Once the highest paid international amateur in Orioles history, the 19-year-old outfielder had a brutal experience in his first taste of full-season ball.
When Mike Elias and his staff took the reins in Baltimore in November 2018, it marked a significant change from previous Orioles regimes. Not only would the new administration bring a fresh focus on data and analytics, but they’d also do something that no other executives under the Angelos ownership had ever done: actively participate in the international market.
For years, the O’s had been the only team in baseball to thumb its nose at signing international amateurs, due mainly to former owner Peter Angelos’s moral objections to the practice. But that changed under Elias, who quickly got to work setting up an international pipeline. And in 2022 he made the Orioles’ biggest splash ever, signing 16-year-old Dominican outfielder Braylin Tavera to a $1.7 million bonus, the largest in O’s history. (That record has since been topped by shortstop Luis Almeyda, who inked a $2.3 million deal the following year.)
Tavera was a highly touted acquisition, a potential five-tool player who ranked as the 18th best international prospect that year by Baseball America. After spending that summer with the Dominican Summer League Orioles, he made a promising stateside debut in 2023. Tavera held his own as an 18-year-old in the Florida Complex League, slashing .262/.391/.421 in 35 games. That .391 OBP especially stood out, as did his 22:23 walks-to-strikeouts ratio, exemplifying his keen batting eye and what MLB Pipeline touted as his “advanced approach at the plate.” Some elements of Tavera’s game were still raw, sure, but he certainly earned his promotion to Low-A Delmarva to begin 2024.
And that’s when he hit a wall.
The adjustment to full-season ball was a rough one for Tavera. I’ll just rip off the Band-Aid and give you his 2024 stats: a .173 AVG, .296 OBP, .213 SLG, and .509 OPS in 84 games for the Shorebirds. He also missed more than a month with a right shoulder sprain. It’s, uh, not ideal.
If you squint, you can see traces of Tavera’s promising plate discipline. He drew 49 walks and had an OBP more than 120 points higher than his batting average. The guy was still getting his free passes even as he otherwise struggled at the plate. As far as silver linings go, it’s not nothing.
But the “emerging power” that Pipeline pegged for Tavera just, well, hasn’t emerged. He hit only one home run all year — which came in the last game of the season — and had a mere eight extra-base hits in 355 PAs. Tavera has been described as a contact hitter, but the quality of that contact has been unimpressive, to put it mildly.
On defense, Tavera continues to get high marks, with Pipeline positing that his “speed and athleticism give him a chance to be a plus defender in center field long term.” For Delmarva, 42 of his starts this year came in center, though he also started at least 14 each in left and right field. He committed one error at each of the three positions, which is the best analysis I can offer you since advanced defensive metrics aren’t publicly available for Low-A.
Tavera’s prospect status is murky. While Pipeline rated him as the #16 O’s prospect in its end-of-season rankings, he was excluded entirely from FanGraphs’ list, which runs 45 players deep and was last updated in June. His 2024 performance doesn’t figure to get him back onto the radar.
It’s worth mentioning that Tavera is still just 19 years old. He was a year and a half younger than the average Low-A player, and there’s reason to believe he’ll continue to fill into his body, which could help him generate some much-needed power. But 2024 was an important year for Tavera to continue to develop as a prospect, and instead he stalled.
It doesn’t mean his career is over. If doesn’t mean he can’t eventually turn himself into a useful player, if not the five-tool talent the Orioles hoped they were signing. But the pressure will be on for Tavera to show signs of progress in 2025 if he hopes to vault his way back up the prospect list.
Previous 2024 prospect reviews: Heston Kjerstad, Frederick Bencosme, Justin Armbruester, Leandro Arias, Brandon Young, Creed Willems, Trace Bright
Tomorrow: Michael Forret