Table of Contents

• Orioles Pitching Factory

• Jack Cebert (RHP, WAS)

• Henry Godbout (SS, BOS)

• Vance Honeycutt (OF, BAL)

• Quick Pearls

I always feel a bit melancholic when a player is promoted from Bowie to Norfolk. It doesn’t mean I’ll never see them again. After all, they’re one step closer to making their debut with the Orioles, and then I’ll be watching them at Camden Yards, or on TV, and inevitably getting upset with them. But they are gone, in an important way, departing the intimacy of little Prince George’s County Stadium, where I can sit up against the fence and pretend these are people I know. In a narrow sense, they are; we see them a dozen or more times a year, hear their walk-up music, hear our kids ask them for autographs at the end of the game. They play on a diamond that the kids circle after the game, warm-up in a bullpen we throw pitches in during the cookout for season ticket holders.

The end of the season brings with it even more melancholy. Most of these players will be gone next year, be it to Norfolk or to different teams or out of affiliated baseball entirely. There will be new players to replace them, that’s the nature of the minor leagues. But I’ll have to learn every newcomer’s walk-up songs, their quirks, their pitch mixes, and their swings. It all adds a sense of dislocation to the cool days and nights of April. Add to that the melancholy of the summer ending, with days growing shorter, nights cooler, my kids moving up a grade at school, and my own feeling of heading towards the backend of my time on the planet – perhaps a tad overdramatic, but indulge me – with the same urge to start calculating the number of outs left for your team to rally as the innings drift later in the game.

Sunday was the last Baysox home game of the year. One week remains of Double-A baseball for the season, and there are a few weeks more to be played in the big leagues before the playoffs begin. And after the Dodgers win, or someone mercifully topples them, we’ll have a long fall and winter, punctuated by anxiety about lockouts and salary caps.

But that didn’t matter on Sunday. It was a pristine day, the type you so rarely get, warm but without the skin-crawling humidity of July, a blue sky above us with a few fluffy white clouds bouncing around above the outfield. It was a good game, too, with a Baysox rally back from a deep hole falling just short at the end. On the other side of the state, the Orioles were busy being swept by the Red Sox, dragging a disappointing season to the brink of the mathematical abyss.

Afterward, we drove down to Annapolis and picked crabs with our kids and friends, drinking orange crushes with hands stinging with Old Bay. Thus ends the summer, with just this last Pearls column before the long wait until next spring. I hope we’ll have baseball next year.

Orioles Pitching Factory

While I haven’t gotten the chance to see all of the Baysox pitchers in person, I have been able to access some pitch data for them while also catching some of them on film. I did manage to see Dzierwa, Quinn, and a bunch of Gongora, plus one Trace Bright start.

We’ll start with the big one. Anthony Eyanson (RHP) was the jewel of the Adley Rutschman trade. He throws from a high three-quarters slot and has a unique pitch movement chart that essentially goes straight up and down along a 12-6 axis, with little horizontal movement. He features a four-seam fastball that sits around 94 with solid vertical movement, a curveball that mirrors it low, and a gyro slider that slots right between them that’s arguably his go-to pitch. He might benefit from widening his arsenal a tad with a little horizontal movement, but he’s deservedly one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. He’s likely to be a mid-rotation pitcher with upside for more.

Joseph Dzierwa (LHP) has rocketed up boards this year. A top-100 prospect just about everywhere, he’s currently sitting atop the leaderboard for minor league strikeouts this season. Dzierwa looks like a modern college basketball big man on the mound, standing a towering 6’8”. His arm angle is low for his height, as he leans and throws across his body, releasing it just above his shoulder, somewhere south of the six-foot mark. As a result, he gets a ton of arm-side run on his fastball, which plays up despite a velo sitting in the low-90s. But what really makes Dzierwa’s fastball play up is the changeup, which looks nearly identical to the fastball horizontally but drops out from under the batter as it comes in the mid-80s. He also throws a mid-70s curveball that lacks real standout traits, and a bullet slider/cutter that he could probably stand to use a little more. Most importantly, he commands all the pitches well. The fastball gets plugged up in the zone and the changeup starts there then dives down, just as you’d draw it up. And he places the breaking balls just off the corners. Dzierwa is, all in all, a really good pitching prospect, with both a high floor and good ceiling, albeit not quite as high as Eyanson’s. He’ll end his season with a 2.27 ERA and 0.90 WHIP in 131 innings.

