ATLANTA — No baseball player is satisfied with being in Triple-A.
The highest minor league level is a mix between the best prospects, who are just one more phone call away from the big leagues, and former MLB players who are looking for another crack at The Show.
Playing in Triple-A offers the hope — for some, a fleeting one — of a big league call-up. That’s why the reputation for a Triple-A atmosphere can be “sour” or “bitter,” according to Orioles youngsters Grayson Rodriguez and Kyle Stowers, respectively, both of whom spent time earlier this season with Baltimore’s top minor league affiliate, the Norfolk Tides.
But those words aren’t the ones the Orioles who came through Norfolk this season have used to describe the Tides. Instead, it’s “loaded,” “legit” and “talented.”
So far this season, the Tides have been crushing their Triple-A competition. With a 24-8 record for a .750 winning percentage after another victory Sunday, the Tides have the distinction as the best team in the minor leagues.
“It was fun to be a part of when I was down there,” said first baseman Ryan O’Hearn, who spent the first two weeks of the season with Norfolk and was optioned back there Thursday evening. “If you’ve got to be in Triple-A, that’s the kind of team you want to be on. That made it more fun to be kicking [butt] every night, being on a team that’s got that amount of talent.
“That team was head and shoulders better than every team that we played when I was there.”
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Norfolk is so good, pitcher Cole Irvin said, that his second start with the Triple-A squad was one of the most difficult starts of his career — for a peculiar reason. The Tides’ offense was so potent, scoring 17 runs in the first four innings, that Irvin said he had to warm up each inning.
“I’ve never sat that long before just to watch our offense go,” said Irvin, who opened the season with Baltimore but was sent down after three rough starts. “This team is really good. There’s a lot of talent.”
Norfolk’s hot start is no fluke, either. Entering Saturday’s games (the statistics to follow are all through Friday’s games), the club had outscored its opponents by a whopping 102 runs — more than any team in the minors and 50 more than the second-best in Triple-A.
The impressive run differential is a product of the Tides ranking first in the International League in runs scored (215, 7.17 per game) and runs allowed (113, 3.77 per game).
They have a the best earned-run average in Triple-A at 3.57 thanks to a starting rotation that, for most of the season, has consisted of four arms with major league experience — Irvin, Bruce Zimmermann, Spenser Watkins and DL Hall — and prospect Drew Rom, whose 2.87 ERA ranks sixth among qualified pitchers.
The top players leading the offense are Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg, ranked Nos. 2 and 4, respectively, among Orioles prospects still in the minors, according to Baseball America.
Westburg is tied for the team lead in RBIs with 28 and is second in home runs (seven) and OPS (.990). Cowser, meanwhile, is hitting .314 with a .455 on-base percentage that is third-best in the International League. He’s walked 25 times in 28 games, with five home runs and six doubles. The rest of the lineup includes top-100 prospects Connor Norby and Joey Ortiz, as well as former big leaguers Lewin Díaz, Terrin Vavra, Josh Lester and O’Hearn.
“It’s a loaded roster,” Rodriguez said. “The wins and the record are not surprising at all.”
The success isn’t a surprise for Rodriguez and Stowers because both came up through the Orioles’ minor league system and played on teams chock full of top prospects. For example, Double-A Bowie went 73-47 in 2021 as prospects Adley Rutschman, Stowers, Rodriguez and Hall all played for the Baysox.
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“It’s a lot like previous minor league teams I’ve been on,” Rodriguez, who spent one week in Norfolk this season before his call-up, said about the Tides. “A lot of competitiveness, just the want to win games. Triple-A teams can get kind of sour. It’s a mix of prospects and then some older guys. But I think [manager] Buck Britton has done a really good job of keeping a really good atmosphere. Of course, there’s a really talented group down there, a lot of guys that can play.”
Baysox manager Kyle Moore, who coached many of the players who are now in Norfolk, said the Tides are a “dream team.”
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“All the major prospects that have come through here, I kind of knew, based on what we had seen before, that they were going to be really good,” Moore said. “I expect them to win a ton of games. I think everyone in the organization did.”
O’Hearn and Stowers both marveled at the depth in Norfolk, naming players who would be placed in the top half of a normal Triple-A lineup who are at the bottom of the Tides’ order. Díaz, for example, often hits seventh despite sporting a team-best .995 OPS. The first baseman hit 39 home runs across his previous 603 at-bats in Triple-A between 2021 and 2022. Ortiz, who spent last weekend in the majors, owns the second-best batting average in the International League at .366, but the shortstop usually hits ahead of Díaz in the No. 6 hole.
“It’s just a crazy amount of talent,” said Stowers, who spent two weeks in April with Norfolk. “Triple-A can get the [reputation] of being people who are bitter, but that’s not what my experience was when I was there. We’re winning up here [in Baltimore], and I think because of that, we have a lot of guys who are hungry to get back up here. It’s really good energy.”
Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, a former minor league skipper, said it’s helpful to have a Triple-A team that has a similar winning culture to the one in Baltimore.
“There’s a winning aspect of player development,” he said. “You want to see players win together. It’s definitely a bonus. That’s a talented team down there. We got to see the majority of those guys in spring training and saw how talented they are.”
Hyde also realizes that the longer some players continue to excel in Triple-A, the harder that will make roster decisions for the Orioles, who are in a balancing act of having the second-best record in MLB and the sport’s No. 1 farm system.
But his message to the prospects in Norfolk who are hoping their success will soon earn them that phone call to join the big league club is simple: “Keep doing it.”