Left-hander Caden Hunter took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning of his Double-A debut Wednesday night, striking out 10 over seven scoreless innings as the Chesapeake Baysox routed the Altoona Curve 9-2 to take a commanding early lead in their six-game series.
Hunter (W, 1-0) didn’t allow a baserunner until issuing back-to-back walks to open the fifth inning. After a mound visit, he retired the next eight batters he faced before Altoona’s Lonnie White Jr. broke up the no-hit bid with a two-out single through the left side in the seventh — the only hit Hunter allowed in his Chesapeake debut. His 10 strikeouts matched a career high he first set June 28 at Wilmington while pitching for High-A Frederick. The outing lowered his ERA across three minor league levels this season to 1.32, one of the best marks in all of minor league baseball.
Hunter’s rapid ascent has become one of the more notable storylines in the Orioles’ farm system this year. Baltimore selected the left-hander in the sixth round of the 2025 draft out of USC, where he served as the Trojans’ Friday night starter and posted a 5.50 ERA — numbers that gave little indication of what was to come. He opened this season at Single-A Delmarva and was nearly untouchable, posting a 1.17 ERA with 40 strikeouts in 23 innings across six appearances, without allowing more than one run in any outing. That performance earned him a late-May promotion to High-A Frederick, where he was similarly dominant with a 1.60 ERA over 10 appearances, five of which he didn’t allow an earned run. Baltimore bumped him to Double-A this week, and Wednesday’s start was his first appearance at the level. Hunter now ranks as the Orioles’ No. 11 overall prospect, according to MLB Pipeline, the highest ranking of any previously unranked pitcher to debut on the list in baseball this year.
Wednesday’s Baysox offense picked up where it left off a night earlier, when Chesapeake plated 12 runs on 16 hits in Tuesday’s series-opening win. The Baysox notched 11 hits Wednesday, with Willy Vasquez reaching base all five times he came to the plate, including three hits. Vasquez drove in the game’s first run with a second-inning infield single, and Adam Retzbach followed two batters later with a two-run double down the right-field line off Altoona starter Dominic Pipkin (L, 2-2) to make it 3-0. Aron Estrada added a sacrifice fly and Brandon Butterworth an RBI single in the fifth, and Vasquez struck again in the seventh with a run-scoring double as part of a two-run frame that pushed Chesapeake’s lead to 7-0.
Altoona got on the board with a two-run homer in the eighth, but Thomas Sosa answered for Chesapeake with a two-run shot to left-center in the top of the ninth — his 12th of the season — restoring the seven-run margin for good in the 9-2 final. Griff O’Ferrall extended his hitting streak to six games with an RBI single in the seventh, reaching base four times and recording his third straight multi-hit game. All nine Baysox hitters reached base Wednesday, and eight of the nine recorded a hit.
Through the first two games of the series, Chesapeake has outscored Altoona 21-5 and outhit the Curve 27-8, a dominant stretch that has the Baysox looking to extend their winning streak to four games Thursday night. Left-hander Sebastian Gongora (8-5, 3.93 ERA) is scheduled to start for Chesapeake against Altoona right-hander Peyton Stumbo (1-9, 5.67 ERA), with first pitch set for 6 p.m. at Peoples Natural Gas Field.
The Baysox will wrap up their road trip before returning to Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie on Tuesday, Aug. 4, to open a six-game homestand against the Harrisburg Senators, the Double-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. First pitch for that series opener is scheduled for 6:35 p.m.
Hunter’s promotion is part of a broader wave of movement across Baltimore’s farm system this summer, with several of the organization’s top pitching prospects climbing multiple levels in a single season. His combination of a heavy, high-velocity fastball and a strikeout rate that ranked among the best in the minors before Wednesday’s outing has made him one of the system’s fastest-rising arms, jumping from an unranked prospect entering the year to a top-15 organizational ranking in a matter of months.