Caden Hunter (LHP) has the best fastball of the group, sitting 95 mph and featuring nearly 18 inches of ride and 9 inches of run with excellent extension. It comes in flat and is going to be really difficult for lefties to pick up. He mixes that in with a changeup that looks very similar to the fastball but gets over a foot of vertical separation and falls out. He also features a mid-80s slider and high-70s curveball. The slider looks like the changeup but with more spin, while the curve looks a lot like the slider but with 5 degrees of velocity separating them. The variable movement patterns between the fastball and changeup and the slider and curve give him an attack pattern against lefties and righties alike, though he still appears to be finding a breaking ball that really works to generate whiffs. Like Eyanson and Dzierwa, he’s a deserving top-100 arm with as much upside as any pitcher in the system.

Kyson Witherspoon (RHP) also came over in the Rutschman deal one year after being a first-round pick. I haven’t seen him in-person since he’s still in High-A Frederick, but I have seen the data. One thing that stuck out to me is how eerily similar his movement chart and pitch characteristics look to Blake Snell’s, just inverse since he’s throwing from the right side. He comes over the top, with an arm angle close to Trey Yesavage’s that would make him one of the more over-the-top pitchers in the Majors this year. The problem with Witherspoon isn’t the stuff or the arsenal, which will both play, it’s the command. He struggles to locate the ball or throw strikes, though maybe the Orioles pitching development can unlock a new level there. He might be trade bait this offseason given the depth of the Orioles’ pitching well.

Sebastian Gongora (LHP) is one of my favorite diamonds in the rough that the Orioles have unearthed this season. Where Dzierwa is a towering lefty with a low slot, Gongora is a shorter, well-built pitcher who deals from a low slot. He’s made big leaps in command this year. Gongora has a wide arsenal and fills up the zone, with a fastball that hits his locations and a changeup that works off a slider. The worry with Gongora is how he performs against right-handed hitters; he’s genuinely excellent against lefties, but he’s missing a pitch against righties that he trusts in the zone. That leads to higher walk rates against righties, though they generally aren’t punishing his pitches there. He reads as a backend innings eater with a Foster Griffin archetype. Unfortunately, becoming that archetype required Griffin to go to Japan for a few years to discover a cutter that he trusted in the zone, but maybe the Orioles can do it without a trip to the NPB. At 25 with about ten viable starting pitching prospects in front of him, time may be running short in the Orioles organization, but Gongora would be a good trade target for pitching-needy teams this offseason looking for a prospect with proximity to the bigs.

JT Quinn (RHP) has a great sinker that sits 95-96 and sprinkles in a four-seamer with similar velocity. Though he throws from a higher three-quarters slot, high for a sinkerball pitcher, the sinker is the standout, getting a ton of break off seam-shifted wake and landing consistently for strikes. He also features a hard, high-80s gyro slider – you may see a pattern emerging with these pitchers – that moves the opposite direction from the fastballs, tunnels well, and gets both whiffs and called strikes at a high rate. He also mixes in a curveball to lefties and a useful but unremarkable split-change. His arsenal tends to work low in the zone. Unsurprisingly given the locations and pitch mix, Quinn is a highly effective groundball pitcher, generating grounders on nearly 70 percent of his batted balls in Double-A after being close to 60 percent in High-A, though he managed a high CSW% at High-A. He’s struggled with walks a bit in his four Double-A outings, but he’s likely to be back in Bowie for at least a couple months next season and should improve on that as his developmental journey continues. He looks more like a number four, but with mid-rotation upside.

I saw Trace Bright (RHP), who was once a watch-listed prospect but has never really impressed me, for the umpteenth time against the Senators. He was perfect through five innings, pumping high fastballs that the Senators couldn’t touch before giving up a home run to Elijah Green. It was a nice outing but I think it said more about the Senators lineup that they trotted out – it didn’t feature Fitz-Gerald, Petry, or Lomavita – than it did about Bright himself, who at least has a chance to be a middle reliever in an MLB pen.

