Mike Elias Hopes Orioles Star Prospect Has MLB Debut This Year

The Baltimore Orioles are at a crossroads with their star catching prospect given recent injuries at the position.

It's clear the Orioles want Samuel Basallo to get as much time developing in the minors as possible, but they also just lost their star catcher Adley Rutschman to the injured list and the youngster looks more than ready for the Majors at the plate.

After months of playing down the urgency of calling him up, Baltimore general manager Mike Elias has started to slightly change his tune.

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Recent comments from Elias, per MASN's Roch Kubatko, have suggested the organization could be changing its tune on that plan.

"Catching is the area that there's still a lot of development left for him, and not all of that's gonna be in the minors. But his bat is more ready than the catching and that tends to happen, and it'll be developing in the Majors, too."

Basallo has been splitting time between first base and catcher this year because they don't have a major need behind the plate at most times.

With Rutschman hurt, though, Basallo's catching ability plays a massive role in his potential call-up. His bat is not a worry at all. It feels like he could now get promoted once they feel good enough about his defense instead of waiting for it to be Major League ready.

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Rutschman will be out through at least the All-Star break, giving the teams a crucial couple of weeks to survive without him.

"I hope that [Basallo] debuts this year," Elias also added. "I think it's really hard to nit-pick anything offensive right now and he's still getting better. He's still refining his approach. He had three walks last night, which was good to see from such a young guy. There's a lot of people really excited about his bat."

At the plate, the 20-year-old has posted a .269/.392/.579 slash line with 15 home runs in 52 games in Triple-A. It took him 106 games to hit 16 in Double-A a season ago.

The Orioles are currently weathering the storm of Rutschman's injury well enough thanks to the recent play of Gary Sanchez, but it's unclear how long that will last.

Since coming back from injury, Sanchez has posted a .342/.419/.684 slash line with four home runs in 11 games. That's obviously very good, even better than what they were getting from Rutschman. But it's a small sample size.

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In his 12 games prior to getting hurt, he went 3-for-30 at the plate. If he starts to slip towards that production before Rutschman gets back, Baltimore will be in trouble.

Their backup right now is Chadwick Tromp, who is a career .222/.232/.392 hitter.

While it makes sense that they would want to be cautious about Basallo being rushed into things given the early struggles of prospects like Jackson Holliday and Coby Mayo, now seems like as good a time as any to get the youngster some chops at the big league level.

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