Each time Triple-A Norfolk takes the field, the fruit of the Orioles’ multiple years of high draft picks — earned with all of those losses — is on display in one of minor league baseball’s most imposing lineups. For most of the first month of the minor league season, Norfolk has boasted at least four top-100 prospects on a nightly basis and the Tides have ridden that to a 19-7 start, best in the International League.

Even with the Orioles’ hot start deservedly gaining attention, there’s plenty worth paying attention to with the Tides. Hitting coach Brink Ambler, who worked with many of these players at Low-A Delmarva back in 2021, has a unique perspective on how some of the organization’s top prospects are performing as they push for major league rolls.

“It’s really exciting, first of all,” Ambler said. “For me, it makes it pretty easy because these guys are so intrinsically driven, they have such high motors and such high desires to grow that there’s not a whole lot of convincing or things that you have to do. When you think that you genuinely have something you have to help them, they’re usually all-in and want to hear — what have you got? We have a really great group as far as that’s concerned. At this level, there can be egos involved and things like that, but all of our guys have been excellent so far this year about handling the situation, trying to dive into their work as best as they can, just getting as good as they can possibly get.”

With Ambler’s help, here’s a breakdown of some of the top prospects at Norfolk and how they performed in April.

Colton Cowser

The Orioles’ 2021 top pick and No. 4 prospect according to Baseball America reached Triple-A last year in his first full professional season and needed a couple weeks to get going — he had a .503 OPS with 23 strikeouts in 12 games over his first two series there, then a .976 OPS the rest of the way.

This spring was a similar story. Cowser had a .329 OPS in the first seven games for the Tides, and has a 1.201 OPS in 18 games since, walking 16 times against 18 strikeouts with four home runs in that span. Ambler said early on, Cowser was being challenged with elevated fastballs in a way he’s never seen before, and because it was working, opposing pitchers kept attacking him that way. They had a conversation about sticking to Cowser’s “core principles” — maintaining a good neutral position, thinking through the middle of the field, moving slowly and under control — then wrote them down and made a point to keep revisiting them daily.

“It sounds like such a huge oversimplification but honestly, I feel like sometimes that’s the way it is,” Ambler said. “Sometimes, the more complicated guys try to make their adjustments, the worse it can be — especially for a guy like Colton who’s so, so talented. His strike zone awareness is so elite, his contact ability is so elite. Just freeing himself up and being able to use the whole field, line to line, line drives, hard contact, that is when he’s at his best, so if he’s in positions where he’s able to just be him, he’s unbelievable. That’s all it was.”

Ambler said Cowser’s plate discipline is being used in a more advanced way this year as well.

“He is being so stingy that it’s tough for some of these guys to really throw chase pitches to him because he’s not swinging at them right now, which is the biggest difference to me,” Ambler said. “He’s earning a lot of pitches in the middle and he’s looking to do damage on them in early counts. He’s not waiting to get to a two-strike count and try to battle his way out and hope he can get on base. He’s actively looking for pitches that he’s hunting in early and plus counts, which is a huge difference-maker for him because he’s so good that if he gets it, it’s over.”

Based on batted ball data from April, that’s resulted in Cowser’s quality of contact spiking from last year’s levels. Over three levels in 2022, 33.7% of his batted balls were 95 mph or harder. This year, that’s at 41.3%, with his 90th-percentile exit velocity up from 103.5 mph to 105. To Ambler’s point, he seems to also be doing more damage on fastballs, which is likely a symptom of pitchers needing to come back into the zone as he has maintained a low chase rate of 19% in the first month.

Joey Ortiz

Ortiz made a well-earned major league debut with the Orioles this week, contributing to their win on Thursday in Detroit and starting three times before being sent back to Norfolk to make way for a returning Kyle Stowers.

He got a late start to Norfolk’s season as he worked his way back from a spring training concussion, and wasn’t himself early. Ambler said that in Nashville, he looked “pretty sped up and was swinging at pitches he doesn’t usually swing at,” resulting in contact quality that was below the standard Ortiz set in the second half of 2022. They looked at some video and Ambler pointed out some areas where Ortiz may have been backsliding into his first-half tendencies, before Ortiz and then-Bowie hitting coach Branden Becker moved Ortiz’s hand placement and unlocked his full potential.

“OK, I’ll work on that,” Ortiz told him.

Ambler said: “He literally figured it out and got back to the position he was in last year, and once that happened, the batted ball quality was literally like a video game — it was unbelievable. Everything he hit was 105+ [mph] at some line-drive angle, and it didn’t matter what pitch type it was, didn’t matter the velo, didn’t matter where in the zone it was. It was unbelievable, and he was drawing walks, so his at-bats the last couple of weeks were off the charts. It was almost as if you went into Madden and boosted the percentiles all the way up to 99. In our system, where we’re checking out and seeing how guys are performing in some of the big key quadrants that we value, the last 15 games or whatever for him was I think every single category was 95th percentile or higher. It was just unbelievable what he was doing.”

