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LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 17: A view of the draft board as Sal Stewart is selected 32nd by the Cincinnati Reds during the 2022 Major League Baseball Draft at L.A. Live on Sunday, July 17, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images) | MLB Photos via Getty Images
This time a year ago, the Orioles headed into baseball’s annual amateur draft with four of the top 37 picks and a bigger bonus pool than any other team has ever had since the pool system was introduced in 2012. That made for an exciting first draft day in the middle of what was supposed to be a one-off disappointing season.
The disappointment has continued into 2026 for the major league club. It is tough to muster excitement for adding more draft picks when so many of the team’s heralded players, former high picks or big bonus guys, are part of the disappointment. A loud minority would rather see Mike Elias fired than give him the opportunity to oversee another draft. And as for that bevy of picks last year, the Orioles don’t even have all of those picks in their system any more, because they traded two of the guys they picked in order to get Shane Baz, who has mustered 1.0 bWAR in his first year as an Oriole.
This year’s edition of the draft does not add so much excitement. The Orioles pick at #7, a reasonably high pick that could feel fun. It’s also still disappointing since they had the fourth-best odds in the draft lottery and fell to #7. Additionally, the Orioles were going to pick at #33 in the competitive balance round A of the draft. However, that pick was also traded to the Rays for Baz. So, their next pick isn’t until #46, and they don’t have any extra picks to play with.
Baseball’s draft being what it is, this is not an exercise in instant gratification of stocking up on absolute, definite help for the MLB team, or for the most part any kind of near-term help for the MLB team at all. Players drafted from college, by and large, will end up as “maybe we can add this guy in the second half of 2028” players at the soonest, while high school players, excepting if someone reveals himself as a generational freak talent, will probably not bubble up to the major league level until 2030 or 2031.
How far away is 2030? In baseball roster terms, that is far enough away that Pete Alonso will be in the last year of his five-year contract. Current mainstays like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson will have departed as free agents. Even guys like Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg are set to hit free agency before 2030. Other than Alonso, the only players whose contracts are guaranteed into 2030 are Samuel Basallo and Baz. The team will look different by then in a way that we can’t even imagine now.
There is no guarantee that any player drafted today will make it to the Orioles. They might not turn out to be good enough. The Orioles could also choose to trade some of their drafted players as soon as this offseason if they value an immediate addition more than hypothetical future potential. There is no guarantee that immediate addition will help as much as Elias (or the next general manager) thinks it will. It’s a tough business and on the whole it hasn’t gone well for the Orioles lately.
Draft Schedule
Day 1, Saturday July 11
- Start time: 1pm Eastern
- Rounds: 1-4
- TV: Picks 1-10 (NBC/Peacock); Picks 11-40 (MLB Network and MLB.com); Picks 41-135 (MLB.com)
Draft Day 1 is typically on a Sunday. The league has moved it to Saturday this year, with the extra wrinkle that the first ten picks are on a different streamer than the whole rest of it. The 1pm listed start time is the start of the preview show, rather than the draft itself, and it’s unclear exactly when they’ll begin picking.
The Orioles, picking at #7, will be towards the end of the Peacock portion (scheduled through 2:30). They will not pick at all in the MLB Network portion (scheduled 2:30-4:30). The day 1 schedule runs through 7:45 Eastern.
Day 2, Sunday July 12
- Start time: 11:30am Eastern
- Rounds: 5-20
- Online: MLB.com stream of all remaining picks
Mainstream draft big boards
- MLB Pipeline (top 250)
- ESPN (top 250)
- The Athletic (top 100)
- FanGraphs (top 75 plus unranked extra names)
Orioles day 1 picks and bonus pool information
- 1st round, 7th overall ($7,327,200)
- 2nd round, 46th overall ($2,181,600)
- 3rd round, 82nd overall ($1,003,800)
- 4th round, 110th overall ($711,800)
Total bonus pool: $13,114,000
The Orioles have the 13th-largest draft bonus pool this year. The pick they traded to the Rays lost them about $3 million on their pool.
As a reminder, teams are not limited by the slot value at each individual pick. Rather, signing bonuses are added up across all of the picks and they are limited by the total pool. Teams can choose to go over or under slot for any of their picks. For rounds 11-20, the first $150,000 of a signing bonus does not count towards the pool.
A team may exceed its pool by up to 5% with only a 75% tax paid on the overage amount, so the Orioles can go over by up to an additional $655,700. There are more severe penalties for exceeding 5% over that no team has ever reached since the system was put in place.
Final wave of mock draft names
- Drew Burress – OF – Georgia Tech
- Eric Booth Jr. – OF – Oak Grove (Miss.) HS
- Jackson Flora – RHP – UC Santa Barbara
- Tyler Bell – SS – Kentucky
- Jared Grindlinger – LHP/OF – Huntington Beach (Calif.) HS
Last year, the last round of mock drafts did not manage to correctly identify any player that the Orioles ended up taking. It will be a bit easier to catch one this year with the team picking at #7. There are fewer permutations of things before the Orioles get to pick.
Most of the mock drafts had Booth and Flora already chosen before the Orioles get to go. Maybe Mike Elias hopes they slip to him. Maybe he doesn’t really care. We’ll find out later today when we see who’s available when he picks and who he chooses out of those options. Grindlinger was a late helium player.
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