The Baltimore Orioles came into this year with a few goals. Foremost among them: reach the playoffs, find reliable pitching, and sign some of their young core to contract extensions. Goal one is out of the question. Goal two is up in the air. But goal three? Goal three is going strong after the Orioles and Samuel Basallo agreed to an eight-year, $67 million contract extension, with a team option and escalators that could push the total value to $88.5 million. Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner first reported the deal.

Basallo, currently the third overall prospect in baseball, debuted in the majors last week after a whirlwind tour of the minor leagues. He overpowered A-ball at 18 in 2023, mastered Double-A in 2024, and was hitting .270/.377/.589, good for a 150 wRC+, in Triple-A before the O’s called him up. He’s been far younger than his opposition at every level, and it just hasn’t mattered; his colossal raw power has papered over any weaknesses or growing pains again and again.

Throughout his ascension through the prospect ranks, the biggest question about Basallo has been whether he’ll stick behind home plate or have to move to a less demanding defensive position, likely first base. While Basallo’s offensive performance has been consistently excellent, his defense hasn’t been quite so exciting. A stress fracture in his elbow has slowed him, costing him valuable reps at catcher. He played DH about as frequently as he caught in Triple-A this year, and the same was true in 2024. Read the rest of this entry »

Beginning last Thursday and continuing through the weekend, several key rehabbers made appearances in the upper levels of the minor leagues. A few might have a meaningful impact on playoff races, while others are scuffling. I dish on eight pitchers below. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the deadline dust has settled – or at least, started to settle – it’s time to start making sense of it. The Padres, Twins, and Orioles were everywhere. Top relievers flew off the board. Both New York teams spent all day adding. But who did well? Who did poorly? Who was so frenetic that they probably belong in both categories more than once? I tried to sort things out a little bit. This isn’t an exhaustive list. There were 36 trades on deadline day, a new record, and more than a dozen before it. Nearly every team changed its trajectory at least a little, and this is just a brief look into the chaos. Here are the trends that most stood out to me.

Winner: Teams Trading Top Pitchers
This year’s crop of rental players was lighter than usual, but deadline activity didn’t slow. Instead, it simply spilled over into relievers under contract for a while. Mason Miller, Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, and David Bednar are under contract for a combined nine more years after 2025. That drove the prospect price up on all four. Having long-term control of relievers might be less valuable than at other positions, but it’s still valuable.

Most of the best prospects who swapped teams at the deadline were involved in a trade for top pitching. Leo De Vries, the consensus best player of the 2024 international signing period, was the big name here, but both the Phillies and Yankees offered up multiple good minor leaguers in exchange for Duran and Bednar. Taj Bradley, whom the Twins got back for Jax, is a former top prospect who won’t be a free agent until 2030. Read the rest of this entry »

Though many predicted heading into the 2025 season that the Orioles’ weak starting rotation and general inactivity over the offseason would come back to haunt them, even Baltimore’s biggest skeptics weren’t prognosticating that the team would sit well under .500 and 7.5 games out of playoff position at the end of July. Such as it is, the Orioles spent this year’s trade deadline turning over roughly a third of their roster. Over the last week or so, the O’s have traded relievers Gregory Soto, Seranthony Domínguez, and Andrew Kittredge, along with infielders Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Urías. Then on Thursday afternoon, Anthony DiComo reported that Cedric Mullins was on his way to the Mets; a few hours later, Jeff Passan broke the news that Charlie Morton would be joining the Tigers. The only healthy pending free agent who wasn’t traded out of Baltimore is Tomoyuki Sugano, and with Zach Eflin hitting the IL mere hours before the deadline, Sugano is now a load-bearing member of the rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Having already pulled off trades on Thursday to add reliever Mason Miller and starter JP Sears in a blockbuster with the Athletics and catcher Freddy Fermin in a deal with the Royals, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller stayed busy in the hours before the trade deadline, pulling off swaps with the Orioles, Blue Jays, and Brewers. San Diego has added lefty-swinging outfielder/first baseman Ryan O’Hearn and righty-swinging outfielder Ramón Laureano from Baltimore in exchange for a six-prospect package of 2024 draftees, and lefty-swinging infielder Will Wagner from Toronto in exchange for catching prospect Brandon Valenzuela. They also acquired lefty Nestor Cortes from Milwaukee in exchange for outfielder Brandon Lockridge, a move that Davy Andrews will cover separately.

The 32-year-old O’Hearn and 31-year-old Laureano have both rejuvenated their careers with the Orioles, albeit on different timelines. O’Hearn had totaled -1.4 WAR in parts of five seasons in Kansas City before being traded to Baltimore for cash considerations in January 2023. After back-to-back seasons with a 117 wRC+ and 1.5 WAR for the Orioles, he made his first All-Star team this month and is currently hitting .283/.374/.463 (134 wRC+) with 13 homers and a career-high 2.4 WAR. Laureano, who was released by the Guardians last May and then turned things around in part-time duty with the Braves, has hit .290/.355/.529 (144 wRC+) with 15 homers and 2.3 WAR — his highest total since 2019 — for the Orioles. Both players have been bright spots on a 50-59 team that’s been carved up in recent days, with infielder Ramón Urías heading to the Astros, center fielder Cedric Mullins going to the Mets, with starter Charlie Morton dealt to the Tigers, and relievers Seranthony Domínguez and Andrew Kittredge to the Blue Jays and Cubs, respectively.