Micah Ashman (LHP) could probably skip Triple-A and slot into the Baltimore bullpen right now. He has a 39 percent strikeout rate and a miniscule 7 percent walk rate, with a FIP and SIERA around 1.60. He only sits 91 on his fastball, but the secondaries are tremendous. He has a chance to be a high-leverage reliever in Baltimore as soon as next season.

Jack Cebert (RHP, WAS)

I’ll admit, I had no idea who Jack Cebert was prior to seeing him play. That was a mistake, because he’s good.

After drafting him in the 15^th round after his senior year at Texas Tech in 2025, the Yankees sent Cebert directly to High-A, where he appeared in 6.1 innings out of the bullpen, striking out 11 and walking just one batter. This year, as a 25-year-old, Cebert was clearly overmatching batters in the low minors, so the Yankees moved him up to Double-A. In thirteen Double-A games with Somerset, he posted a 28.3% CSW and 19.7% K-BB%, though the results were less than ideal because of a .329 BABIP and inflated HR/FB rate. At the deadline, the Yankees traded him to the Nationals in the package for Luis Garcia, Jr. Chris ranked him 15^th overall in the Nationals organization.

I saw Cebert make his first start in the Nationals organization. After that game, Cebert pitched twice more in Double-A before being moved up to Triple-A Rochester at the end of August. He’s run into a bit of a walk issue, having walked five batters over seven innings in Rochester while recording six strikeouts. In addition, Triple-A means we got some pitch data!

Cebert has a low arm slot and features a wide arsenal with three fastballs, two breaking balls, and a changeup. There’s a four-seamer that sat in the 95-96 range when I saw him but has been in the 92-94 range in Triple-A, a sinker that sits around 92, and a cutter in the high-80s. He has a sweeper that works in the mid-to-low 80s and a changeup that looks like a work in progress. But the best out-pitch in the arsenal is a mid-70s arcing curveball that left Baysox hitters shaking their heads in dismay; it’s one of the more impressive breaking balls I’ve seen at the level. Not sure I’ve seen a better individual breaking ball come through since Nolan McLean’s sweeper, and that’s a tough bar to clear. Stuff models love both the breaking balls. He tends to go sinker/sweeper to righties and saves the curve for lefties, but he’s capable of generating whiffs and called strikes against both. In his most recent start, he led with the sweeper — probably the best choice, given how positive stuff models are on it — and threw it heavily in the zone, getting good results against righties.

I was impressed by Cebert’s ability to command his pitches. He had a CSW of 41.1% in the game and walked two batters, though he may have gotten unlucky with the call on the payoff pitch on one (his walk rate in 2006 is just 7.4%). He gave up no hard contact at all and the only hit he allowed in four innings of work was a Baltimore chop that deflected off him.

Overall, Cebert looks like a potential gem. After getting pushed by the Nationals after they acquired him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he works his way into the big league rotation in 2027. The package I saw combined a wide arsenal with a good fastball, excellent put-away curve, and solid command. He looked as good as any starting pitcher I’ve seen come through Bowie. He has true middle of the rotation upside, and anyone who’s in a league that’s rostering 250 prospects should be on this guy.

Henry Godbout (SS, BOS)

Godbout, the 75^th overall pick in 2025 out of the University of Virginia, is very distinctive in the batters’ box. He stands up straight and sort of hunches his head and shoulders forward – I’m sitting here typing this and trying to replicate it and I’m not sure my body can bend that way. The stance means his hands are low, and this contortion lets him get his bat to the ball extraordinarily quickly. Maybe the weird stance hurts him with fastballs up, but I didn’t see that when I watched him. Maybe pitchers are afraid to put it up there with Godbout’s head as a floating target.

Raw power isn’t one of Godbout’s physical gifts – he’s built well in the lower body, but he looks tiny next to an actual behemoth like his teammate Justin Gonzales – but the bat speed lends itself to a pull-heavy approach that lets him maximize his gifts. His ground ball rate this season across three levels has been just 36 percent. Ultimately, it’s tough to argue with eight home runs across 84 plate appearances since he debuted at Double-A Portland in mid-August, one of which I saw last Sunday. This followed a two-homer game on Thursday.

