This week in Minor League Baseball for the Orioles farm system saw a lot of rain and a couple of interesting debuts.
There’s no need to wait. Let’s get right into which O’s prospects shined this week for each affiliate.
Triple-A Norfolk: Jeremiah Jackson – INF / Grant Wolfram – LHP
As most Tides pitchers failed to have a good week, one pitcher in particular continued a perfect month, including an outing where he gave up his first hit of June.
That pitcher is 28-year-old lefty Grant Wolfram, who would make two appearances this week, not allowing a run, which continued a stretch of zero runs allowed.
Wolfram has gone six straight games and seven of his last eight outings without allowing a run, totaling 10 innings during that time.
For June alone, Wolfram has pitched six innings with eight strikeouts, one hit given up and two walks. Opponents are hitting .050 against him for the month, and he has pitched to a WHIP of 0.50.
For the year, Wolfram finds himself 1-3 across 18 games with three holds. He has totaled 20.1 innings with the Tides, accumulating a 4.87 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP while holding opponents to a .268 average. He has accumulated 20 strikeouts to seven walks and has yet to allow a home run this season.
Jeremiah Jackson put together one of his best series of the season, watching his batting average for the month rise .119 points in the process. He is now slashing .391/.404/.717/1.121 in June.
Jackson put together a 10-for-22 (.455 avg) series, which included a home run and two doubles. The 25-year-old infielder also picked up four RBIs, two runs and a stolen base while striking out just twice during the series.
For the season, Jackson is slashing .279/.311/.468/.779 with eight home runs, 27 RBIs and 62 hits across 56 games.
Double-A Chesapeake: Adam Retzbach – C/1B / Nestor German – RHP
Seeing Adam Retzbach have a career year is something we have been waiting for, and that continued after the exceptional series he had this past week.
Retzbach posted a 1.285 OPS while having a slash line of .350/.435/.850 for the week. The 24-year-old had seven hits, three home runs and knocked in five RBIs.
Retzbach is eight hits away from having a career-high in a season, and he is going to do it in almost 30 less games. Retzbach leads the Baysox with a .830 OPS and 25 RBIs. The former 14th-round pick is the definition of underrated.
On the pitching side, we have a top 30 prospect who continues to dominate at the Double-A.
German tossed six scoreless innings of one-hit baseball in his lone outing this week, walking one and striking out six. The game was called after six innings due to rain, but his outing against Harrisburg earned him Eastern League Pitcher of the Week honors.
To end the month of May, German gave up 10 earned runs in 8.2 innings between two games. To start the month of June, German has gone 11.2 innings without allowing an earned run and has only allowed two hits. He has a season ERA of 3.53 in 51 innings of work.
High-A Aberdeen: Aron Estrada – INF / Sebastian Gongora – LHP
The Pitcher of the Week for the IronBirds is a new one to this list, however extremely deserving.
Sebastian Gongora spun one heck of an outing in his win on Thursday. This outing marked the second for Gongora at the High-A level, with this one totaling 5.1 innings.
The 23-year-old left-hander allowed just one hit to go along with five strikeouts on the day. In his two games with Aberdeen, he has pitched to a 1.04 ERA with 10 strikeouts.
Offensively, 20-year-old infielder Aron Estrada takes the cake this week.
During his four games, Estrada hit safely seven times in 19 at-bats. That included three multi-hit games, 11 total bases and just two total strikeouts all week.
This puts Estrada at just under 200 at-bats on the season, with a .286 average,.760 OPS and 23 stolen bases.
Low-A Delmarva: Elis Cuevas – INF / Yeiber Cartaya – RHP
At the age of 20, we wished more people knew of Elis Cuevas.
This past series, Cuevas slashed .315/.381/.632 with a 1.013 OPS, collecting six hits, two home runs and driving in six RBIs, while also going 3-for-3 in stolen base attempts.
Cuevas has spent time between Delmarva and rookie ball and has put up impressive numbers: 25 hits, four doubles, two home runs and 11 RBIs on the season. Cuevas has seven stolen bases on the season as well.
Yeiber Cartaya continues to show out in Delmarva.
The 22-year-old came in relief and went five innings of three-hit, one-run baseball with an impressive season-high nine strikeouts.
While Cartaya is dominating, his statistical numbers say otherwise. The Venezuelan native has a 4.86 ERA, yet he is holding batters to a .192 batting average, which is a career-low.
Cartaya has had a big of a control issue, as he has walked 35 batters and hit 11 of them. Just a little command work, and this guy can be a big-time arm moving forward.
What do you think of our picks this week? Let us know in the comments below! Make sure to follow The Baltimore Battery on Facebook, X, Bluesky and TikTok, and use the hashtag #baltimorebattery when sharing our content!
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