When the Orioles made their biggest move at the 2025 trade deadline, the deal came with plenty of noise and a fair amount of frustration. Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano went to the Padres in a seven-player swap that brought back five prospects, and the reaction from a big chunk of the fan base was immediate grumbling. O’Hearn was headed for free agency, but Laureano still had another season of team control left, so the move felt to some like Baltimore was giving up on a useful 2026 piece.
As it turned out, Laureano didn’t exactly make the case for regret. He posted a .660 OPS for San Diego this year and later suffered a season-ending labrum injury in May.
The prospect return, though, was enough for Mike Elias to pull the trigger. The centerpiece was left-hander Boston Bateman, who has already become one of the Orioles’ better pitching prospects and will get his own breakdown elsewhere.
Two others, infielder Cobb Hightower and right-hander Tyson Neighbors, haven’t helped their stock much. Hightower played only 18 games before ACL surgery, while Neighbors finished with an 8.82 ERA in 33 minor league outings.
That leaves Victor Figueroa and Brandon Butterworth, two names that won’t light up a prospect list but did enough in 2026 to put themselves on the radar.
Butterworth is the more versatile of the pair, and the defensive reputation came first. The Padres took him in the 12th round in 2024 out of NC State, and when Baltimore got him last July, he was already having a solid year at High-A with a .782 OPS and 155 total bases, third-most in the league. Even then, the bat wasn’t what drew the most attention.
FanGraphs ranked Butterworth as Baltimore’s No. 27 prospect in May and described him as a “plus glove” with “great hands and a strong arm.” Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski wrote, “He has plenty of range for the position, but what really stands out is the speed with which he gobbles a grounder, transfers, and fires accurately from any angle.”
The Orioles have tested that versatility all over the field. This season in the minors, Butterworth started at least eight games each at second base, shortstop, third base, left field, and center field.
Shortstop was his most common spot, with 33 games there. Butterworth summed up his own mindset this way: “Whatever gets me in the lineup, I’ll catch if you guys need me to, it doesn’t matter,” Butterworth told PressBoxOnline.
The question has always been whether the glove would be enough. FanGraphs projected him as a future utility infielder, while adding, “Butterworth isn’t going to hit much.”
This year, though, he hit more than expected. After opening at Double-A Chesapeake, where he had posted a .677 OPS in 34 games the year before, Butterworth broke out in a big way. In 52 games, he put up a .269/.377/.497 line, all career highs, and launched 10 home runs with 22 extra-base hits.
A knee injury in early May slowed him down and kept him out for two months, but once he returned, he came back scorching. Over his first 27 games off the injured list, Butterworth hit .294 with a .953 OPS.
That run earned him a promotion to Triple-A Norfolk, where the 24-year-old was more than three years younger than the average player. The jump proved tougher, and he hit .208/.296/.396 in 28 games.
Because of the time he missed, the Orioles are sending Butterworth to the Arizona Fall League for more reps. His glove looks ready for the majors, but the 5-foot-9 utility man still has to prove he can hit enough to carve out a bench role. He’s survived, and at times excelled, at every stop so far, and Triple-A is the next hurdle on the way toward a possible late-2027 debut.
Figueroa brings a very different profile. He is not a glove-first player, and he’s not built around a contact-heavy game. The 6-foot-5 first baseman is all about power, and the ball left the yard often enough to make him one of the system’s most interesting bats.
He led all Orioles minor leaguers with 27 home runs this season, including 22 for High-A Frederick before a late-July move to Chesapeake, where he added five more. That was a major step forward from 2025, when he didn’t hit a homer in 98 plate appearances after joining the organization.
The 22-year-old was drafted by the Padres in the 18th round in 2024 out of Florida SouthWestern State College, and FanGraphs ranked him No. 33 in May. Longenhagen and Gawlowski wrote, “Figueroa has real thunder in his hands and enough juice to hit for power the opposite way, which he must because his swing’s length causes him to spray most of his well-struck contact that way,” They added, “He’s a stiff-legged guy and below-average athlete, a one-tool player with enough power to carry some value despite his issues.”
Those issues are real, and they’re loud. Figueroa struck out in more than 30% of his plate appearances this season and finished with 155 strikeouts. That kind of swing-and-miss makes the road to the majors a steep one, and it means he’ll need to tighten things up if he’s going to be more than an organizational bat.
He also showed extreme splits. Against right-handers, Figueroa posted a .935 OPS and hit 24 home runs. Against lefties, his OPS dropped to .638, and he managed only three homers in 109 plate appearances.
Neither Butterworth nor Figueroa looks like a future star, and the odds say neither one is likely to have a long big league run. But there is a path where both become useful in some way: Butterworth as a bench utility type, Figueroa as a power-hitting reserve.
It isn’t glamorous, but teams need players like that. The Orioles just have to figure out how to build around them with more impact talent.
In Other News...
Orioles Fans Will Love What Happened To The Yankees In Game 1
The Yankees opened the ALDS by running into the kind of October trouble Orioles fans know how to appreciate, as the Rays came within a single hit of a no-hitter and left New York staring at a 1-0 loss. It was the sort of postseason game that can change a series mood in a hurry, especially against a division rival, and it gave Baltimore supporters a fresh reason to enjoy the view from afar as the playoffs rolled on.
Around the rest of the bracket, the Division Series had no shortage of drama, with wins for the White Sox and Dodgers and a tight Brewers-Padres game adding to the mix. For Orioles fans, the bigger picture is less about who advanced than about watching a familiar rival get squeezed in a high-stakes opener, while the postseason reminders of Baltimores own history keep hanging in the background. [Read more 🡒]
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Baltimore will be keeping a close eye on how that progress carries over against AFL competition, because Reilly is trying to turn a promising return into something more durable. For a pitcher whose development has already been interrupted once, this is a chance to make the club think again about his ceiling and whether he can still track toward a major league role in 2027. [Read more 🡒]
Orioles Enter Spring With One Defensive Decision Looming
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The biggest question is where the adjustments come from, and the outfield is the likeliest place to watch. Baltimore is expected to spend spring training drilling fundamentals while sorting through roster choices that could improve the run prevention behind the pitching staff, giving this camp a practical edge even before the games start counting. [Read more 🡒]