Samuel Basallo snub will leave Orioles fans baffled after latest roster move

Eric Cole

2025 Baltimore Orioles Spring Training / Todd Olszewski/Baltimore Orioles/GettyImages

The Baltimore Orioles have had a number of opportunities to call up Samuel Basallo and, to this point, they have not taken any of them. Basallo has been one of the better hitting prospects in baseball for a couple of years now, but the Orioles have seemingly been dead set on taking their time with Basallo even when Adley Rutschman got hurt. Sadly, despite having a clear opening to promote him today, the Orioles went in a different direction.

After a scary collision at home plate over the weekend, the odds that Maverick Handley was headed for the IL were extremely high given manager Tony Mansolino's comments after the game. Handley is indeed headed for the seven day concussion injured list, but the Orioles opted instead to not call Basallo up and went with selecting Chadwick Tromp instead.

Orioles keep Samuel Basallo in the minors, bring Chadwick Tromp up instead

Baltimore added Tromp back on a minor league deal after DFAing him and was perhaps the safest option here. He has big league experience as a backup catcher and can occasionally run into one and hit it over the fence. Ryan Mountcastle was transferred to the 60-day IL to make room on the roster, but that doesn't change anything as he wasn't coming back until the second half of the season anyways.

Still, one has to wonder now if Baltimore has soured on Basallo at catcher altogether. There is a chance that they just don't think he is quite ready and want to give him more reps now that he is healthy, but all of the playing time at DH and 1B combined with the resistance to calling him up has to make fans wonder what exactly the problem is given just how well Basallo is hitting in the minors right now.

While Tromp is a fine backup catcher, one wonders how different this move could have been if all of this catcher chaos in Baltimore had happened a few days earlier. James McCann just signed with Arizona and had a rolling opt-out in his minor league deal with the Braves. Given his familiarity with the club, it wouldn't have been all that shocking if the Orioles went that direction instead of Tromp.

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Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.