The six 2024 draftees heading from the Padres to the Orioles are second-round pick Boston Bateman (a 19-year-old lefty), third-rounder Cobb Hightower (a 20-year-old shortstop), fourth-rounder Tyson Neighbors (a 22-year-old righty), 12th-rounder Brandon Butterworth (a 22-year-old middle infielder), 15th-rounder Tanner Smith (a 22-year-old righty) and 18th-rounder Victor Figueroa (a 21-year-old first baseman/outfielder). Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a big deadline for relief pitchers, even for teams that aren’t operating in the Mason Miller or Jhoan Duran tier. The Orioles bullpen continues to get picked over like a charcuterie board: Andrew Kittredge is Chicago-bound, with the Cubs sending Wilfri De La Cruz the other way.

The Tigers beefed up their bullpen by picking up Paul Sewald from the Guardians in exchange for a player to be named later or cash. A few hours later, Detroit sent minor league pitchers Josh Randall and R.J. Sales to Washington for Kyle Finnegan and added Codi Heuer from Texas for minor league depth. Finally, the Dodgers are bringing Brock Stewart back from Minnesota, with James Outman going in the other direction.

Let’s take those in order. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is a time for handling needs both big and small, and the Astros and Orioles got in on the latter half of that on Wednesday night. Houston acquired Ramón Urías from Baltimore in exchange for prospect Twine Palmer. Urías shores up third base for the Astros, who will be without the injured Isaac Paredes for at least two months and potentially the whole season.

Urías is six years into a major league career that didn’t start until he was 26, and he’s been something of a utility infielder for most of that time. Third base is his most frequent home, but he’s played 500 innings of second, 400 innings of short, and 100 innings of first base, too. He’s a roughly league average hitter and a roughly league average fielder at second and third, though overmatched at shortstop. In short, he’s a competent veteran with little ceiling but plenty of floor.

That suits Houston’s needs just fine from my perspective. With a packed-to-the-gills IL (Paredes, Jeremy Peña, Yordan Alvarez, Jake Meyers, and no fewer than eight pitchers), the Astros need warm bodies. Their most recent pre-trade lineup featured Victor Caratini at first base, Mauricio Dubón at third, Cooper Hummel in left field, and Zack Short at short. (They drubbed the Nationals 9-1 anyway.) Caratini is a nice rotational catcher with a career 90 wRC+, and Dubón is a competent utility player himself, but Hummel and Short have accrued a combined -3.0 WAR in their major league careers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Some transactions are epic sagas that unfold over weeks or months, while others are compact little one-act plays that are over and done with in an afternoon.

On Tuesday, the Blue Jays lost Game 1 of a doubleheader to the Orioles by a score of 16-4. Chad Green, the team’s second-most expensive reliever, surrendered four of those runs in one inning, bringing his ERA to 5.56 and his home run total to 14 in just 43 2/3 innings. Before Game 2, the Blue Jays DFA’d Green and traded for Orioles right-hander Seranthony Domínguez, an unused substitute in Game 1.

Cutting ties with Green, who makes $10.5 million this year, will be expensive, but the Blue Jays did save a few hundred bucks on airfare by trading for a guy who was already in the building. Read the rest of this entry »

The weekend before the trade deadline was light on big names moving — poor Eugenio Suárez has probably had to take his phone charger out of his go bag a dozen times this month — but we did see plenty of preliminary action. The Orioles began their sell-off by shipping hard-throwing left-hander Gregory Soto up to the Mets. Meanwhile, the Royals sought to maintain their spot on the postseason wait list by picking up a right-handed bat from Arizona: not Suárez, but Randal Grichuk.

Finally, the Braves picked up some reinforcements for their injury-riddled rotation, tossing the Cardinals a player to be named later or cash in exchange for the right to jump the waiver line on recently DFA’d right-hander Erick Fedde. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Hays is having a productive-when-healthy season with the Cincinnati Reds. The 30-year-old outfielder has missed time with a calf strain, a hamstring strain, and a foot contusion, but he’s also slashed .282/.338/.510 with 10 home runs in 228 plate appearances. Moreover, his 128 wRC+ and .360 wOBA are both second on the team (behind Elly De La Cruz) among those with at least 140 PAs.

His résumé is that of a solid hitter. From 2021-2023— his first full seasons in the majors — Hays had 97 doubles and 54 home runs, as well as a wRC+ ranging between 106 and 111. Those three seasons were spent with the Baltimore Orioles, who subsequently swapped him to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Seranthony Domínguez and Cristian Pache a few days before last July’s trade deadline. Hays’s 2024 campaign was the worst of his career. Hampered by injuries and illness — a kidney infection proved most problematic — he had a 97 wRC+ while playing in just 85 games. The Reds then inked him to a free agent contract over the winter,

Which brings us to the crux of this column’s lead item: the reasons behind the success he’s currently having.

“Consistency is probably the biggest thing,” Hays told me. “There’s not always an adjustment to be made. Sometimes it’s just the game [and] you’re being pitched tough. I don’t want to be altering too much of what I do well. In the past, I would sometimes pay too much attention to what the pitcher was doing and try to adjust to that. Staying strong to my strengths — locking in on those strengths — is going to help me over the course of 162 [games].” Read the rest of this entry »