Could he back up Adley Rutschman this season? Crazier things have happened.
Recent years have seen top 100 prospect lists stocked with Orioles. This season, even after Gunnar Henderson and Grayson Rodriguez graduated from prospect status and DL Hall’s trade to the Brewers, there are still five in Baseball America’s top 100: Jackson Holliday (No. 1), catcher Samuel Basallo (10), infielder Coby Mayo (25), and lefty-hitting outfielders Colton Cowser (34), and outfielder Heston Kjerstad (No. 41).
In terms of pure buzz, no one is unseating Holliday but an even younger player is coming pretty close: the 19-year-old catcher Basallo. As CC’s Tyler Young put it at the end of last season: Basallo’s recent rise through the prospect rankings has been nothing short of remarkable. The 6’3” backstop went from being the Orioles’ 19th-best prospect in 2022 to MLB’s No. 10 now. He played at three separate levels in 2023, drawing attention for a number of skills at all three stops.
Basallo’s rise, like the completion of the Orioles’ state-of-the-art new training facility in the Dominican Republic, is a sign of the progress the Orioles have made on the international market. Basallo initially signed a $1.3 million deal with the team as an amateur in 2021, then the largest bonus the O’s had ever had out to an international prospect.
So far, it’s looking like a good investment. After playing for the Orioles’ Dominican Summer League entry in 2021, in the Florida Complex League in 2022, Basallo progressed through Single-A Delmarva (April-July), High-A Aberdeen (August-September) to end the season at Double-A Bowie (where he played four games). Across those levels, he hit .313 with a .953 OPS, including 20 home runs
Despite being among the younger players at Delmarva, Basallo’s bat didn’t need time to get acclimated: he OPS’d .866 in the month of April, and put up even better numbers in June and July. He’d put up a .299/.384/.503 slash line in that time while homering 19 times and driving in 60 runs. Out of 83 games, he started 21 at first base, nine as designated hitter, and 51 behind the dish, where he threw out 33% of attempted base stealers. (For comparison, Adley Rutschman threw out 28% of runners as a minor leaguer in 2021, 31% in 2022 with the Orioles, and then saw that total dip to 22% this past season, partly due to the enlarged bases and pickoff rules.)
On August 1, the Orioles announced that Basallo was moving up to High-A Aberdeen. As it turned out, his offensive numbers would get even better at the next level. Basallo hit .333 in 27 games with the IronBirds, homered eight times, and OPS’d a red-hot 1.131. Despite missing a week of play with a concussion, he came back to the lineup on Sept. 6 and delivered almost immediately. On Sept. 8, the hard-hitting lefty powered the IronBirds to a win with a ninth-inning walk-off home run.
That was quite a week for him. On September 11, Basallo earned South Atlantic League Player of the Week honors for going 9-for-19 with a double, triple, 3 home runs and 7 RBIs, good for a .474/.545/1.105 batting line. The next day, he was sent up to Double-A Bowie for the last week of the season. It was a brief but successful debut: he went 7-for-15 with a double and a triple, including a three-hit day on September 14 (I like watching him time up the curveball here):
Overall, this worked out to a .313 average, a .953 OPS and 20 home runs for Basallo while still 18 years of age and young at all three levels. He also put up impressively even lefty-righty splits: he averaged .306 versus lefties and .312 against right-handers, plus an .844/.978 differential in OPS. This year, MLB Pipeline praised his “advanced approach” at the plate, writing earlier this year, “It’s becoming clear it might be a mistake to put a cap on Basallo’s offensive ceiling.”
And while Fangraphs has some doubts about his swing-and-miss issues, they also rave about his “terrifying” raw power, noting that among 18-year-old pro hitters, his hard-hit percentage was fourth, behind only Jackson Chourio, Miguel Bleis and the Twins’ Jose Rodriguez. “He can generate extra-base power with just a flick of his wrist,” writes Eric Longenhagen, “and his max-effort swings are the stuff of Paul Bunyan.”
It’s worth noting, too, that Basallo’s strikeout percentage has dropped with each season he’s been in the Orioles org (it was 22% in 2023) while his walk rate has gone up, from 9% in 2022 to 14.55% last year.
Apparently, the only real questions are about his defense: Pipeline says he has a “plus arm” but it’s being held back by a somewhat slow pop time. His size also contributes to that assessment (he’s 6’3”, weight TBD, but probably more like 250 than the 180 he’s currently listed at). Still, Pipeline believes the bat will play “just fine” at first, where the Orioles played him about 25% of the time, if it comes down to it.
Now the fun question: could we see the 19-year-old Basallo in the big leagues sometime soon? On Feb. 6, the Orioles announced that Basallo would be one of their non-roster spring training invitees. Unlike Jackson Holliday, Basallo doesn’t have a real shot at cracking the roster directly out of the gate, but there’s no doubt, this is a vote of confidence.
For comparison’s sake, about this time last year, 24-year-old outfielder Heston Kjerstad hadn’t played a single game at Double-A, but after a monster year between Bowie and Norfolk, he earned his big league call-up and played 13 games with the Orioles in September, going 7-for-30 with two home runs in 13 games. Kjerstad was older, of course, had several years of college ball behind him, and plays a less difficult position.
There’s a lot to see from Basallo this year. For him to take the same path, it’ll require strong offensive numbers, including controlling the walks and strikeouts, plus improvements behind the dish. James McCann is still a worthy backup to Adley Rutschman, so there’s no hurry here. But I think Basallo’s strong lefty bat makes it possible that we see him get a few MLB at-bats this year.
Anyway, there’s no rush. Like the Orioles in general, Samuel Basallo is in a good spot going forward. Seeing the cavalry continue to arrive in Baltimore should be fun.