a 20-year-old. I didn’t see anything wrong with the swing mechanics; he has a short lever and fast hands, he just seems to be swinging too much at bad pitches and failing to make contact, which suggests to me he’s pressing and overthinking.

All this is to say that, despite the unimpressive Double-A stats so far, if you jumped on the Fitz-Gerald wagon in April – or you’ve been on it since last year – don’t get off now. You may even consider a buy-low if his owner is starting to sour. But do temper your expectations a bit on the timeline, as he’s going to need to take his Double-A lumps for a bit.

Quick Pearls

I’ve gotten to see a surprising amount of Evan Yates (RHP, BAL) instead of the other exciting arms in the Baysox rotation. He’s a tough to hit junkballer with about four different breaking balls and a rarely-used fastball that tops out at 90. It’s fun to watch but he’ll struggle to stick in a Major League bullpen.

Speaking of relievers, Gerald Ogando (RHP, BAL) should be in the Orioles’ bullpen this year or next, and he has a pretty nifty arsenal including three different fastballs (including a lightly-used cutter with incredible metrics) and a good slider. He has the put-away stuff to pitch in leverage one day.

Ethan Petry (1B, WAS) may share a name with the tiny pteranodon from The Land Before Time, but he’s built more like a Sharptooth (that’s the tyrannosaurus for the non-millennial crowd), with broad shoulders that could blot out the sun. As with Fitz-Gerald, he has followed up a scorching hot High-A campaign with a lackluster Double-A debut. I liked his swing and the power is real, he just needs to start making contact particularly on spin. The Nationals already seem to be giving up on him as an outfielder, which is going to put a lot of pressure on the bat.

Alex Clemmey (LHP, WAS) has an arsenal that includes a pretty good slider, an otherwise unremarkable mid-90s fastball, and a similarly pedestrian changeup. If he can throw strikes, he has the makings of a useful backend lefty starter. From what I saw, that’s a big if.

Two thousand years ago, you could’ve conquered the Roman Empire with a hundred guys who look like Alfonsin Rosario (OF, CLE). I got to see him play in Single-A a couple years ago, and he stood out then for his size. He looks even bigger now. He’s a super-athlete with speed and defense on top of the prodigious power, but he strikes out too much to ascend prospect rankings. He’s basically the inverse of the platonic ideal Guardians prospect.

I was excited to see Khal Stephen (RHP, CLE) pitch. I didn’t really get to, though, as he got through exactly one inning before leaving the game with an elbow injury and had Tommy John surgery last week. What’s interesting is that he got out of that inning on a well-executed pickoff, and then simply didn’t come out for the next. Not that it matters, but you wonder if he didn’t blow up his elbow throwing to first base.

Jacob Cozart (C, CLE) is a defensive maestro behind the plate, and I watched him blast two hits including a home run with some good exit velocities. Cozart’s catching chops give him a runway to the Show, and I saw a fine bat that gives him the chance to be more than just a backup.

Tagging Up

Let’s check in one some of our favorites from previous Pearls columns.

Brett Callahan (OF, DET) moved up to Triple-A in late June and has cemented himself as a name to know. His max EV and EV90 are in the 70th percentile for the level, and his average EV is around the 75th with solid angles. It’s a small sample size yet, and he is very free-swinging (as he seemed in Double-A), but his zone contact rate and quality of contact has been excellent. His profile reminds me of Jake McCarthy with a little more pop. This is a real prospect with an MLB future and the chance to help a fantasy team in every category.

Sebastian Gongora (LHP, BAL) probably deserves to move up to Triple-A but the Orioles have a huge backlog of starters there. In his most recent start on Independence Day, he posted a quality start with 6 IP, 2 earned runs, and 6 strikeouts. Those were the only runs he’s given up over his last three starts. He has the look of a left-handed innings eater who can help any Major League rotation.

Anderson de los Santos (CI, BAL) has cooled off after a hot start. He’s still getting on base at a good clip and his power has ticked up a bit, but he’s also striking out a lot more. I don’t think he’s a third baseman, though the organization may as well keep trying him there, so the bat cooling off isn’t a great sign.

Victor Arias (OF, TOR) was probably my favorite player I saw live last season. He has hit seven home runs since returning in mid-May after missing most of Spring Training recovering from an injury that also cost him the latter part of last season. After a supernova first week back in Double-A, the offensive production has been middling, but he’s playing in center field every day and he’s allayed the big concern – worm-burners – this year, dropping his grounder rate from the mid-50s to around 40 percent. I still really like him; we’ll see how the CBA and Rule 5 affect his timeline (he was eligible this year but went unpicked, maybe due in part to injury).

[1] I just looked it up and I’m four years older than Jim Morris was when he debuted. Forget it. No sequel to The Rookie where I’m portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe. Dreams shattered.

[2] These work in the Eastern League because all stadiums generally have their Hawkeye systems tied to Gameday, though interpret with a little caution because the systems can sometimes go down for games at a time until MLB can send someone out to troubleshoot.

[3] Despite hailing from Virginia, Anderson features the beginning of Kanye West’s Homecoming as his walk-up song (“Chi city!”) – maybe there’s a story there, or maybe he just likes the song.

[4] Yes, Ev, I’m aware of what the contour line on the LHP side of this looks like. No, I didn’t do it on purpose.