Adley Rutschman is standing few steps away from Samuel Basallo, who is erect at his locker like a youngster among men. The 19-year-old catching prospect, who is 6 feet 4 and may still be developing, has the build of a major leaguer, but he has a teenage smile and face. Although he is the youngest player in Orioles spring training, he is not a child or an immature athlete.
Basallo had aspirations of being a major league player while growing up in the Dominican Republic. At the age of twelve, he started training professionally, arriving at his academy two days a week at 4:30 a.m. for sessions. Before he was once more made available and the Orioles moved in, he was initially associated with the New York Yankees. At the age of sixteen, he signed for a then-franchise record $1.3 million, making him the centerpiece of the first significant investment made by the new leadership following decades in which the company had mostly ignored the Latin American market.
Basallo wasn’t well-known or viewed as a key player for the Orioles a year ago. In short-season ball, he had respectable but unspectacular stats, and if he had a major league career at all, it was still a few years off. Despite being the 15th-best prospect for the Orioles according to Baseball America, he was nowhere near the top 100 lists. His raw power was interesting, but it remained to be seen if he could play well enough behind the plate or hold his own against superior pitching.
After an extraordinary 2023 season in the lower leagues, Basallo has now emerged as one of baseball’s top prospects. On Baseball America’s list of the top 100, he is placed No. 10, just one spot behind another catcher. After Jackson Holliday graduates from such status in 2024, Basallo will probably be the Orioles’ finest prospect. He might become Baltimore’s fourth consecutive No. 1 overall prospect, joining Holliday, Gunnar Henderson, and Adley Rutschman in that regard. Koby Perez, the Orioles’ vice president of international scouting and operations, said of the young player, “This kid is amazing.” “He is unique.”
THE DREAM
While his friends and family refer to him as Basallo, he goes by Samuel (pronounced sam-well). There were occasionally other Samuels on the field during his professional scout displays as a child growing up in Santo Domingo.
However, Basallo was singular. Scouts for the Orioles have described the Basallo family as close-knit and encouraging, with his parents instilling “excellent morals” in all three of their children. Basallo is the middle child, with his younger brother and elder sister also having potential as ballplayers.
Notwithstanding the growing importance of analytics in the majors, scouting still heavily relies on intangible factors like a player’s background, values, and work ethic. These factors are called makeup. When considering the foreign market, where athletes are occasionally recruited before reaching puberty and permitted to drive in the majority of states, it becomes even more significant. Basallo added, speaking through team interpreter Brandon Quinones, “We’re a truly unified family.” Although there are five of us, we truly are one. That’s how we’ve always been. My parents have always insisted that it’s critical to maintain tight relationships and put up a strong battle for the things you want out of life.” When Basallo was 12 years old in 2017, he began training at Ivan Noboa’s Baseball Dreams Academy, one of the top facilities for developing talent in the Dominican Republic.
Having started working with ballplayers in the late 1990s, Noboa has trained 23 big leaguers, including as Emilio Bonifácio, Nomar Mazara, and Jasson Domínguez, who signed for a whooping $5.1 million in 2019 and is presently the Yankees’ top prospect. Noboa reported that five days a week, starting at five in the morning and continuing at six in the evening with a three and a half-hour break in between, Basallo and the other players at his academy do everything from hitting and fielding drills to simulated games to strength and conditioning exercises. During the week, Basallo resided at the facility and spent his weekends at home. Noboa remarked, “He always had an extremely good work ethic.” “I anticipate Basallo staying in the major leagues for a very long time.” When Basallo started training like a man, he was just a boy.
Though those expectations occasionally seemed burdensome, he was taught he had the potential to achieve far in life. It is challenging, and you definitely feel some of that pressure, he said. “You feel under strain knowing that all you desire and your family’s future are in your hands.” Wearing a necklace with the letter “B” dangling from it, near to his heart, Basallo shows off his pride in being a Basallo and serves as a reminder of his family back home. Although he said that his dreams of playing in the major leagues and supporting his family are no longer a burden, he is still not content. “It’s what I would call motivation,” stated Basallo. “Inspiration to keep going and accomplish my goals.”
