Four years later, it looks like all the Orioles will get from this class is whatever Colton Cowser gives them.

How many games would the 2020 Orioles have ended up losing if they played a full 162-game season? That is a question for which we will never have an answer, because the pandemic shortened that season to 60 games. The O’s were a .500 team as deep as 28 games into that season before ending up with a 25-35 record. That was not too awful compared to what we experienced the year before, but still bad enough that it set up the Orioles with the #5 pick in the 2021 Draft.

This class of players had had a lot of attention paid to a Big Four group of high school shortstops. After the Red Sox selected Marcelo Mayer at #4, the Orioles could have chosen any of the remaining three guys of that Big Four. Mock drafts from the time all believed that the O’s were going to do that. Nearly four years later, here’s how this Big Four has done:

• Mayer – Arrived in MLB this season, .679 OPS and 0 bWAR through 33 games
• Jordan Lawlar – Debuted in 2023, just 22 MLB games to date, .993 OPS in AAA this year
• Brady House – Reached MLB this season, .570 OPS through 18 games
• Kahlil Watson – Repeating Double-A in 2025, .246/.344/.460 in 51 games

Colton Cowser

Instead of the Big Four, the Orioles turned to Cowser, then an outfielder with the relatively not-major Sam Houston State program. There were draft rankings that liked Cowser; he was #6 in the class at FanGraphs. Others did not like him that much, with The Athletic’s Keith Law rating Cowser 14th. The O’s gave Cowser an underslot bonus reflecting talent more like the #9 pick. Shortly after making the pick, Mike Elias said that the O’s had taken “one of the best pure hitters in the country.”

I’m taken aback a bit in reading that quote from my contemporaneous coverage because that is not the kind of player that Cowser has been as a major leaguer. Some prospect writers started to flag him as being something else in the minors, even as he generally hit well. On the cusp of his debut, Cowser was dubbed a platoon bat by FG. I like the Milkman, as Ben McDonald has dubbed him and many others have been delighted to call him. But he’s sure not a pure hitter. Across 210 games as an MLB player, he’s batted .227/.311/.427.

That feels about right. Cowser is not a high batting average guy. He swings and misses a lot. Until he has a signature big moment, it will be hard not to think of him striking out in the postseason, with the bases loaded, while swinging at a pitch that ultimately hit him and broke his hand.

Cowser might walk enough to post a decent on-base percentage, though he has not done so while active in 2025. His value comes from connecting for power when he does make contact. Hitting 24 doubles and 24 homers in what should have been a Rookie of the Year-winning campaign last year was very good. Eight homers through 31 games this year is good. If he can keep putting up three-win seasons, as he did last year, he will go down as a very good pick,

A comparable player to Cowser from the draft class was Sal Frelick, then at Boston College. Frelick was ultimately selected 15th by the Brewers. Frelick might be inhabiting the “pure hitter” label better than Cowser, as he’s batting .268 through 289 MLB games. Frelick also won a Gold Glove last year. Still, Cowser has the most WAR of any player in the top 14 picks of the class. It looks like the Orioles dodged a lot of flops in their draft range.

Connor Norby

Draft chatter at the time believed the Orioles were primarily interested here in Florida outfielder Jud Fabian, who was drafted one pick before this by the Red Sox. (Fabian didn’t sign and the Orioles got their guy in the 2022 Draft. We’ll talk about him tomorrow.) They went with Norby, from East Carolina, who was always regarded decently as a hitter but whose ultimate defensive home was always a question mark.

While Norby was never universally regarded as a top 100-caliber prospect, mostly because of those defensive questions, he had his fans among prospect writers, with Law writing about Norby ahead of the 2023 season:

He can hit, he plays hard, and he seems like he’d knock over his own grandmother just to take an extra base. … he might be a 20-homer guy who plays adequate defense at second and can move to the outfield corners, with strong batting averages and raves from teammates and coaches.

The year after being drafted, Norby showed off the quality of the bat, running through Aberdeen and then-Double-A Bowie (which is now called Chesapeake but is still in Bowie) before finishing with a cup of coffee at Triple-A Norfolk. In a full season at Triple-A in 2023, he batted .290/.359/.483, with 21 homers in 138 games.

With the Orioles prospect situation being what it was, with both infield and corner outfield spots seeming to be locked up by better-regarded guys, Norby was easy to root for as kind of an underdog story but also easy to view as eventual trade fodder. That second one is how he turned out, with the Orioles trading Norby, along with Kyle Stowers, to the Marlins for Trevor Rogers.

Norby caused Orioles fans some heartburn by dropping a 1.002 August OPS (in a small 12 game sample) after the trade, while Rogers stunk his way out of the rotation promptly. He’s played in 103 games for Miami since the trade, batting .241/.296/.390. That should not fuel many regrets.