Ortiz returns to Norfolk with a an .889 OPS, including a 1.137 OPS in the 10 games since the middle of that Nashville series. His batted ball data from 2022 doesn’t paint a full picture considering he was so much better in the second half than the first, but in 2022, 28.2% of his batted balls were over 95 mph. In Norfolk, 63.6% of his batted balls were, with his 90th percentile exit velocity at 108.5 mph. For comparison’s sake, only three qualified major leaguers have a hard-hit rate higher than Ortiz’s this year: Joey Gallo, Matt Chapman and Aaron Judge.

Jordan Westburg

Considering Westburg spent most of 2022 in Norfolk and performed at a level that in many other circumstances would warrant a call to the majors, then made a strong impression in spring training, his continued presence in Triple-A has all the potential to frustrate him and affect his performance.

It has not.

After winning Orioles minor league player of the year honors with an .869 OPS there last season, he’s up to .928 in 91 plate appearances this year with five home runs. Ambler believes that comes from the intrinsic motivation and attention to detail that defines Westburg.

“Westy is a different beast,” Ambler said. “He’s a guy who has proven himself at this level to be able to handle everything that comes his way. Now, the league still tries to adjust and he counters it, but he is the picture of consistency. ... It’s exciting to get to see him now start to click and settle in, and it’s been really good for him to get a chance to continue that work and continue to show what he can do.”

Having such high standards can be challenging when a player doesn’t meet them, but that’s not been the case with Westburg.

“He’s very precise, he’s got very high standards about what he expects out of himself, but at the same time he’s an ultimate professional,” Ambler said. “When he has a tough day, he’s the exact same guy no matter what as if he had an unbelievable day and hit two homers and is hot as fire. So, you can see his professionalism in that way, and his experience, and having been around this level.”

The underlying data supports the improvement from Westburg so far this season. He’s raised his hard-contact rate from 36.5% in 2022 to 48.3%, with his 90th percentile exit velocity up to 106.9 mph from 104.3.

Kyle Stowers

Stowers broke camp with the Orioles this season, but major league playing time was scarce and the Orioles sent him to Norfolk to play every day and prepare for a time when opportunities may be more plentiful in the majors — a time that may have come Sunday when he was recalled in Ortiz’s place.

The sporadic at-bats that first week-plus made it hard for him to get into any kind of groove, and Ambler admired how cleareyed Stowers was about that when he arrived. The slugging outfielder was honest about trying to see as many pitches as possible and get comfortable early on, and as his time with the Tides progressed, that played out exactly as everyone hoped. He hit three home runs in Norfolk’s doubleheader Friday to give him five in 75 Triple-A plate appearances with a .996 OPS before he was recalled Sunday.

“I think you started to see, as the time has gone on and being down here, that he’s starting to settle in a little bit more,” Ambler said Saturday, before Stowers was recalled. “He’s controlling the zone a little better, and [Friday] he exploded with a little bit of power. I think for him that’s what it is — getting to the player that we know that he is and just letting that show. I think he’s done a nice job so far and I know that he wants to continue that and show that he can go up and be a really productive player up there for us.”

Connor Norby

Of all the well-regarded prospects in Norfolk this month, only one — Norby — has struggled to acclimate to the level. The 2021 second-round pick earned a brief taste of Norfolk at the end of his first full season last year, but entered May with a .675 OPS in 111 plate appearances.

Ambler said that like Cowser, Triple-A pitchers have keyed on a way to get Norby out and are forcing him to adjust to it. Specifically, the ability for pitchers to locate two-seam fastballs that move in toward Norby — who knows he still has to honor the multiple different breaking balls a pitcher might have that move away from him — has created a challenge for last year’s organizational home run leader to combat.

“It’s a matter of, as simple as it is, being on time,” Ambler said. “The worst thing that can happen to Norby is when he gets in-between speeds where he’s not quite on the fastball but not quite on the breaking ball either. It’s honestly, for him, as good as his bat is, it’s like — can you be on-time and can you get a good pitch to hit? If those two things are checked off, the rest of it is going to fill in.”

Nothing that’s happened so far has changed Ambler’s estimation that Norby is “an elite, elite bat.” He also believes the pending use of automated balls and strikes in Triple-A could help speed up his acclimation process where he doesn’t have to protect against borderline pitches anymore.

“Once they figure out a way they can kind of try and get you a little bit, you really have two options — hit it or take it,” Ambler said. “If some of those things they’re doing to Norby, if he’s able to recognize them and take them with the ABS that’s pretty precise, that might be able to expedite the adjustment to the league where then the league goes, ‘Alright, maybe we need to try something else.’ I think he’s going to be fine.”

jon.meoli@thebaltimorebanner.com