All this has led to an impressive .286/.333/.623 slash line for Portland, good for a 167 wRC+ at the level. The only concern is his strikeout rate has climbed from 17 percent at High-A to 25 percent at Double-A while his walk rate has shrunk in half to 6 percent, though this may just be a combination of adjusting to the level and small sample sizes. (He also accumulated a bunch of those strikeouts in his first few games at the level after missing all of June and July with an injury.)

Godbout plays capable defense at shortstop, though his lack of standout traits including a just average arm suggests a move to second or third base may be in store as he climbs the organizational ladder. The Red Sox, though, are keeping him at shortstop for now. He has the look of a 20 home run bat with a potentially higher (if difficult to predict) ceiling because of the air-pull efficiency, who will chip in with a handful of steals without hurting any ratios. Given the Red Sox organizational depth chart in the middle infield, I’m trying to buy Godbout anywhere I can.

Vance Honeycutt (OF, BAL)

Oh, look, an Orioles prospect writer who’s going to offer everyone an opinion on Vance Honeycutt. How novel. And no, my opinion isn’t going to be that they should try him out as a relief pitcher, but two months ago…

Honeycutt, the Orioles’ first round pick out of UNC in 2024, has become something of a punchline, not least for Orioles fans. Any cursory glance at his statistics makes the reason clear – he’s run a 40 percent strikeout rate over his professional career. And it’s not just the strikeout rate, it’s that he gets to those strikeouts in all sorts of fun and novel ways. Sometimes he just stands there staring, watching three straight strikes go by like forgotten he’s actually at the plate and playing baseball. Sometimes, like someone in a men’s league softball game who’s had two too many beers, he whiffs on three straight fastballs in the heart of the zone. Sometimes he chases the worst pitches you’ve ever seen.

Sometimes, though, he doesn’t strike out. Sometimes he makes you remember why pre-draft scouting reports gushed about his loud tools. Sometimes, like in spring training, he goes bananas and hits four home runs in 11 plate appearances.

On Sunday, I got the full Vance Honeycutt experience. In his first plate appearance, he didn’t swing at all. He watched two strikes go by at the bottom of the zone, then a ball below the zone, and finally a third strike, again at the bottom of the zone. At no point did he look inclined to swing.

In his second plate appearance, he actually swung at the first pitch, fouling it off. Then he watched another one go over the heart of the plate, then took a ball low. Here we go again, I thought. Not so fast, as Honeycutt absolutely cranked a no-doubt homer with a 108 mph exit velocity to dead center.

In the sixth inning, Honeycutt came up again and laid down one of the cleanest bunts I’ve ever seen down the third base line. Then he ran to first like he had wings attached to his feet. I don’t know if he’s quite as fast as Enrique Bradfield Jr., but he’s at least close. Then he stole second. And third (on a wild pitch). Then came home easily on an Ethan Anderson single. The man can move; those 38 stolen bases in 2026, including 10 in Double-A, aren’t a mirage. He’s going to be a terror on the basepaths if he can make it.

So we have perhaps 55-grade power, 70-grade speed, and (lest we forget) perhaps 80-grade centerfield defense… with a completely unplayable hit tool.

Or is it? Since his promotion to Double-A, he’s struck out in just 15 of 71 plate appearances while continuing to walk at double-digit rates. His 206 wRC+ and .493 wOBA at Double-A are otherworldly, with 5 home runs in 71 plate appearances, and his contact rate has jumped from 65 percent to 78 percent while still being in the bottom quintile in his swing rate.

What’s going on here? Will the real Vance Honeycutt please stand up?

I can offer a couple ways to square the circle. I’ll offer the pessimistic one first. That read is that the present heater, like his spring training, is simply small sample size in action. He has just 71 plate appearances in Double-A so far and will likely reach about 100 before the Double-A season comes to an end. Balance of probabilities, it’s the most likely scenario. The first plate appearance I saw, with a bunch of balls clustered at the bottom of the zone that he didn’t swing at, suggest he might have a hole down there, and lack of pitch recognition has long been one of the explanations preferred by Honeycutt’s detractors.

Others believe there might be a real sea change. Someone pointed out that Honeycutt started going to 80 Scale, a training facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and has been hitting better since then. “He went to 80 Scale” doesn’t roll off the tongue the way that “He went to Driveline” does, but maybe it’s the same concept. He hasn’t gone on this sort of long-term heater before. We’ve seen otherwise gifted players like Jordan Walker have their swing tweaked at a facility and it unlock a new level, and maybe – just maybe – Honeycutt is a beneficiary. Maybe we’ll see him in the AFL, and maybe we’ll get a better read on it then.

