SARASTOA, Fla. — The back fields were quiet, major league spring training camp not yet underway.

For eight days, the Orioles gathered their eight brightest young players for a minicamp. Some, such as Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad, have spent time in the majors and are front-runners for spots on the opening day roster. Others, such as Coby Mayo, are right on that edge. Then there were Enrique Bradfield Jr., Dylan Beavers, Jud Fabian, Vance Honeycutt and Samuel Basallo, prospects who will spend the spring in major league camp before dispersing to Double-A or Triple-A.

All eight players will spend the spring alongside Orioles stars in camp. But these eight days were a chance to get one-on-one training with the major league staff and get acclimated before the madness begins.

This year was especially important, because the Orioles have two new hitting coaches. Sherman Johnson, who has been in the organization since 2023 and helped many of these prospects already, and Tommy Joseph, previously with the Seattle Mariners, will join Cody Asche as assistant hitting coaches.

“You get up here, and you are excited, and the environment’s overwhelming, and you are doing things for the first time, and you just worked really hard to show everybody what you can do, and now you get put into these new environments and things start getting funky, and you don’t know why,” Asche said. “Really, what that camp serves as is just training wheels to spring training.”

The days were similar to what camp will look like when full-squad workouts begin Tuesday. They arrived around 8 a.m. and started in the weight room at 9 a.m. Then they headed to the batting cages and later to the field to get hitting work in, followed by defense and sprinting work, all while getting individual feedback and directives.

“It’s nice to get here early and have one-on-one [time] with the hitting coaches and get their full attention before camp starts and there’s a lot of people here,” Mayo said. “Especially after the offseason, they get to look at video and stuff like that. It’s good to have their insight and what they see and everything.”

It’s not just about the fundamentals — although there is plenty of that — but also a chance for them to learn. The goal, Asche said, is for them to feel comfortable in a big league environment and to teach them that they don’t need to be perfect all the time.

All three hitting coaches remember what it was like to be the scared young guys. They hope this camp can alleviate those feelings.

“You can do your weird-looking drills in the cage, and like Cedric Mullins isn’t going to be like, ‘what the heck are you doing?’” Asche said. “Just feel comfortable with who you are as a person, as a player, give yourself the freedom to look bad every now and then because I think it’s cool to realize, like young guys can see like Gunnar [Henderson] hits the ball in the turtle sometimes in BP. Sometimes Gunnar takes rounds of BP where he wants to like throw his bat. Rutsch [Adley Rutschman] hits off the machine and it’s not perfect. So then they can go back to Triple-A and Doube-A and there can be a little more, ‘OK, when i’m working, it doesn’t need to look 100% perfect for me to be a big leaguer. It just has to be what’s right for my skill development.’”

Nearly everyone who has attended this camp has gone on to become a staple major league player: Henderson, Rutschman, Kyle Stowers, Joey Ortiz, Jordan Westburg, Connor Norby.

These eight expect to be the next in line.

“I just thought you can always take away something from everyone, whether you are in the cage there or just watching the other guys hit, just kind of watching them and how everyone goes about what they’re needing to do,” Bradfield said. “I had a great time.”