They’ve been one of the better teams in baseball for the last month and a half or so.
After picking up a sweep on the road against the Braves over the past weekend, the Orioles are now sporting a 24-15 record over their last 39 games. That’s the point right after they hit their worst record of the year, at 16-34. Since then, they’ve been climbing so that now they’re up to 40-49, nine games under .500. Unfortunately, that’s still quite a long way away from really being in the wild card race.
One reason it’s been easy to lose sight of that is that there’s still a lot of craziness going on with the Orioles catching situation. They’ve placed two catchers – Chadwick Tromp and Gary Sánchez – onto the injured list just since the month of July began. Those guys join Adley Rutschman and Maverick Handley already on the IL. It’s almost unbelievable what kind of misfortune continues to befall them.
With each subsequent injury piling up, it’s another occasion to think, “Why not just get Samuel Basallo up here right now?” Knowing how Mike Elias operates, it seems safe to guess that a big part of why the Orioles haven’t tried that move yet is that they’re hoping to preserve his rookie status into 2026, and with that, the possibility that a strong rookie season from Basallo would result in a Rookie of the Year win, giving the O’s a bonus draft pick. In this episode, I’m wondering if it’s the wisest course to put so much stock in that:
Is this all a Mike Elias outsmarting himself situation? What if one possible draft pick isn’t worth it? The Orioles used the Gunnar Henderson ROY bonus pick on infielder Griff O’Ferrall, who is currently hitting .211/.305/.305 for High-A. Not looking like a major impact just now. It’s good to take the shots with picks, but they’re not guaranteed. … What if the actual best thing for the team is to let Basallo get in 2.5 months of lumps this year? He could learn to hit and catch MLB caliber pitches. The veteran big league catcher/bench coach Robinson Chirinos can probably help him learn more about catching than the minor league staff. It wouldn’t throw off the service time math. … Elias won’t do it, so it doesn’t matter, but maybe he should think about it more.
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