One adjustment the Orioles need to make to their everyday lineup

After a slow start, Samuel Basallo appears to have turned a corner and now looks like one of the best hitters in the Baltimore Orioles lineup. Over his last 12 games, he's slashing .415/.455/.707. During that span, he's gotten 17 of his 25 hits and 10 of his 14 RBI this season. The only issue is that during this run, the Orioles have left him out of the starting lineup in about a third of their games to make sure that significantly worse hitters get playing time. Given how much the Orioles' offense has struggled, they cannot afford to keep sitting one of their best hitters for the sake of their worst.

Looking at how the Orioles are dividing up playing time amongst their players, there are some interesting trends. There are three guys who have played in almost all the Orioles games this year: Gunnar Henderson, Pete Alonso, and Taylor Ward. Then there are guys who play in the majority of games: Jeremiah Jackson, Samuel Basallo, Coby Mayo, Leody Taveras, Adley Rutschman, Dylan Beavers, and Blaze Alexander. Finally, there are guys who play sparingly: Colton Cowser, Tyler O'Neill, and Weston Wilson.

There is no reason for Samuel Basallo to sit in favor of the the Orioles right handed bench bats

For the most part, these roles make sense. The guys that play every day should be the Orioles' best hitters, the guys that play the least are the Orioles' worst hitters, and the guys in the middle are the guys in the middle. What stands out is that Basallo is proving that he is on the level of the top guys and should be elevated to the play almost every day group.

The reasoning behind not doing this is that Basallo is a catcher, and catcher is a tough position to play every day. However, Rutschman is the Orioles' primary catcher, and when he's been healthy, he's carried the majority of the catching load. If you remove the time when Rutschman was on the IL, Basallo has played more DH and first base than catcher. The Orioles haven't come out and said this, but from how the two have been used, it's pretty clear the idea is that Rutschman will catch two of the three games of each series and Basallo will catch one, with some exceptions, of course. If the Orioles are faithful to that, it would result in about a 65%-35% split in the catching workload.

As long as Basallo is catching well under 50% of the Orioles games, he should have energy to be the designated hitter almost every day when he's not catching. He is 21 years old, and at that age, he doesn't even know what a rest day is supposed to be for. Being in the lineup as a DH is not that much more physically demanding than riding the bench and getting a pinch-hit at bat in the eighth inning. He has been better against lefties than most of the Orioles right-handed hitters, so there's no need to platoon him to get Mayo or O'Neill into the lineup against a lefty.

This isn't to say that Basallo needs to start the Orioles' remaining 126 games, but there is no reason for the Orioles to sit him in back-to-back games as they did against the Yankees earlier this week. They should play their best players as often as they can, and those best players now include Basallo.

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