Orioles Brass Soil Themselves By Questioning Samuel Basallo's Toughness

Samuel Basallo was trucked in a home plate collision earlier this season and barely missed any time, eager to get in the lineup.

He appeared to suffer a pec injury and left the dugout with trainers in the last homestand, but was back in the on-deck circle for his final at bat if needed. He’s been dealing with an abdominal issue, for a team whose medical staff appears to specialize being unable to handle muscle issues, and his swings were awkward and contorted Sunday after weeks of some of the best at bats on the team, but the Orioles claim he’s fine.

The visuals were so pronounced and Basallo seemed so distressed that broadcaster Ryan Ripken, son of Iron Man Cal Ripken, Jr., one of the team’s minority owners, brought it up repeatedly on the MASN broadcast. Then Basallo got cleated at home plate on the wrist on Sunday, writhing in pain because the Orioles have a first-overall pick who was an alleged shortstop who they still can’t develop as an adequate second baseman amid years of player development failures, whose pathetic throw created the collision and allowed another run to score.

Basallo stayed in the game and kept catching and then was removed for a pinch hitter in the 8th inning of what was a fairly innocuous performance for the 21 year old. You’ll never guess what happened next.

Double Standards and Playing Favorites

This perpetually underachieving franchise also has a rookie manager with no feel for handling a pitching staff who has cost them several games with backward maneuvers, including Sunday, and yet his most pointed remarks of the season after a crippling, 6-4 loss at Rogers Centre, were about the baby-faced catcher who is just trying to find his way in the majors and is being asked to do more than anyone imagined because baseball demagogue Mike Elias makes sure to baby and coddle his first ever draft pick, now 28-year old catcher Adley Rutschman, as much as humanly possible.

So, no, novice skipper Craig Albernaz didn’t take aim at himself for leaving in Shane Baz too long (happens at least once a week), or that 1-1 pick making another low IQ play or the team’s best player, Gunnar Henderson (who a real front office would have moved to third base by now), for keeping booting balls and failing to tag lead runners in critical spots or getting picked off in droves and getting on base about 27 percent of the time and striking out at a ridiculous rate.

Nah, he went after Basallo, because the Baltimore Orioles under Elias are as bad at cultivating talent as they are about having any feel for the human element in this business. Even eight years into a never-ending rebuilding they haven’t learned a thing, and they can’t stop soiling themselve s.

"Sammy is learning,” said overmatched Albernaz, who should only hope he was progressing anything close to as quickly as Basallo is. “He's learning a lot how to play through being nicked up. When everything is checked out and everything is fine, Sammy is learning to play through some adversity right now,"

Trust The Player, Or This Medical Staff?

This regime also has a nasty reputation around the league for a high-injury rate after pushing out an esteemed trainer a few years back and these are the same people who couldn’t get players back as expected from Tommy John surgeries and other procedures normally be it John Means or Felix Bautista or Tyler Wells or Kyle Bradish.

This is the same front office regime that had top young arm Grayson Rodriguez throwing well below normal warming up for a spring training game, and then left him stay in it throwing 89 mph fastballs – which the original puppet skipper at the time couldn’t be bothered to actually attend on time – as the precursor to years of injury issues in what would be his last appearance in an O’s uniform.

But take their word for it, not this rookie who has been arguably their most impactful bat since May 1 and unlike others hits with people on base and is making great strides behind the plate. No way this medical team and this bumbling GM could have possibly missed anything, this kid is just over exaggerating everything for sympathy to the point where it becomes a theme in their game broadcast.

These trainers have an ugly rate of muscle problems, with Rutschman having issues with both obliques in the same season, and it’s become a talking point around the league, but the insinuation here is that their crack staff thinks this is all in Sammy’s head? He’s gotta learn to toughen up.

Um, like who?

Adley – who disappeared for two years in the middle of the rebuild right when things started looking real? Like all their overhyped college bats who fell apart so pathetically they couldn’t find a single leader among them? Like Elias, who wasn’t even tough enough or man enough to meet the media after firing Brandon Hyde in-season and waited until the team go to Milwaukee so there was fewer media around.

Is that the toughness standard around here? Are those the role models in the tough guy department? Am I missing anyone? Sig, maybe?

Who’s Invited To The Frat House?

So while Ivy League Elias (go Yale!) covered for Rutschman getting out of shape and losing any shred of confidence at the plate or behind it, flatly distorting his productivity and abstaining from dropping him deep in the lineup when he didn’t even deserve to be in it, Basallo gets this?

They let their top ever pick basically hide from the media for the better part of two years, while their Lego-fueled clubhouse culture was laughed at around the league as lacking maturity and leadership, and rather than face any real accountability inward or outward, or get tough about that, Elias just enabled it.

When Rutschman was 21 he got to take as much time as he wanted after celebrating being the top pick before reporting to the Gulf Coast League, then moving eventually up to High-A where he wouldn’t be asked to catch more than three days in a row and got to DH and play first base every week.

Basallo at that age is trying to help save their failing rebuild, while Rutschman gets more days off than many in the industry (including Mike Bordick and Jim Duquette on “The Daily Flock”) think is normal. Crazy how none of that innate toughness oozing off all their draft picks and clubhouse holdovers didn’t just rub right off on Basallo, huh?

I smell something, but it ain’t Elias’s musk.

Meanwhile, over-drafted Heston Kjerstad (SEC) was basically away from baseball for long periods of time cloaked in mystery, and he still couldn’t catch a fly ball during any of it, but no one ever dared whisper a word about his mentality or what was stunting his development or holding him back. Total silence. Give him all the time and space he needs.

Holliday was supposed to be back from a broken hand a few weeks into the season he broke before spring training and suffered setback after setback before returning to bat at the bottom of the lineup, where he belongs. But never a real vetting of what exactly went on there. Nothing about him having to learn to overcome that adversity and earn that paycheck.

Another first-round pick, Jordan Westburg (SEC), can’t stay healthy for more than a few months at a time and has never played more than 107 games in a season, and he keeps breaking down in his mid-20s. But, hey, we’re not going to question that in any way.

Their opening day starter, Trevor Rogers, was such a shell of a major-league starter that after making him the highlight of a trade deadline in a pennant race he had to quickly spend the rest of the season in Norfolk, where he could not get anyone out. They waited until they fired a manager last year and blew their season by Memorial Day before calling him back, with no pressure.

Oh yeah, this same guy cratered utterly and completely over a six-game stretch with an ERA of 12 and a WHIP over 2.00 as this season unraveled. It was non-competitive (as noted by Bordy and Duquette on “The Daily Flock”) and Albernaz lied about how well he was performing and made excuse after excuse for him – while he pitched for outings on end like a shattered soul – and never once did anyone dare question his fortitude.

Nah, saving all of that for Sammy, I guess. Really makes you wonder why

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