Eighth-round picks are not supposed to make headlines. Most years they're organizational filler — a body to send to short-season ball, a lottery ticket nobody really expects to cash. The Orioles just tore up that script for Will Plunkett, the shortstop out of Mamaroneck High School in New York, signing him for $675,000 against a slot value of just $247,900.
Jim Callis broke the signing, framing Plunkett as an athletic 6-3, 200-pound prep shortstop with a smooth swing and power still to come.
That's not a modest overpay. Baltimore blew nearly 3x past slot to lock down a player MLB Pipeline reportedly ranked around 198th overall, a talent tier that usually comes off the board in the first few rounds, not the eighth. Plunkett was committed to Binghamton, where he had a real shot to be a multi-year starter at shortstop, so this wasn't a kid with nothing to lose by signing. The Orioles had to pay him to walk away from that path, and they did.
The profile explains the money. Plunkett hit .485 with 6 home runs and 28 RBIs in his 2026 prep season, and scouts have zeroed in on a line-drive, projectable swing with room to add power as he fills out that 6-3 frame. That's the kind of upside teams chase deep in the draft when the price is right — and for Baltimore, apparently, $675,000 was the right price to keep him off a college campus and inside a farm system that's become one of the deepest in baseball.
It also fits the pattern of how the Orioles have operated under Mike Elias: save money on top-of-the-draft slots or later college seniors, then funnel the savings into an overslot bet on a projectable athlete who fell for signability reasons. Plunkett landing in the eighth round despite a pedigree that read much higher on rankings boards is exactly the kind of value dip this front office has made a habit of exploiting.
Whether it pays off is a multi-year question — prep shortstops from cold-weather states are notoriously slow-developing, and $675,000 buys patience, not certainty. But for a franchise that's leaned on player-development hits to rebuild a contender, getting a top-200 talent to sign as an eighth-rounder is exactly the kind of quiet win that shows up on a farm-system ranking a few years down the line.