Orioles reset: Kyle Gibson is impressed by his young teammates. The organization values maturity.

After his first start in an Orioles uniform, Kyle Gibson offered unprompted praise for the crop of young players who surrounded him in Baltimore’s spring training clubhouse.

It wasn’t because of their evident talent, but rather their maturity.

“Whoever they have in the organization helping bring these young guys along, they’ve done a great job because they have good feel, they know how to be professionals for 99% of the time, and I should say 100% of the time because I haven’t even seen anything where you’re like, ‘Man, that’s a young guy mistake right there,’” Gibson said after his spring debut. “They just all have good heads on their shoulders, and you can tell how they get their business done, how they walk around, how they carry themselves, and I think that’s going to help them excel and help them get more comfortable in the big leagues and help them reach their ceiling faster.”

In the nearly four months since Gibson’s March 3 comments, the 35-year-old right-hander has grown only more impressed with the byproducts of Baltimore’s top-ranked farm system. Signed to a one-year contract this offseason to supply the rotation with an established presence, he’s brought one to the clubhouse, too, though he said he hasn’t necessarily felt that’s been needed.

Not all the young talents who impressed Gibson in the spring are in Baltimore, but those who are or have been haven’t acted as if their status as top prospects gives them added importance, which he said hasn’t always been the case with such players during his 11-year career.

“There’s not one guy in here that I wouldn’t want to go to dinner with, and there’s a lot of teams that I can’t say that about that I’ve been on,” Gibson said. “… Let’s face it, today’s culture is different than it was 15 years ago, and there’s a lot more of a tendency for young guys — or even older players to be this way — to come up and have a built-in chip on their shoulder or just seem like they have it all figured out or just show up and rub people the wrong way with how their personality is.

“You think you’ve made it, and you think people are out to get you, so you have to have this, like, persona about you, and these kids aren’t like that, and these are top prospects, right? These are kids who across the entire game — there’s not one person that wouldn’t tell you that Adley Rutschman was the best prospect in baseball, there’s not one person that wouldn’t tell you that Gunnar Henderson wasn’t top five, Grayson [Rodriguez] wasn’t top five. This isn’t just the Orioles’ top prospects. This is top of the game. And I just feel like it’s more rare for those guys to come up and fit into a clubhouse and not rub people the wrong way with a different personality.”

To Brad Ciolek, the Orioles’ director of draft operations, the praise from an established and respected player such as Gibson reflects the emphasis the organization’s amateur scouts put on high school and college players’ makeup leading up to drafts. On top of on-field talents, intangible traits played significant roles in Baltimore’s selections of Rutschman and Jackson Holliday with the first overall picks in the 2019 and 2022 drafts, respectively, with the front office wanting to be sure they had the capabilities of handling the pressure associated with that selection. That area is sure to factor in as the Orioles decide who to select with the 17th pick and those who follow in next month’s draft.

“The number one thing, for me, is you look at the beast that is the American League East, and you see how good of a division is, and in order to compete day in, day out, obviously you’ve got to have guys that are talented enough to go punch to punch with a lot of these teams like the Yankees, Toronto, Tampa, Boston, but they have to be wired in a way where they’re not going to be satisfied, regardless of how well they’re doing on the field,” Ciolek said. “There’s always going to be the need, the desire to want to be better, and I think we’ve done a tremendous job of really digging deep and finding those types of guys.

“When you get a lot of those guys together, whether it’s in a minor league clubhouse or up in Baltimore, they kind of feed off each other, the energy that they have, the work that they’re going to put into it. No one’s taking shortcuts.”

Ciolek said that “competitive edge” is evident in Rutschman, a 25-year-old catcher, and Henderson, a 21-year-old infielder. Baltimore’s first two draft picks under executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias, the pair became the first players from the same team’s draft class to be No. 1 in Baseball America’s top prospect rankings in consecutive offseasons. Ciolek also pointed to a few products of the previous regime’s drafts — Cedric Mullins, Austin Hays, Mike Baumann and Ryan Mountcastle — as examples of what the Orioles look for in terms of makeup.

He said the Orioles’ scouts go through a process that is “long and tedious” to build profiles focused on players’ character. It begins when they’re in high school, with scouts passing along information to one another about a given player’s maturity, work ethic and coachability if he moves out of their region for college or later transfers to a university in a different part of the country.

