Samuel Basallo managed to live up to the hype this season

The 20-year-old crushed the ball in Bowie, was named Eastern League Player of the Year, and finished with twenty strong games in Triple-A Norfolk.

So far, so good for the Orioles’ recent crop of draftees. There was Adley Rutschman in 2022, of course. Then Gunnar Henderson, whose debut was worthy of Rookie of the Year honors in 2023. Also Kyle Bradish, nurtured from A-ball to a Cy Young Top 5 finalist last season, and Grayson Rodriguez, a first-rounder in 2018. Jordan Westburg put together an All-Star year, Jackson Holliday debuted and stuck with the team, and Colton Cowser could be closing in on a Rookie of the Year award himself.

What’s comes next? It might be 20 years old and waiting in Triple-A. Catcher/1B Samuel Basallo has burst onto the scene since signing as an international free agent out of the Dominican Republican in 2021.

Why don’t we start with what makes him so exciting: his power. Just two weeks after turning twenty, Basallo was called up to Triple-A Norfolk. A week later, he did this:

As the video indicates, he clobbered it. The ball traveled a ridiculous 455 feet, with an exit velocity of 109.6 mph coming off his bat. That was one of three home runs Basallo would hit in twenty-one games after being called up to Triple-A.

Yes, there are things to work on. He struck out a third of his at-bats while adjusting to the level. But as the youngest player at that level, he deserves some time to figure it out. If he keeps hitting moonshots like this, he’ll soon be not only the Orioles’ No. 1 prospect but a major leaguer.

Basallo’s rise in the Orioles’ top prospect rankings has been what they call meteoric. He signed with the team out of the Dominican Republic in 2021, was ranked their 19th-best prospect in 2022, their 12th in 2023, and shot up the boards this season to the current No. 2 for the Orioles and No. 10 in all of minor league baseball.

It’s the hit tool, obviously, that is driving all the excitement. Last season, across three levels, his output was tremendous: he posted a .313/.402/.551/.953 slashline and hit 20 home runs in 114 games. This season, just his second in pro ball, he hit .289/.355/.465/.820 in 106 games at Bowie before being named the 2024 Eastern League Top MLB Prospect, an award voted on by managers. Basallo led the Baysox in average, hits (115), on-base percentage, slugging percentage and multi-hit games (30), and he finished fourth among all hitters in average, total bases (185), tied for fifth in slugging, sixth in hits, and eighth in OPS.

Basallo is the second Baysox player in franchise history to be named the Eastern League’s Top MLB Prospect. The first: Adley Rutschman in 2021.

Pipeline gives him a 60 for his hit tool, writing, “It’s becoming clear it might be a mistake to put a cap on Basallo’s offensive ceiling.” They love his power, his elite-level exit velocities and his advanced approach at the plate. Having simplified his setup while in the Orioles organization, Basallo has the ability to drive the ball to all fields, and he makes a ton of contact. He also draws a lot of walks (46 over two levels this season), while deploying his good batting eye to help him get better pitches to wallop consistently. Pipeline believes the 20 homers he hit this season are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

There are two questions with Basallo, and you probably know them: when and where? How soon will he get his call-up, and at what position? There have been doubts about his ability to stick behind the plate. His arm rates a 60, according to MLB Pipeline, but concededly there is work to be done on his overall receiving. For that reason, or possibly because Rutschman foreseeably occupies the catching position for a while, the team has started to give Basallo more work at first base, where he played 32 games this year.

The Orioles do have questions at the catching position these days. Do they bring back McCann or try to sign a free-agent catcher? How much does Adley catch versus DH next season? Could they decide to hand the keys to Basallo in a backup role?

Admittedly, it seems risky, after just three weeks in Triple-A, to have the 20-year-old Basallo become the guy to spell Rutschman in 2025 the way James McCann did this season. He is still very green. That doesn’t mean he won’t make his MLB debut in 2025, though. Elias has said that Basallo is on the Jackson Holliday trajectory, which if taken literally, would put his debut somewhere in April 2025.

So far, Basallo is a clear success story for the Mike Elias regime. One of Elias’ key points of emphasis when he took over as Orioles GM was to broaden the team’s engagement on the international market. That included establishing the Orioles Dominican Academy, a state-of-the-art 22 1/2-acre training complex in the Dominican Republic that even included an international high school program. One of the O’s first big signings, with a then-record $1.3 million bonus in January 2021, Basallo became one of the program’s first 24 high school graduates.

At just 20 years old, Basallo may be young to take over backup catching duties, but with how he’s performed at every step of the way, he is making it really hard for the Orioles to keep him on the farm.

Previous 2024 prospect reviews: Heston Kjerstad, Frederick Bencosme, Justin Armbruester, Leandro Arias, Brandon Young, Creed Willems, Trace Bright, Braylin Tavera, Michael Forret, Thomas Sosa, 2024 draft picks, Aron Estrada, Alex Pham, Luis De Léon, Patrick Reilly, Dylan Beavers, Enrique Bradfield Jr., Chayce McDermott, Jud Fabian

Monday: Coby Mayo