There are two interesting pitchers who were drafted in the second round after Norby: Cincinnati’s Andrew Abbott, and Atlanta’s Spencer Schwellenbach. It might have been nice if the Orioles tried to take a pitcher for once. On the other hand, there are plenty of college second round pitchers who’ve either not made it to MLB yet or done nothing good: Jaden Hill, Ky Bush, Matt Mikulski, and Russell Smith, just to name a few.

Creed Willems

The money saved by going under slot with Cowser was ultimately used in the eighth round by giving a $1 million bonus to Willems, a catcher from the Texas high school ranks. Around the time of this pick being made and on into the early period of his pro career, any scouting commentary made about Willems made reference to criticisms about his conditioning, suggestions that he was out of shape, and so on. These are the polite ways that prospect analysts dance around calling a guy overweight.

Willems appeared with Low-A Delmarva the year after being drafted and struggled substantially. He repeated that level in 2023 and dominated, earning a promotion to High-A Aberdeen, where he again struggled a lot. (The criticisms about his conditioning tapered off in this period.) Repeating Aberdeen in 2024, he played well enough to get promoted to Double-A in the waning days. Willems also received an assignment to the Arizona Fall League, both of which went fairly well. In 2025, he’s batting .246/.337/.421, with eight homers through 67 games at Double-A.

This is good enough that Willems can’t be written off yet, although at the same time, it’s not a sure shot to MLB. One other positive for Willems is that at his notional primary position, catcher, he’s taken a step forward in throwing out 31% of base-stealers this season. That’s better than last year’s 19%. He will surely have more of a path to an MLB career if he can do some catching, even if he’s not a team’s primary starting catcher. If he ends up as a righty-batting 1B/DH, there will be power expectations that he will have to prove that he can meet.

The thing about Mike Elias and drafting pitchers

We’re now many drafts into Mike Elias’s tenure and this pattern holds true: He doesn’t use either of his top two picks on pitchers. In earlier years, including this 2021 class, Elias went several rounds before taking a pitcher. He made up for it, so to speak, by picking a lot of pitchers in rounds 11-20. This means that it’s not technically true to say “Mike Elias never drafts pitchers” but if you say that and really mean he doesn’t use high picks on pitchers, you’re right.

At different times in the intervening years, some degree of hope was placed on the following:

• RHP Carlos Tavera, 5th round (highest drafted Orioles pitcher in the class)
• RHP Justin Armbruester, 11th round
• RHP Ryan Long, 17th round
• RHP Alex Pham, 19th round

Four years after this Draft, the number of these pitchers who have reached and achieved success at Triple-A is zero. This contributes to the ongoing plot of Elias-drafted pitchers having thus far started no games for the Orioles. (Undrafted Brandon Young from 2020 has made four starts.) The only drafted guy who’s even thrown a pitch for the team is 2019 draftee Kade Strowd, who has appeared in three games of relief this season.

Elias isn’t drafting pitchers highly and he’s not turning the lower-round guys into useful pitchers for the Orioles. Or at least he hasn’t done this yet.

Billy Cook

The Orioles used their tenth round pick on this senior from Pepperdine, and he hit well enough in Double-A and Triple-A in 2023 and 2024 that you could maybe wonder if he’d be some kind of MLB-level super-utility player. The O’s ended up trading Cook to Pittsburgh for another prospect last July rather than worry about protecting Cook from last year’s Rule 5 Draft.

In that trade, the Orioles received pitcher Patrick Reilly, who they quickly polished into one of their top 10 prospects on the strength of strong Double-A results after the trade. If they’re not going to draft pitchers, that’s not a bad way to try to get them. However, Reilly went on the injured list after three starts this season and has undergone Tommy John surgery, so we won’t be hearing much about him until around this time next year.

Cook appeared in 16 games for the Pirates after the trade last year, but didn’t carry over as a 2025 incumbent. He’s only appeared in three MLB games in 2025.

**

Prior to the 2021 Draft, Elias also said to reporters, “We feel that we should be getting an impact player with this pick, and that is our goal. I think if that doesn’t happen, we’ll feel like we failed with the pick.” Whether you think he’s succeeded will depend on your feelings about Cowser. He’s got to sustain his rookie season success to prove to me that he is an impact player or even something lesser but still decent like a solid regular.

One thing that has not happened with any of the Elias draft classes so far is hitting on day 2 or day 3 picks. This 2021 class is a good demonstration of that. There’s Cowser (first round), Norby (second round), and Cook (tenth round). Cook probably isn’t much. Nobody else has made it to the majors, and at this point Willems is the only one who might. This is going to need to change if the Orioles are going to be able to maintain at least an average farm that can reinforce the big league team through promotions or trades.