Maybe. I, for one, am still skeptical. But, boy, if it works out…

Quick Pearls

Brandon Butterworth (UT, BAL) went on a tear after returning from the injured list in late June and was promoted to Triple-A Norfolk in mid-August. He failed to reach base in only three of his last 27 games in Bowie, and hit 6 home runs in that period. He’s added another four since his Triple-A debut. Butterworth has emerged as a true super-utility player, showcasing a plus glove and arm across the infield and in center field, and his combination of contact skills, usable power, speed, and defensive versatility has him on track to make an MLB debut some time in 2027 – especially with his ability to play shortstop in an organization starved for it amid Gunnar Henderson’s struggles.

Aron Estrada (2B, BAL) remains on a heater, belting six home runs over the last month of the season, giving him 24 so far this year. Mix in a five-hit game there and a long on-base streak, and you can see why everyone was excited about him last season. His OPS remains 200 points higher against righties than against lefties, but the extreme splits have started to normalize a little bit. He’s still likely a platoon bat in the big leagues, but – currently in his 40-man platform year – there’s a good chance he gets there in the next year.

I genuinely expected Victor Figueroa (1B, BAL) to be much bigger based on the reports I’ve read on him and the fact he leads the Orioles organization in homers in 2026. Be that as it may, he can really crank the ball – he sent a no-doubter over the fence on Sunday. He also made a nice catch at first base and looked natural playing the position, but there’s a lot of pressure on his bat, and his low contact rates are not ideal. Nor is his foot speed, which is bottom of the barrel. He’s a pickoff candidate any time he’s on base.

There are baseball players that stand out because of their size, and then there’s Justin Gonzales (OF, BOS). He’s an exceedingly large individual whose hands are so massive that the bat looks like a stick he broke off a pine tree. Then they put his headshot up and you see his neck is wider than his head. At 19, he’s one of the youngest players in Double-A after being promoted in mid-August. It’s tough to deny a player with his build who has mashed at every stop, but I worry about falling contact rates in Double-A paired with rising strikeout rates, plus a tendency to put the ball on the ground that may limit the actualization of his unparalleled physical might. All of these issues, based on the eye test, stem from a similar place – he’s a rather stiff athlete who swings down on the ball with a long, looping swing that often arrives late. Most prospect rankings prefer Gonzales to Godbout – and who can’t see the appeal of the 19 year-old who looks like a Greek god? – but I think Godbout has a much better chance of being an everyday Major Leaguer.

Johanfran Garcia (C, BOS), the brother of Jhostynxon Garcia, has an intriguing bat that blends power (18 Double-A home runs) and quality of contact, though his approach is less than ideal (close to a 30 percent strikeout rate). If he could stick at catcher, he might be viable, but he’s a stiff athlete with a lower body that gets in the way and delays his pop time. His blocking and run game control are well below average, and – though he’s still just 21 – he probably isn’t quite good enough to survive a move to first base.

Elijah Green (OF, WAS) has become something of a running joke since he was drafted fifth overall in 2022 because of contact skills that would make Joey Gallo wince. Though I wouldn’t say those jokes to his face, because Green is built, and moves, like his NFL tight end father. Green smashed a home run to break up Bright’s perfect game and added another a couple days later, and that’s been it. Unlike Honeycutt, there’s no heater to recommend him — he’s running a high-30s percent strikeout rate in Double-A so far… which has somehow lowered his strikeout rate on the season.

Roc Riggio (2B, COL), which I assume is short for Rocco and isn’t named for the legendary bird of Arabian myth, has a sort of Gimli look about him, as a bit of a dense, stumpy guy with an amber beard. He’s hit 20 home runs this season across Double-A and Triple-A and gets the most out of his frame. He’s very passive and tends to whiff when he does actually swing, making him a boom-or-bust player. But with the Rockies’ options at second base thinner than the Denver air (someone named Chad Stevens started over a dozen games for them there this season?), it wouldn’t be terribly shocking to see Riggio make his debut early in the 2027 season and offer home run upside in Coors.