THE PURSUIT
The Orioles had very little foreign exposure prior to November 2018, when Mike Elias was appointed general manager. Perez, who was brought on by Elias in January 2019 to revitalize the team’s underutilized overseas scouting program, found it astonishing that the Orioles were able to succeed from 2012 to 2016 without it.
Many of the best players in the game, like Juan Soto, Jose Altuve, and Ronald Acuña Jr., were signed as youngsters from Latin America. Perez compared not participating in the global economy to beginning a video game at 60 or 70 percent life. That is not to imply that all foreign investments are successful. Considering how young they are when they join, overseas prospects actually have more erratic factors. Plus, because the MLB draft offers a system for determining which teams acquire the finest young players in the country, it can sometimes be more challenging than domestic scouting.
Comparatively speaking, major Division I college recruiting is similar to the wild, wild west of the worldwide market. Perez stated, “That’s exactly what it’s like.” When Perez was hired, the Orioles were behind the eight ball, so there wouldn’t be any big stars in the 2019 international class. Perez and his crew concentrated a great deal on the 2020 class in addition to identifying underappreciated talents for the first group.
Basallo is one of the names at the top of their list. In 2018, Perez was a member of Cleveland when he witnessed Basallo, then 14 years old, play. The Orioles’ director of scouting for Latin America, Gerardo Cabrera, saw a preteen Basallo play shortstop in 2017. At the age of 13, he moved to catcher after realizing he would never be a middle infielder again. Cabrera was with the New York Mets when this happened. Cabrera described him as “a huge child for his age and he had amazing power.”
In January 2019, Perez hired Scout Michael Cruz early on, designating him as an area scout to cover Santo Domingo. At Noboa’s academy in April, Cruz started scouting Basallo and was struck by the player’s stature, strength, and arm reach. “He can be unique,” Cruz remembers believing. However, Perez stated that it seemed as though Basallo was “off the market” to the Orioles a few weeks later. Oral agreements are typical, although neither the player nor the team are legally obligated until pen meets paper. Players cannot formally sign until they are 16 years old.
Although one scout mentioned it was another AL East team, the Orioles would not comment on which team they think had an oral arrangement with Basallo. Basallo declared that he was aware of the Yankees’ “strong interest” in him. Although the Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, and Yankees were all interested in Basallo, Noboa stated that there was never an oral agreement. The Yankees, in particular, offered a “quite appealing offer.”
Whatever the details, the Orioles saw Basallo back “on the market” in a matter of months, and that’s when Baltimore stepped up its efforts. “To be honest, I would be furious if I were in the same situation with a child like Basallo and something happened and another team signed him,” Cabrera remarked. “Those kinds of talents are rare.” For over 20 hours per week for the following year, Cruz observed Basallo play, practice, work out, and connect with his teammates. Cruz became more and more certain that Basallo was the real deal as he continued to watch.
When observing Basallo in action, the instruments are visible. But it was his disposition, his nature, that distinguished him,” Cruz remarked. You have to be really close to a player like that when you locate one. This market changes quickly. Someone else can enter and sign the player if you pass out.And it feels great to win the lottery because you were correct.” The Orioles called in Elias, their closer, in an effort to close the deal. Elias traveled to the Dominican Republic twice to watch Basallo play, much like a college football coach would visit a recruit’s house to demonstrate the program’s dedication to the recruit’s family. “Here in the Dominican Republic, you don’t see GM very often,” Cabrera remarked. “Being able to obtain Basallo was made possible by that.”
According to Noboa, the Orioles’ conviction that they could quickly progress Basallo through their system and develop him was what made them successful. Because the 2020 signing deadline was pushed back several months due to the coronavirus epidemic, it took a little longer for the agreement to be officially publicized.
Following the official signing of the $1.3 million deal, Basallo stated that he and his family “thanked God for everything” before hosting a celebration at their house for family and friends, which included Cabrera and Perez. “That day, we all felt like we had accomplished something,” Basallo remarked.
