With the Orioles' Minor League system now ranked the fifth-best in baseball by MLB Pipeline, it's time to pay attention.

All summer at Orioles.com, we’ll be keeping tabs on the top performers from each rung of the Minor League ladder with weekly Sunday roundups. Think of it as a way to track the rebuilding process in real time.

Here are the O’s top Minor League performers, plus some additional news items, from the past week (all stats as of Sunday morning):

Triple-A Norfolk

Pitcher: RHP Felix Bautista
Prospect ranking: Unranked

Overshadowed by bigger-name prospects this season, Bautista is having as fine a season as any hurler not named Grayson Rodriguez in the Orioles’ system. The 6-foot-5 hard-throwing righty jumped from High-A Aberdeen to Triple-A Norfolk in less than two months; he’s now turning heads in the late innings for a Tides team that has struggled out of the ‘pen.

Bautista, 26, has a fastball that flirts with triple digits, and he has pitched to a 0.95 ERA with 52 strikeouts in 28 1/3 innings across Aberdeen and Double-A Bowie. He’s struggled a bit at Norfolk, allowing four runs in his first five appearances. But Bautista must be protected from the Rule 5 Draft this November, meaning there is a chance he ends up on Baltimore's 40-man roster.

Position Player: 3B Rylan Bannon
Prospect ranking: Unranked

It was looking like 2021 would be a lost season for Bannon; suddenly, it looks like nobody can get him out. Slowed by injuries, Bannon was hitting .133 when he took off last week, homering eight times in eight games dating back to Aug. 12. The highlight came Thursday, when Bannon homered twice and drove in six to pace the Norfolk's 11-6 win over Charlotte. The Orioles are taking notice, especially since Bannon is on the 40-man roster and likely to get a look in the big leagues come September.

Worth noting: How good was Bannon? Good enough to overshadow even Adley Rutschman, who is hitting .410 with four extra base hits over his first nine games at Norfolk. Rutschman’s first Triple-A homer came Aug. 18, a 423-foot solo shot to center field; he’s also stolen two bases with the Tides.

Double-A Bowie

Pitcher: RHP Grayson Rodriguez
Prospect ranking: No. 17 overall, No. 2 club

The Orioles are managing Rodriguez’s workload carefully this year coming off the shortened 2020 season, which is why he’s yet to pitch more than five innings in any of his 11 starts at Double-A Bowie. Meanwhile, he’s been dominant in nearly all of those outings, the Baysox’s 3-2 loss to Reading on Tuesday being the latest example. Rodriguez struck out six across five innings of one-run ball, allowing just three baserunners. All told, Rodriguez is 5-1 with a 2.79 ERA at Bowie, with an 88-to-15 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Position Player: 1B Andrew Daschbach
Prospect ranking: Unranked

The Baysox are in sole possession of the second playoff spot in Double-A Northeast with just over four series remaining, and they received a jolt recently with the promotion of Daschbach, the O’s 11th-round pick out of Stanford in 2019. Daschbach quickly made his presence known by crushing two homers in Friday’s 5-3 win over Reading, including the go-ahead two-run homer in the 10th inning. This after the 23-year-old posted an .802 OPS with 10 homers at High-A Aberdeen.

High-A Aberdeen

Pitcher: RHP Griffin McLarty
Prospect ranking: Unranked

The Ironbirds' best start of the week came from McLarty, who logged five innings of one-run ball in his Aberdeen debut, Thursday’s 8-7 defeat to Wilmington. It also marked a season high in innings pitched for McLarty, the Orioles’ eighth-round pick in 2019 out of the College of Charleston. The 23-year-old had a 5.88 ERA in 17 games (13 starts) at Delmarva.

Position Player: OF Lamar Sparks
Prospect ranking: Unranked

Sparks wasted little time upon his promotion to High-A this week, going 3-for-5 with two triples and a home run in his second game, Friday’s 6-5 win over Wilmington. The two triples were as many as the speedy Sparks had across 45 games at Low-A Delmarva, where he reached base at a .344 clip and stole six bases in 10 attempts. Now at Aberdeen, Sparks is part of a lightning-fast outfield alongside Hudson Haskin, who has a .379 OBP with no homers in 24 games at the level.

Low-A Delmarva

Pitcher: RHP Jake Lyons
Prospect ranking: Unranked

A former 22nd round pick, the 23-year-old Lyons twirled his best outing of the year Friday against Fredericksburg, logging six innings of one-run ball behind a bevy of run support. He struck out eight and walked only one as the Shorebirds scored 17 runs on 13 hits and 10 walks. Lyons is 3-3 with a 3.97 ERA in 17 games (nine starts) this season at Delmarva.

Position Player(s): OF Colton Cowser, OF John Rhodes, OF Billy Cook
Prospect ranking: No. 5 club; Unranked; Unranked

The Shorebirds are trotting out lineups full of 2021 Draft picks these days, and the early results are very strong. Delmarva went 5-0 in the last six days and outscored its opponents 46-16 behind an offense that is meshing extremely well early. There are lots of mention to go around. Let’s start with Cowser, the fifth overall pick in this year’s Draft. He’s 5-for-18 with four RBIs so far at Delmarva, including the walk-off double in Saturday’s 5-4 win over Fredericksburg.

The Orioles’ third-round pick out of Kentucky this summer, Rhodes collected six hits in 17 at bats in his first four games at Delmarva. Cook was their 10th rounder out of Pepperdine and went 5-for-15 with 6 RBIs and two stolen bases over his first three games, driving in four in Delmarva’s 14-1 rout of Fredericksburg on Friday. One night earlier, Rhodes tied a single-game season-high for the Shorebirds with five runs driven in. He had three hits: two RBIs singles and a three-run homer, his first as a pro.