The Orioles may have plenty of prospects worth watching, but Aron Estrada keeps standing out in a different way: he just keeps hitting. The 21-year-old switch-hitting infielder spent most of this season at Double-A Chesapeake, and he backed up the kind of year that makes a player easy to root for. He hit .281/.325/.482 over 128 games there, then got a handful of games at Triple-A Norfolk over the final week of the season.
Estrada has built this reputation the old-fashioned way. Signed for $175,000 out of the 2022 international amateur class, he entered pro ball as the sort of player scouts love to tag as “undersized.”
He’s listed at under six feet and 142 pounds, which has long fed the familiar line that he’d have to prove himself at every stop. So far, that’s exactly what he’s done.
The production has been there for three straight years. He hit well in Delmarva two years ago, then again in Aberdeen last season, and now he’s carried it into Chesapeake while being young for every level he’s played.
At Double-A, he was facing competition that averaged about two and a half years older than he was. He handled it.
The biggest change in Estrada’s game this season was power. After hitting nine homers in 2024 and 10 in 2025, he jumped to 25 this year.
That came with a small rise in strikeouts, but his strikeout rate still sat at 17.9% for the season. Compared with the Orioles’ major league club, which struck out 24.8% of the time, that’s a very different kind of offensive profile.
Still, there’s a wrinkle here. Minor league home run totals spiked all over the place this season, and Estrada’s jump has to be viewed in that light.
Baseball America’s JJ Cooper pointed out that last year only 18 minor leaguers reached 25 homers; this year, 75 players got there. Estrada was one of the 57 additional names, which is good news, but it leaves the obvious question hanging: how much of this was real growth, and how much was a power-friendly environment that may not follow him to next year or to Baltimore?
The advanced numbers add another layer to that debate. Over the previous two seasons, Estrada posted wRC+ marks of 129 and 135.
This year, despite the stronger-looking power output, he finished at 100, which is league average. That’s not a bad thing at all, especially for a player whose main position has been second base.
If the Orioles ever got league-average offense from that spot, they’d take it in a heartbeat.
His season didn’t start smoothly. Estrada opened with a .624 OPS in April, and that early stretch clearly shaped some outside evaluations.
FanGraphs, in a belated preseason ranking released in mid-May, placed him 25th among Orioles prospects and wrote that “the swing itself is scary,” with concern about how his left-handed swing would handle average-or-better velocity up in the strike zone. That ranking also pointed to his early Double-A struggles.
But after April, Estrada settled in. He posted an OPS of .850 or better in each of the next four months, which looks a lot like a player adjusting to the level rather than one stuck at it.
He also split the season very differently from each side of the plate. Batting left-handed against righties, Estrada posted an .873 OPS and hit 22 of his 25 homers.
As a right-handed hitter against lefties, he managed a .662 OPS with three homers. That’s the kind of split that will matter when the Orioles decide how to view him going forward, especially since his weaker side is the side that faces lefties.
There’s disagreement about where he belongs defensively. FanGraphs projected him for left field, while other rankings have been more confident he can stay at second base.
Before the season, he was 13th on the Camden Chat composite prospect list, reflecting that broader belief in his value as an infielder. The Orioles have moved him around in the past, but in 2026 he played only second base or designated hitter, which suggests the organization may be leaning into his future at second rather than treating him as a utility option.
That matters because Estrada is heading into an important offseason. He becomes Rule 5 Draft eligible, so the Orioles will need to add him to the 40-man roster in November if they want to protect him. That also means he’ll be locked out with the rest of the 40-man group if Triple-A starts while the lockout is still in place.
The next step is obvious enough: he has to show it at Norfolk. If he can do that in his age-22 season, he puts himself on a path toward a big league role by Opening Day 2028, if not before. For a player who keeps outperforming the labels attached to him, that next test feels like the right one.
In Other News...
Pete Alonso Is Chasing A Baltimore Milestone MLB Has Never Seen
Pete Alonso has been one of the most dangerous run producers in the game this season, and his latest push is putting him in position to reach a place no hitter has ever reached before. Now with the Orioles, Alonso leads the American League with 108 RBIs, a mark that trails only the kind of season-ending pace that has made him a fixture in the middle of a lineup built to score in bunches.
What makes the chase stand out from a Baltimore perspective is the broader history attached to it. Alonso already led the National League in RBIs in 2022 with the Mets, and if he finishes on top again he would become the first player in MLB history to lead both leagues in different seasons. He is also in the mix to lead both leagues in home runs after reaching 40 this year, giving the Orioles a late-season storyline that sits well beyond the usual box-score drama. [Read more 🡒]
Orioles Wild Card Push Just Got A Brutal Late Twist
Steady rain washed out Tuesdays game against the Blue Jays at Camden Yards, pushing the Orioles into a split-admission doubleheader Wednesday at a point in the season when every game seems to carry postseason weight. Baltimore holds a two-game margin in the Wild Card race, so the lost night matters less as a standalone postponement than as another test of a schedule that has already been cramped by weather.
It is the fourth time this season the Orioles have been forced into a doubleheader because of a postponement, a grind that can ripple through a pitching staff and a lineup trying to stay fresh down the stretch. On the front office side, Baltimore also added Ty Holub as a senior analyst in domestic scouting, another move aimed at sharpening the organizations long view even as the present keeps demanding attention. [Read more 🡒]
Orioles May Be Facing The Mike Elias Question Fans Dread
Mike Elias has been the Orioles top baseball voice since November 2018, and in that time he has helped steer the club from rebuild mode into a stretch that has included playoff appearances. He has earned credit for turning the organizations prospect pipeline into a real major league foundation and for making trades that fit the long-view plan, which is no small thing for a franchise that spent years trying to climb out of the basement.
Still, the bigger question hanging over Camden Yards is whether that success has been enough to get Baltimore from contender to true force. Elias has said he expects to be back next season, but there remains a growing sense that the Orioles may need a different kind of leadership push if they are going to break through to the next level rather than keep circling around it. [Read more 🡒]