A year ago, Esteban Mejia looked like one of the Orioles’ brightest young arms. Now he’s facing a far different reality.
The Dominican right-hander arrived as a 2024 international signing and spent his first stateside season turning heads at Low-A Delmarva. As an 18-year-old, he put up a 2.45 ERA with 11.8 strikeouts per nine innings, and the stuff was every bit as loud as the numbers.
His fastball reached 102 mph, and he paired it with a changeup and a slider that gave hitters plenty to think about. MLB Pipeline had him all the way up to No. 8 in the Orioles’ system, while Baseball America ranked him among the 100 best prospects in the sport.
Josh Norris of Baseball America called his outings ones that “burrow in your brain and stay there for weeks.”
That was the version of Mejia that had people talking about a breakout in 2026.
Instead, 2026 became a nightmare.
Mejia returned to Delmarva and opened the year with a decent enough start at Salem, striking out six and walking three while allowing one hit over 4.1 innings. But the wheels came off quickly after that. In his home debut a week later, he didn’t make it out of the first inning, giving up three runs and five baserunners.
The control problems that had always lingered turned into something much worse. On April 17 in Fredericksburg, Mejia walked eight batters in just 2.1 innings, doubling his previous high for a single outing.
He threw 42 balls and 21 strikes, uncorked two wild pitches, and in the first inning alone walked the first three hitters, allowed two runs on a balk and a wild pitch, then walked the next two to force in another. For a pitcher who entered the season with a career 5.4 BB/9 rate, it was a stunning collapse.
He bounced back briefly in his next outing, striking out eight over four scoreless innings with just one walk. But that was a tease, not a turnaround. Over his next six starts, Mejia posted an 8.83 ERA and walked 26 batters in 17.1 innings, including three games with at least five walks.
By the end of June, the Orioles had seen enough. Mejia had made 15 starts, never reached five innings in any of them, and was sitting on an 8.08 ERA while averaging more than 12 walks per nine innings.
He was allowing fewer than one hit per inning, but the walks made the rest almost irrelevant. Baltimore removed him from the roster for a month and put him on the development list, where the club worked with him on a specialized throwing program in hopes of repairing his command.
The trouble only deepened after he returned.
His most jarring stretch came in back-to-back starts on July 29 and Aug. 4.
Combined, he faced 11 batters and retired none. Against Hickory, the sequence went single, single, hit by pitch, single, double, single, wild pitch, walk.
In the next outing, against Fredericksburg, he walked all four batters he faced and all four scored, pushing his ERA to 10.20.
There were a few brief signs of life in mid-August, when he put together three straight scoreless outings and issued only three walks in 8.1 innings. But that didn’t last.
On Aug. 27, he walked all three batters he faced against Fredericksburg. In his season finale on Sept. 6, he was tagged for six runs in 1.2 innings, the fourth time he gave up six or more runs in an outing.
The final line says plenty: 0-9, 9.80 ERA, 70 walks and six hit batters in 52.1 innings, for 12.0 walks per nine. For a pitcher who had been billed as a breakout candidate, it was a brutal reversal.
Mejia’s path back is now the big question. If his prospect stock is going to recover, it will take serious work, and maybe a complete mechanical reset. The Orioles have an offseason of figuring ahead of them, and the first item on the list is obvious: he has to throw strikes.
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