Samuel Basallo Is Going To Be an Oriole for a While

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.

ZiPS generally concurs with the scouting assessment of Basallo. It sees him as a plus hitter who can stick behind the dish, albeit as a below-average defender (-7 runs a year relative to the positional average, which isn’t displayed below). Put it all together, and the computer forecasts him as an above-average contributor as he hits his stride. Accounting for three years of pre-arbitration salaries and the arb process, ZiPS would have been willing to offer Basallo as much as $101 million for these eight years:

A -7 catcher is barely above the lowest acceptable bar for long-term major leaguers. Given that we’re talking about a median projection here, ZiPS sees plenty of outcomes where Basallo’s defense ends up as fringe playable there. Thus, we also have a projection for him at first base:

Note that ZiPS forecasts a better offensive outcome at first base. Dan Szymborski noted to me that it’s also a less volatile outcome; it’s a lot harder to develop offensive skills when you’re spending your days crouching and getting baseballs thrown at you at upwards of 100 miles an hour, so the model likes Basallo’s offensive potential much more if he changes positions. Note, though, that the aggregate value equation still doesn’t come out quite as well, thanks to the positional value of playing catcher. ZiPS would offer Basallo $87 million as a first base only option, slightly less than it would give him as a catcher despite the improved offense.

In his first game in Baltimore, Basallo DH’ed. With Adley Rutschman hitting the IL, he’s since caught three of the four games he’s started, which answers the question of whether the O’s would be willing to give Basallo major league catching time this year with a resounding yes. Out of necessity? Perhaps. But the best sign that a player can handle catcher is a major league team giving him playing time there.

Even when Rutschman returns, I expect the two to split time behind the plate. Both of them are good enough hitters that getting both guys extra playing time elsewhere in the lineup while they alternate days wearing body armor is a no-brainer. Heck, Basallo has been catching only about half of the time in the minors this year. Catchers are often slow-walked to the majors because the defensive side of the position is so demanding. Learning behind Rutschman, an excellent fundamental defender, is a nice upside for Basallo.

Meanwhile, the O’s should have space to play both at DH intermittently (or first for Basallo if they’re so inclined) with Ryan O’Hearn and Ryan Mountcastle out of the picture (O’Hearn was traded to the Padres at the deadline, while Mountcastle is headed to free agency). In fact, Rutschman has already been DH’ing frequently to get his bat in the lineup more often, and the team could use a bit more offensive juice. Extending that plan to Basallo feels like a good option to me, even if it means carrying a third catcher; the cost of that extra roster spot is offset by the fact that you’re getting a starting DH in aggregate between Rutschman and Basallo’s non-catcher playing time.

It might feel a bit strange for the Orioles to agree to an extension with their prospective star of the future instead of one of their current stars. Gunnar Henderson, Rutschman, Jackson Holliday, and even Jordan Westburg are much closer to free agency than Basallo, and bigger contributors to the current-day team. Even if the O’s didn’t agree to a deal with Basallo, they’d have him under team control for the next six seasons.

Here’s the counterpoint: That doesn’t matter. It’s not an either/or situation. The right number of young stars to attempt to sign to long-term extensions is “all of them.” The $67 million Basallo is making over the next eight years won’t break the bank; this deal doesn’t stop the O’s from pursuing extensions with the rest of their core. Owner David Rubenstein said as much over the weekend. “We have a lot of other talented people on the team who we hope will ultimately want to spend their entire career here… We’re committed to doing more of these as soon as we can,” he told reporter Steve Melewski. That’s absolutely the right way to think about this from Baltimore’s perspective.

That’s the throughline of this extension for me. There are a lot of small downsides on the periphery of my considerations. Basallo plays the same position as another star. He’s a tweener defensively, and now that the O’s have signed this deal, he’ll be doing his development at the major league level. There are other guys they could give extensions to as well. That’s all true, but each of those are marginal problems at best. The upside of the deal – guaranteeing nine years (assuming the option is exercised) of a potentially spectacular hitter at a reasonable price – outstrips all of those drawbacks combined, and it outstrips them by a good margin.

So is it weird that the first O’s contract extension didn’t go to Rutschman or Henderson? Sure, a little bit, but it would be weirder if they refused to offer any other extensions until one of those stars signed one. This is a great sign for those future extensions, though. Until at least one young Oriole signed a contract extension, there was some probability that the O’s just weren’t in the right ballpark in their negotiations. Now that we know that they’re making offers that get accepted, I feel better about them finding deals with at least one or two of their other extension candidates. None of the others are quite as far from free agency as Basallo, which gave the team extra leverage in its negotiation with him, so maybe the others will just take longer to come to an agreement on.

That’s not to say that more deals are automatic, of course. It takes two interested parties to sign a deal, and there are myriad reasons why any given player might prefer to test free agency instead of signing an extension, particularly if they’re already closer to reaching that milestone. Henderson’s agent, Scott Boras, notably guides his clients towards free agency. Money isn’t the only factor, either. “I want to be in a winning culture. That’s the number one thing for me… Losing doesn’t sit well with me,” Henderson told The Baltimore Sun over the weekend when he was asked about a potential extension of his own. A Basallo extension doesn’t make future deals inevitable, particularly if the team doesn’t make other moves to bolster the roster come the offseason, but it definitely makes them more likely.

That’s Baltimore’s side of the deal; Basallo’s is much more straightforward to me. Last week, he was a minor league catcher who got a $1.3 million signing bonus in 2021 and had been earning minor league salaries ever since. Even if he continued to develop rapidly and made the major leagues for good next year, he wouldn’t crest $1 million in salary until 2029. His profile has some high highs and some low lows; you can imagine a world where his bat won’t play at first, but his glove won’t play at catcher, even if that isn’t the median outcome. Who wouldn’t want to lock up life-changing money given that backdrop? Even better, he’s so young that even if the O’s pick up the $18 million team option, he’ll hit free agency at 30. The deal has escalators worth up to $20 million, too, so he’s not taking much of a discount to the ZiPS estimates. This is the kind of contract that, were I a young baseball phenom, I’d be excited to sign.

It’s been a bummer year in Baltimore, no doubt, but if you asked me what the best thing the O’s could do this season would be, I’d say “lock up the young core.” It’s incredibly hard to develop standout major leaguers. The Orioles basically gave up on competing at the big league level for half a decade in their pursuit of it. Now that they’ve done that very tough job, it’s incumbent upon them to keep their window open for as long as possible, and the best way to do that is to keep their good players for as long as they can. This is the first step in that process, much better late than never.