If you wanted a one-line summation of the Baltimore Orioles’ disappointing season, you could do worse than this: they have more catchers on their big-league injured list (four) than most teams have on their 40-player rosters. Indeed, the O’s are without starter Adley Rutschman, backups Maverick Handley and Gary Sánchez, and backup to the backups Chadwick Tromp. While teams are notoriously reluctant to add catchers in-season who aren’t familiar with their staff, Baltimore has had no choice but to turn things over to a crew that includes two in-season acquisitions (Jacob Stallings and Alex Jackson).
Sometimes, in art and in baseball rosters, it’s the negative space — what isn’t there — that tells the real story. It’s with that philosophy in mind that it’s reasonable to ask: where, exactly, is Samuel Basallo?
Basallo, 21 come August, has hit .263/.384/.572 with 17 home runs in 58 Triple-A games. He is, it’s no stretch to proclaim, one of the most promising offensive prospects in the minors. I recently ranked him ninth in my midseason update, writing the following:
Basallo is a big, strong left-handed hitter who has recorded an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher on nearly 60% of his batted balls to date. The question remains: where does he play at the next level? The Orioles have continued to catch him a fair amount in Triple-A, but one would assume that the answer entails him splitting time behind the plate and either at first base or designated hitter. Either way, the draw here is his bat. MLB ETA: Summer 2025
Surely the Orioles have their reasons for not unleashing Basallo at the big-league level. What are they? Let’s highlight three particular dynamics at play.
1. Offense needs more polish
For as impressive as Basallo’s topline statistics are, there are a couple of underlying reasons to think he could use more developmental time.
For starters, Basallo has done nearly all of his damage with the platoon advantage. He entered Thursday having posted a .739 OPS when tasked with facing a lefty. Granted, it’s an extremely small sample, as he’s encountered only 39 lefties this season. All the same, 13 of those faceoffs ended in a strikeout, and he’s reliably had a noticeable platoon split over the last few seasons.
Basallo has also had his issues with non-fastballs. He’s swung and missed roughly a third of the time against changeups and breaking balls, and has hit just .229 against those pitches. For comparison’s sake, he’s batting .329 against four-seamers and sinkers.
You might consider this nitpicking — after all, Basallo’s results are good and that’s usually what matters — but it’s the kind of stuff that teams monitor before promoting a youngster, if only to avoid a situation where the player comes up and is exposed against big-league arms and game plans.
2. Positional questions
As I alluded to in Basallo’s prospect ranking, defensive concerns have plagued him throughout his career. He’s a big lad, listed at 6-foot-4, and he remains both a below-average receiver and goalie. His season debut behind the plate was delayed this spring by injury, but he’s steadily caught since, albeit while still getting one or two looks at first base as a means of improving his optionality.
“Catching is the area that there’s still a lot of development left for him, and not all of that’s gonna be in the minors. But his bat is more ready than the catching and that tends to happen, and it’ll be developing in the majors, too,” general manager Mike Elias told reporters in late June. “But I think the experience that he’s getting, catching in Triple-A right now, is still really, really valuable. The game-calling, the handling veteran pitchers.”
Evaluators I’ve spoken to from other teams are unsure that Basallo will ever improve enough to be an everyday backstop. The O’s may hold doubts themselves. If so, it stands to reason they’d want to give Basallo as many pressure-free repetitions at catcher as possible to raise his competency. Once they promote him to the majors, his every mistake will be amplified and scrutinized, making it tougher to commit to playing him there on a long-term basis.
In other words, staying in the minors for now gives Basallo the best chance at remaining at catcher for the long haul.
3. Big-picture considerations
It’s important to keep something else in mind: the Orioles’ world doesn’t revolve around Basallo. There are other matters at hand, some pertinent to him and others not, that take priority.
Presuming the Orioles sell at the upcoming July 31 deadline, they have every reason to want to keep a better defensive presence behind the plate to help their tradeable pitchers perform as well as possible. Additionally, bringing up Basallo and having him alternate between catching and first-base or DH duty wouldn’t work right now — not when Baltimore has other trade candidates, like Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano, occupying those positions while auditioning for contenders.
There’s also the roster and service-time ramifications. Basallo isn’t yet on the 40-player, and you can understand if Baltimore isn’t juiced about adding yet another backstop to their collection — especially if it’s a long-term arrangement. As for the service-time aspect, I don’t mean for the purposes of suppressing Basallo’s salary; rather, the relevance here is keeping him rookie-eligible for next season, when he could compete for the Rookie of the Year Award and potentially net a compensatory draft pick.
Piece it all together, and it’s a lot easier to understand why Basallo hasn’t yet arrived in Baltimore.
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