This Orioles prospect may be Baltimore's fastest riser in 2026

Last year, the Baltimore Orioles saw previously unknown and undrafted pitching prospect Trey Gibson rise from High-A to Triple-A and fly up prospect rankings to the point where he is now widely considered a top 100 prospect and the best pitching prospect in the Orioles organization. This year, pitching prospect Esteban Mejia is poised to experience a similar ascent.

As a recently turned 19-year-old set to start the season in Low-A, Mejia is a bit younger and a bit farther from the majors than Gibson was to start the 2025 season. He was promoted to Low-A at the very end of the 2025 season and made only three starts there.

Those starts didn't go awesome, but there's always a learning curve when prospects move up a level. So, considering that Mejia was 18 years old playing at a level where his teammates included many of the players the Orioles had just drafted out of college, his 4.63 ERA and 10.8 K/9 are pretty impressive.

With just a few simple improvements Mejia could be one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball

With an offseason to grow into his body and adjust to what he saw in his first taste of Low-A, Mejia should be able to cruise through that level. His fastball, which has come in as hot as 102 mph, is simply too good for low-A hitters, even if Mejia wasn't combining the fastball with multiple good-decent secondary pitches.

The real factor that will determine whether Mejia reaches Double-A or stalls out in High-A will be whether he can hone his command. Mejia has never posted a BB/9 below 4.6. Even when he was blowing the doors off of kids in the Dominican Summer League and striking out 14.8 batters per nine, he was dealing with a lot of traffic on the bases because of how much he was walking batters. His stuff was pretty much unhittable if it was in the zone; he still has never given up a home run in his professional career, but he does struggle to throw strikes, which is why his ERA and WHIP have remained inflated.

There wasn't a single qualified starting pitcher last season that ran up a BB/9 over 4.5. The closest was Gavin Williams at 4.46. Looking at the leaderboard for BB/9 over the last few seasons, it would appear that the highest a pitcher can really go and still expect consistent success is about 3.3. So that should be Mejia's goal: walk 1.2 fewer batters per nine, and he's golden.

If Mejia takes a step forward from a command perspective this season, he'd almost certainly end the season in Double-A, making it the rare but possible two promotions in one season. If he can improve his command and take a step forward with his secondaries, either by improving his changeup or discovering a new pitch altogether, then finishing the season in Triple-A is on the table.