“It’s an all-around effort on our staff,” Ciolek said. “The work that our scouts do on the ground has been tremendous. And the fact that it’s being talked about front and center, not only by Kyle but other people on the major league team, makes you feel good at the end of the day. It means that your process is working.”

An important aspect of the scouts’ jobs is forecasting how players will develop in terms of talent, but Ciolek said the Orioles don’t necessarily have a method to do so with character traits, though he noted advancements in artificial intelligence could make it an area of interest in the future. Even then, Ciolek said, the organization would continue to emphasize scouts’ face-to-face interactions with not only the players but also those closest to them such as family, friends, coaches and teammates, hoping to build a well-rounded picture of who they are as a person. Of course, the Orioles also recognize that could change over time.

“I think that a lot of people sometimes do forget that these are 17- and 18-year-old kids,” Ciolek said. “They’re trying to figure out who they are sometimes as a person, where they fit in social circles, and they also have the fact that there’s 30 major league organizations that are knocking on their door, lighting up their phones trying to talk to them and trying to figure out what they’re all about. The humanistic side of this is monumentally important.”

In Gibson’s eyes, the Orioles have nailed those efforts.

“Everybody’s seen it in their job: You have somebody that gets hired, and whether they’re young or old, if they think they’re really good at what they do, they feel like they have something to prove, so they act like they’re really good at what they do, and then by doing that, people around them are like, ‘Man, why is this guy jerk? Why is she acting this way?’” Gibson said. “[The Orioles] do a really good job, it seems like, of finding people with the right personalities that are going to work hard and not let outside opinions of them boost their ego or deflate their ego.”

What’s to come?

Between days off Monday and Thursday, the Orioles visit the Tampa Bay Rays — the only American League team with a better record than them — for two games. Right-handers Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells are set to start at Tropicana Field, but with the open dates, it’s unclear how Baltimore will set its rotation for a weekend home series against the Seattle Mariners. The matchup will pit Seattle outfielder Julio Rodríguez, the reigning AL Rookie of the Year, against Rutschman, who finished as the runner-up for the award.

What was good?

Two organizations — including Baltimore — designated Ryan O’Hearn for assignment this offseason. He’s now become the Orioles’ primary cleanup hitter against right-handed starters and deservedly so. After a week in which he went 8-for-19, O’Hearn is hitting .349 with a 1.003 OPS for the Orioles. Adjustments to O’Hearn’s hands and posture have seemingly unlocked the 29-year-old’s potential, and it especially showed last week; 11 of 15 balls he put in play were hit at least 95 mph, with seven topping 101 mph.

What wasn’t?

Yennier Cano has joined Félix Bautista to form a dynamic backend relief tandem. But the Orioles’ bullpen otherwise left a lot to be desired last week. Relievers other than Cano and Bautista allowed 13 earned runs over 12 2/3 innings, and that’s including a combined three scoreless frames from Bryan Baker and Keegan Akin. Right-handers Dillon Tate and Mychal Givens are progressing from their respective injuries, and Cano and Bautista have shown they can lock down the final six outs — and more if needed. But middle relief is emerging as a need for Baltimore as the trade deadline draws closer.

On the farm

The Orioles are making a collection of minor league promotions this week, according to an industry source, with the moves including five players Baseball America has ranked among their top 30 prospects.

Infielder César Prieto (No. 16), right-hander Justin Armbruester (No. 22) and right-hander Wandisson Charles are joining Triple-A Norfolk; a Cuba product signed in the club’s 2022 international amateur class, Prieto hit .364 for Double-A Bowie, and Armbruester had a 2.47 ERA in 12 starts there. Outfielder Jud Fabian (No. 13) and right-hander Jean Pinto (No. 28) will go to Bowie along with right-handers Alex Pham and Keegan Gillies; Fabian was drafted 67th overall last summer, and Pinto was acquired in the December 2020 trade that sent shortstop José Iglesias to the Los Angeles Angels. No. 29 prospect Juan Nuñez, who like Cano is a right-hander who was part of the Orioles’ package from the Minnesota Twins for All-Star closer Jorge López last summer, is being promoted to High-A Aberdeen.

MASNSports.com first reported the promotions.

Orioles at Rays

Tuesday, 6:40 p.m.

TV: MASN2

Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM

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