It's Time for the Baltimore Orioles to Call Up Their Top Pitching Prospect

It's time for the Baltimore Orioles to give another one of their young starting pitchers an opportunity after his most recent dominant outing.

Chayce McDermott pitches at Grand Park Sports Complex in Westfield / Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar via Imagn

The Baltimore Orioles have done a fantastic job of stockpiling elite prospects over the years through drafting, developing, and acquiring other organizations' top young players when they weren't contenders.

That has turned this farm system into the best in all of baseball.

Now, those star youngsters are ready to become Major League contributors as many have already turned into elite minor league players on a consistent basis.

While the position players have gotten the most attention (Jackson Holliday, Samuel Basallo, Coby Mayo, etc.), the pitchers aren't anything to sneeze at either.

The Orioles have already called up their second-best pitching prospect, Cade Povich, after the season-ending surgeries to three of their starting pitchers, and following a dominant stretch in the minors, it's time they call up their top guy.

Chayce McDermott is No. 7 in Baltimore's pipeline, one spot ahead of Povich. Despite that, there were some concerns his control might be an issue in the MLB, which was the reason why he was passed over for the left-hander.

However, the talented 25-year-old seems like he is now ready for The Show.

Not only is he leading the minors in strikeouts with 121, he also is going deeper into games at this point in the season compared to at the start, having thrown 5.0 or more innings in 10 out of his last 12 starts.

He also talked about a change in mentality that has seen his pitching profile improve.

"At the beginning of the year, everyone's knock on me was my command and I tried to prove that I could be a huge command guy and that's probably not always going to be my strength. So, recently, it's just been attacking guys. Make them beat you and then if they do, find different ways to get them out," he said according to Matt Weyrich of The Baltimore Sun.

Players need to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

For McDermott, that is using his above-average fastball paired with his solid offspeed stuff to miss batters' bats.

"The staff is really happy with how he's gone about his business and he's a really serious guy and I think that him having the success that he's had down here so far has been great for him," Baltimore's Triple-A development coach Josh Rodrigues said about the young starter.

Seeing what McDermott can do right now would be smart.

The Orioles are a prime candidate to add a starting pitcher at the trade deadline, and for a team with a World Series ceiling like themselves, it would be ideal for them to add a star who can be part of the top three with Corbin Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez.

McDermott isn't going to be that right now, but whatever they see from him should give them a better idea about if they can pursue a rental, or if they need to target someone with multiple years of control remaining.

Their star pitching prospect has passed the test so far at Triple-A with a 4.00 ERA, 1.45 WHIP and ridiculous 13.07 K/9 ratio.

It's now time for Baltimore to see what he can do in the bigs.