When Brandon Butterworth landed in the Orioles organization as part of the July 2025 trade that sent Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano to San Diego, he didn’t exactly have time to ease into his new reality.
“It was crazy. It was probably one of the last things I expected,” Butterworth said.
“Especially the first deadline in my first full year. Your life completely doing a 180.”
Baltimore brought back six players in that deal, and Butterworth was one of them - a 5-foot-9 utility prospect who suddenly found himself changing uniforms, changing teams and changing levels almost overnight. He was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, playing well at High-A, when the Orioles pushed him to Double-A Chesapeake.
“I had to pack my things up that night and leave the next morning to go play eight hours away for a different team in a completely different organization,” Butterworth said.
The shock didn’t wear off immediately.
“It took him two or three days to grasp the new setting.”
“I was waking up, like ‘I can’t believe this happened.’ I was still in shock.”
Before the move, Butterworth was hitting .267 with a .782 OPS, 11 home runs and 46 RBIs for Fort Wayne. His first stretch with the Baysox was rougher: .215, a .677 OPS, two homers and 16 RBIs.
But he settled in the following year at Chesapeake, where he hit .269 with an .875 OPS, 10 home runs and 23 RBIs in 52 games. In 28 games at Triple-A Norfolk, he hit .208 with five homers and 11 RBIs.
Butterworth said the turnaround at Chesapeake came when his body finally felt right again.
“Everything was clicking,” he said of his time at Chesapeake. “My body was feeling good when I came back from injury. I was seeing the ball well, playing good defense.”
That injury was a left knee issue, and because he missed time, he’s spending part of his offseason getting extra at-bats with the Peoria Javelinas in the Arizona Fall League. He’s there with Orioles prospects Vance Honeycutt, Ike Irish and Patrick Reilly on a 35-player roster and support roster that also includes players from the Padres, Reds, Cardinals and Mariners.
“I’m having a blast here,” Butterworth said. “We’re playing five games a week. Our team is very close even though we’re from different organizations.”
Through 16 games, he’s batting .186 with a home run, eight RBIs and 13 walks.
“We’re treated like big leaguers here,” he said. “When we’re treated so well, you want to show up to the field every day with a great attitude.”
Butterworth has also noticed that the instruction he’s getting isn’t all that different from what he’s heard in other places.
“There’s many ways to teach a swing. There’s many ways to teach how to throw a slider, but at the end of the day, it’s still a baseball swing, and it still is a slider.”
What separates Butterworth in Baltimore’s system is the kind of player he can be on the field. He played six positions this season - second base, shortstop, third base and all three outfield spots.
That versatility started at N.C. State, where he played only shortstop and second, and San Diego had begun moving him to the outfield just before the trade.
The Orioles kept pressing that path.
“It’s something I hope they value just as much as I value,” Butterworth said. “I love being on the field.
I love being available. At any given moment, I feel like I can go out there and play any different position at a pretty high level.”
The Orioles already have a similar multiposition piece in Blaze Alexander, and Butterworth sees the appeal of that kind of player, especially with so many infielders in the big leagues. Baseball America ranks Butterworth as Baltimore’s 30th prospect.
“I understood why they wanted me to do it,” Butterworth said. ‘I loved it. I had a positive attitude about it the whole entire time.”
He also knows Alexander’s reputation as a high-energy player, and he saw that up close in August when Alexander was rehabbing his broken left hand at Norfolk.
“I’m always going to be the quick-twitch player with positivity,” he says. “I love the way Blaze plays. Just being around him, you can tell the energy that he brings.”
Speed is another part of Butterworth’s game that stands out. He stole 23 bases in 25 attempts this year, and he sees that as a weapon that affects everything he does.
“My speed, that’s important for my entire game,” Butterworth said. “Defense, trying to beat out a ground ball, stretching those singles into doubles and doubles into triples … I’m always trying to get that extra base.
“That gets the other team thinking a lot. It makes them rush. It makes them get uncomfortable.”
He also learned quickly that Triple-A is a different test.
“Triple-A, it’s a lot harder. The guys are a lot smarter,” Butterworth said.
“They understand what to do. They have better reports.
They have better execution.”
Now that he’s reached Norfolk, Camden Yards doesn’t feel far off. Butterworth said he’d tell the Orioles he’s ready whenever they call.
“The confident answer that I’d like to give to any Orioles’ front office guy if they ask me, is I’m ready to go tomorrow,” he said. “Send me to Camden tomorrow. I think I’m always going to have that chip on my shoulder…I’m always going to have that confidence that I can go play in the big leagues tomorrow because when I so get that opportunity, I want in my head to think that I’m 100 percent ready, and I’m 100 percent prepared to be there.”
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