Orioles' Fall League focus for Enrique Bradfield Jr. is sure to annoy fans

If you’re a Baltimore Orioles fan waiting for a young, first-round center fielder to come roaring out of the Fall League with louder contact and a blueprint for extra-base damage, this isn’t the update you wanted. Baltimore’s staff has Enrique Bradfield Jr. leaning even harder into the small-ball chapter of his skill set, turning the AFL into a lab for bunts, drags, and softly contested singles. 

It’s prudent in a vacuum, optimize the carrying tool, bank low-variance on-base events, but it also feels like shopping for a safe when what the 2026 roster could really use is a crowbar.

That’s where the frustration bubbles up. In a league increasingly won by slug in the air, Baltimore is doubling down on Bradfield’s floor rather than testing his ceiling. The Fall League is supposed to be the sandbox for swing decisions, bat speed challenges, and gap-to-gap intent, especially after a regular season clipped by two separate hamstring injuries. Instead, the headline moment so far is a bunt. An elite, blink-and-you-miss-it bunt, yes, but a bunt all the same. It plays as a philosophical tell: the Orioles want Bradfield to be a table-setter first, and Orioles fans were hoping to watch him start flipping tables.

Orioles bet on speed, not slug, with Enrique Bradfield Jr. this fall

Yes, Enrique Bradfield Jr. has been actively using bunting as part of his strategy in the Arizona Fall League. On October 21, 2025, he pushed one up the right side for a leadoff single, a perfect showcase for his speed game.

Statcast measured his home-to-first at 3.73 seconds on that play, the fastest recorded in the Fall League this year. That’s 80-grade speed doing 80-grade things, and there’s genuine value in weaponizing it.

But the Orioles aren’t simply living off tricks. The Fall League brief also includes offensive cleanup: refining approach after those hamstring stops and starts, testing a tweaked stance to live on time more often, and trusting a flat, line-drive swing to spray contact. The intent is sensible: get healthy, get on base, let speed breathe. If you believe his frame will always skew slender and his swing is built more for liners than loft, then bunting is just another on-ramp to OBP.

Here’s the rub: that same comfort zone is what has gotten Bradfield into trouble. When “soft contact” becomes a default rather than a counterpunch, big-league pitchers will smother it with elevated velocity and spin. Baltimore doesn’t need him to morph into a 25-homer threat; it needs him to threaten outfielders, regularly with balls that split alleys and rattle walls. Gap power isn’t a betrayal of his identity; it’s the thing that turns his speed from novelty into run creation. Doubles become triples. Shallow outfields become mistakes.

That’s why the AFL is the perfect time to push power, measured power. We’re talking selective aggression. Hunt a zone, drive it hard to the big part of the park, then let the 80 run tool turn good contact into crooked numbers. If Bradfield’s fall slate tilts too far toward the short game, Baltimore risks hard-coding him into a role that MLB game plans will quickly neutralize. Teams will take the bunt single and the occasional drag if it means they never have to respect the gaps.

So yes, fans are going to roll their eyes at another bunt highlight. Fair. The compromise isn’t complicated: keep the speed weapon sharp while demanding more intent through the middle of the field. If the Fall League ends with Bradfield proving he can both drop one perfectly and drive one authoritatively, then everybody wins, especially an Orioles lineup that needs more than chaos. It needs consequences.