The Orioles outfield prospect made it to Triple-A this year and he struck out 40% of the time there.
In the 2021 draft, the Red Sox took then-Florida outfielder Jud Fabian exactly one pick before the Orioles selected. A persistent rumor is that the O’s wanted Fabian. He never signed with Boston and one year later, the Orioles grabbed Fabian with a pick they acquired from trading Cole Sulser and Tanner Scott to the Marlins. As prospect origin stories go, “spurned the Red Sox and joined the Orioles” is a good one.
If Fabian had performance that was on the same level as that origin story, he’d be on every fan’s favorite Orioles prospects list right now. The start and finish of any discussion of Fabian as a prospect is the main thing that holds him back from being an interesting prospect. The guy just strikes out too dang much.
This is not a new or surprising revelation that has unfolded in Fabian’s time in professional baseball. It was a story of his career in college with the Gators as well. His junior season saw him hit 20 homers in 59 games, but along with that power came a strikeout rate of nearly 30%. Already striking out that much against amateur competition is an area of concern.
It is a pattern that continued in 2024. Fabian opened up the season with Double-A Bowie, where he had spent the second half of the 2023 season as well. Across 98 games with the Baysox, he batted .233/.326/.432 with 18 home runs, but was still rolling with a strikeout rate of just about 30%. This was enough for the Orioles to bump Fabian up to Triple-A for the final month-plus of the season, long enough for him to rack up 51 strikeouts in 30 games – a rate over 40% at that level.
There were just four MLB batters this season who struck out in excess of 30%. If there’s any silver lining for Fabian, three of these guys were decent-to-good batters: NL Central infielders Elly De La Cruz and Oneil Cruz, as well as Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser. That’s a tough path to follow, but there is a path. The idea of two of those guys being in the MLB lineup at once is a tough one, it must be said.
An obvious question to ask is: If the Orioles knew that Fabian struck out so much, why did they take him with such a relatively-high draft pick? The Red Sox used a second round selection the year before. These aren’t stupid teams doing stupid things. They knew there was a possible reward to balance out that risk, enough to make it worth taking.
Fabian has been delivering the power up to this point in his pro career. His time with Bowie, split between last year and this year, adds up to 162 games played with 33 home runs. A guy with 30+ home run power potential has value at any spot in the diamond, with the big if of whether or not he can achieve that potential amid so many strikeouts staring us in the face.
This makes for some divergent opinions among prospect evaluators on what’s the appropriate way to look at him. The Athletic’s Keith Law was all the way out on Fabian even before the 2024 season began, listing him as “the fallen” from his list of the top 20 Orioles prospects and writing:
(Fabian) reached Double A last year without really making any adjustments to his whiff-heavy approach, hitting .177/.314/.399 with a 37.5 percent strikeout rate as a 22-year-old. He still has plus power and can still play center, and modo liceat vivere, est spes, but this is the hitter he’s been for three-plus years now and he’s going to get passed by waves of better prospects.
If you are like me and lack the ability to make sense of that random Latin phrase, Google translate informs each of us: As long as he is allowed to live, there is hope.
Elsewhere, at FanGraphs, Fabian clocked in as the #11 prospect in the Orioles system in their first incarnation of an O’s prospect list, and by season’s end, with players graduating to the majors ahead of him, he was up to 7th. They don’t really make any different assessment than Law about what Fabian is, just in his ability to carve out some kind of MLB role while being like that:
(Fabian) struggles to get to velocity up around his hands, and swings and misses a ton in the zone, more than all but a couple contemporary center fielders. But the explosion in Fabian’s hands and the lift in his swing help ensure that he gets to his power when he’s making contact, and he’s quite a good outfield defender, so he’s ticketed to play a part-time role.
FG’s specific player comparison for Fabian as a righty-batting outfielder who strikes out a lot but brings defensive versatility and value is Astros outfielder Chas McCormick. This is a more interesting comparison if you look at his combined stat line from 2021-2023 (.259/.336/.449 with a 24 home runs per 162 game pace) than if you look at what he just mustered for 2024, a paltry .576 OPS. If the Orioles get three decent years out of Fabian, this will have been a fine pick.
Had Fabian signed in the 2021 draft class, he’d be Rule 5 draft eligible this offseason. Since he didn’t get into the pro ranks until 2022’s draft, that decision is a year away. The Orioles can wait and see what Fabian does over a full season at Norfolk next season. He could even play his way into a call-up if things go well, though a post-Cedric Mullins 2026 outfield is a more likely place to fit Fabian in.
If they don’t go well for Fabian, it’s not going to hurt the team much to have him at Norfolk trying to figure things out, though the team will probably want some veteran depth at the position in case of an early-season injury before Fabian or Dylan Beavers would be an option.
Tomorrow: Samuel Basallo