SARASOTA, Fla. — Vance Honeycutt is liking his new normal.
His entire life, the 2024 first-round pick had to figure out how to balance baseball with school, extracurriculars and everything that came with being a student-athlete. Now, as a full-time member of the Orioles’ farm system, he’s finally able to spend the majority of his days focused on the game — with just enough of a work-life balance for some fishing in between.
“This is the spot that you want to be in as a player,” Honeycutt said Tuesday at the Orioles’ Buck O’Neil Baseball Complex, where the club holds minor league spring training. “You work your whole life to get to this spot. So, just continuing to try to get better, make adjustments, make improvements and just have fun along the way.”
Honeycutt, 21, has all the tools to be the next prized position player to emerge from the Orioles’ development system as a star at the major league level. He set the program record with 28 home runs in 62 games for North Carolina last season while amassing 28 stolen bases and winning his second ACC Defensive Player of the Year Award for his performance in center field.
The major question mark surrounding Honeycutt’s profile — and the reason he was available for the Orioles to select at No. 22 overall — was his contact ability. Honeycutt struck out in 26.2% of his plate appearances at UNC and that trend continued in his brief stints with Low-A Delmarva and High-A Aberdeen at the end of the summer.
In addition to putting in the reps to improve his pitch recognition with his work in the batting cages over the offseason and live bullpen sessions this spring, Honeycutt also implemented some tweaks to his mechanics by adjusting the angle his bat travels through the strike zone and beginning his load earlier in his swing cycle to maximize his chances of making contact.
“The things we’re working on [are] just going to give me more room for error in the zone,” Honeycutt said. “Whether that’s the swing plane or whether that’s getting up early, seeing pitches longer, things like that.”
Honeycutt also made it a goal in the weight room to get more “explosive,” focusing on lower-body muscle groups to help him generate more power and speed. As he prepares for his first full season in the minors, the young outfielder is focused on rounding out his game to become the complete player the Orioles envisioned when they drafted him.
“It’s some physical adjustments here and there but just continuing to work on those things,” Honeycutt said. “You can do all these things in the cage, all these things off of [fastballs from] a BP arm, but once you get into lives, you really see if this stuff plays. So, there’s definitely been adjustments and I think it’s going well so far.”
Reilly entered a new school of thought
Patrick Reilly has only been a member of the Orioles’ organization for a little over seven months, but the right-hander has already experienced stark differences between Baltimore’s approach to pitching development and that of his former organization, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“The Orioles really are all [encompassing] with their data and information, and I think we have so much to learn about that with everything that they offer, especially the in-house stuff that we use,” Reilly said. “The Pirates, not that they weren’t data-focused, but I think it was more personal-focused. I think it was a little bit more person-to-person, the development stages and how every pitcher wants to be developed. … A little bit old school-er pitching methodology, compared to the Orioles.”
The Orioles acquired Reilly, 23, from the Pirates for second baseman and outfielder Billy Cook at last season’s deadline, bolstering the pitching side of a farm system that had become position-player-heavy. Reilly went straight to Double-A and posted a 3.73 ERA with 38 strikeouts in 31 1/3 innings, earning the No. 10 spot on MLB Pipeline’s top 30 Orioles prospect rankings.
Reilly believes he stands to benefit from implementing tidbits he picked up from both the Pirates and Orioles, including Baltimore’s notes on leaning into his high approach angle to help his breaking pitches play bigger and a few new pitches he can introduce to his repertoire.
“That’s been the real big focus this offseason is really honing in some of the breaking balls and some of the stuff against left-handed hitters,” Reilly said. “So, there’s been addition of a curveball/gyro-slider, which is pretty much the same thing but it’s something new to me. And then a lot of splitter work, just because it’s a nice weapon against the lefties, and because of my approach angle and how steep it is, it’s going to play [like it has more] depth here than the numbers might say, which helps me.”
How Gibson unlocked his velocity
Few Orioles prospects have seen their stock rise more in the past year than Trey Gibson, a former undrafted free agent who signed with Baltimore in 2023. After struggling in the Cape Cod League earlier in the year, he made just one appearance with the club’s rookie ball team before spending the offseason working on his mechanics to pump his velocity up to 99 mph.
“Freshman year of college, I ran it up to the mid nineties but I got sidelined with an injury and never really got back to that shape, trying to change the mechanics or never fully got healthy, whatever it may be,” Gibson said. “But yeah, I throw that baby hard.”
At the Orioles’ direction, the Liberty product started closely tracking his center of mass acceleration, a key statistic for any pitcher focused on generating more power in their delivery. Listed at 6 feet 5, 240 pounds, Gibson has the frame to be a power pitcher and his build lends itself to the profile of a starter if he can build out the rest of his repertoire.
The right-hander already throws what he calls a “death ball,” a gyro slider with mostly vertical movement that already stands out as an effective strikeout pitch. He said the Orioles have encouraged him to tinker with a fourth breaking pitch in spring, another version of the slider.
“The biggest thing when I first signed with the Orioles was that they sat me down, told me I had some few things to work on,” Gibson said. “Those things were like trunk stacking and how it was loading to my back leg as I was getting down the mound. That first offseason, really hammered those goals. They had some good payoff, and kind of keeping that same mindset this past offseason, making sure I’m still hitting those checkmarks that I have been and keep going. The thing I’m working on right now is trying to get deeper into my back leg.”
Overn brings the leg kick back
It was only 21 games, but Austin Overn announced his presence in the Orioles’ farm system with authority last year hitting .280 with five doubles, three triples and 16 stolen bases across 93 plate appearances with Delmarva and Aberdeen. The third-round pick out of Southern California carried over the success he enjoyed in the Cape Code League earlier that summer, a run he attributed to a swing change he decided to make on his own.
“After the season at USC, I just wanted to go back to my old swing, my old mindset at the plate and I felt like doing that was probably the best decision I made,” Overn said. “Because going to the Cape, the coaches were super lenient on your approach. They weren’t really tweaking with your swing and stuff. So, I just kind of went in there, got back to my old self and started hitting again and it was great to see that.”
Overn brought back the leg kick he had ditched with the Trojans, feeling much better about his timing after “feeling like a statue in the box” without it. So far, he’s intent on keeping that leg kick around while incorporating the Orioles’ suggestions to help get more backspin on his line drives by giving his swing angle more of an “upward finish” so that they drop in the gaps for hits instead of opposing outfielders’ gloves,
The biggest adjustment so far, however, has been catching up to the increased velocity he saw in High-A, forcing him to key in on each pitcher’s delivery from the on-deck circle to ensure he’s starting his load at the right time.
“It was a little eye opening for me at first, because I could tell I was getting blown up by some fastballs,” Overn said. That was the jump from Delmarva to Aberdeen. I could tell the biggest factor is kids are throwing a lot more strikes and their secondary pitches are landing in the zone. I felt like Delmarva, I was walking a lot. Aberdeen, I still walked a little bit but definitely was striking out more than I wanted to. But yeah, timing there is a big factor.
“Working on that with high velocity machine work, foam balls, just kind of making sure I’m getting my foot down before. Just a little bit earlier because everyone is throwing 95-plus and being on time for that fastball has got to be my No. 1 priority.”
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