Baltimore Orioles Front Office Has Unprecedented Number of Top Picks in MLB Draft

The Baltimore Orioles have officially lost their two star free agents this winter.

Anthony Santander was always seen as the player most likely to depart since the Orioles have a tons of offensive talent coming up through the pipeline and he was coming off his career-best year. In the past, there would have been no chance that Corbin Burnes would have been re-signed, but the new ownership group allowed the front office to make a real run at retaining him.

Alas, both will now suit up for different teams.

Baltimore looks worse on paper at this point in time, but there's a chance they have a higher ceiling than they've had before considering their top prospects are virtually all going to be contributors this year and the pitching staff is deeper than it's been the past few seasons.

The hope is the secondary wave of youngsters (Jackson Holliday, Colton Cowser, Heston Kjerstad, Coby Mayo) supplement the first (Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg).

If that happens, then the third wave that comes up, led by Samuel Basallo, will be icing on the cake for what could be a group that becomes a dynasty should everyone reach their ceilings.

While that is looking far into the future, it's something general manager Mike Elias and his front office have to do when it comes to building a perennial contender, especially because it could get to the point where they start trading more of their top-ranked prospects to supplement the Major League roster around the deadline going forward.

One of the positives that has come from losing Burnes and Santander is the draft pick compensation the Orioles have received since they extended both a qualifying offer and they each signed a deal worth over $50 million.

Because of that, Baltimore is going to get the 30th pick and what is expected to be the 31st or 32nd pick in the upcoming draft, and according to Steve Melewski of MASN, Elias and his front office are going to have an unprecedented amount of top picks this year.

"So that would be picks 19, 30, 31, 59, 71 and 94. This would be the first time since he came to Baltimore that Mike Elias and his staff would have three picks in the first 35 and six in the top 100," he writes.

That is massive for the Orioles.

It's pretty clear this front office has been able to make the right selections when it comes to their top picks in the past.

Elias took over in November 2018.

Here are some of his top selections since being hired as the GM:

-Adley Rutschman (No. 1 overall 2019)
-Jackson Holliday (No. 1 overall 2022)
-Heston Kjerstad (No. 2 overall 2020)
-Colton Cowser (No. 5 overall 2021)
-Enrique Bradfield Jr. (No. 17 overall 2023)
-Vance Honeycutt (No. 22 overall 2024)
-Jordan Westburg (No. 30 overall 2020)
-Connor Norby (No. 41 overall 2021)
-Gunnar Henderson (No. 42 overall 2019)
-Kyle Stowers (No. 71 overall 2019)
-Coby Mayo (No. 103 overall 2020)
-Joey Ortiz (No. 108 overall 2019)

That is quite the haul of star prospects and players.

With six more picks coming in this range during the upcoming draft, Elias has another opportunity to bring in a bevy of top prospects.