It takes an uncommon level of talent to get where Samuel Basallo is. At 19, he’s on another hot streak at Double-A Bowie, and in all likelihood he will be finishing this year in Triple-A thanks to his overwhelming power potential at the plate and his improvements behind it.
But, to overcome some of the first true struggles on a baseball field he’s ever had, the Orioles prospect had to suppress one of those uncommon talents: his recall of how he’s pitched.
“He doesn’t forget sequences or pitches or how guys threw him, probably from when he was 15 doing tryout stuff in the DR [Dominican Republic] until now,” Bowie hitting coach Josh Bunselmeyer said. “He remembers, and he knows what you got him out on. If he swung at a bad pitch, he knows when you went to it, what count, that kind of stuff.”
The problem is, as Basallo has received extended exposure to high-level pitching in Double-A, that’s almost served as a detriment at times — especially when the best stretches of Basallo’s season have come when he’s locked in on his plan and not expanding the strike zone, instead attacking only pitches he can do damage on.
“If he knows this guy’s going to go to a fastball in an 0-2 count, and it’s probably high, he knows that pitch is coming and he sees it and he’s swinging at it,” Bunselmeyer said. “It’s like, if you weren’t thinking that, you’d take that pitch if you were focused more positively on a different plan of some kind. In that regard, even when you know it’s coming, sometimes it makes it worse because you see it and it’s like ‘Oh, there it is,’ and even if it’s not a good pitch, you still [swing]. When he’s seeing it, and he does have an idea of what’s happening but he’s really zoned in, he’s tough to get out.”
Basallo, the Orioles’ representative in the MLB All-Star Futures Game, feels he’s in one of his best stretches of the season at the moment in part because he’s focused on his plan in the moment. After that Futures Game appearance, he was batting .320 with an .880 on-base-plus-slugging percentage with eight extra-base hits and just 15 strikeouts in 20 games entering Wednesday.
After missing most of spring training with a stress reaction in his elbow and ramping up defensively as the Bowie season began, Basallo started slowly, at least relative to the high expectations for such a prolific young hitter. He had a .757 OPS entering June. Since then, he has an .853 OPS. His walk rate in the first two months of the season was 6.4%. It’s been 10.5% since, which he believes is a reflection of his progress at the level.
“Early on, I felt like I was in swing mode,” Basallo said, with manager Roberto Mercado translating. “I felt like I could make contact with everything but not really pitches I could do a lot of damage with, and that’s one thing I’ve been trying to home in on and has gotten better throughout the season, taking walks and being patient, taking what the pitcher is giving. I’m going to wait for that mistake that the pitcher makes and, if he doesn’t, I’m just going to take my walk.”
Bunselmeyer, who coached Basallo at lower levels in each of the last three seasons, said the stretches when his protégé was pressing and trying to chase hits gave him valuable experience, especially given how well things have gone for him in his minor league career. Basallo climbed three levels in 2023, with 20 home runs and a .953 OPS, as he became one of the game’s top prospects.
“It’s been a really good year to watch him go through some struggles over a longer period of time because the last thing any of us want to happen is for the first time he goes through a long stretch of failure is in the big leagues,” Bunselmeyer said. “It’s hard to make changes up there. It’s super tough, and at some point you’re going to fail. The sooner he can do that and learn how to do it, the better. It’s only going to help him bounce back better going forward. That’s been the best thing, just watching him struggle and say, ‘You have to do something about it.’ Mentally, he’s been doing a much better job of getting out of some of those tough stretches.”
The way out has been through, first of all, a continued focus on his defense and receiving behind the plate but also a compartmentalized approach to his at-bats. The more Basallo presses and chases hits, the farther he’ll get from his plan and the corresponding unfavorable results have the potential to compound.
“The biggest thing for him is always, what kind of pitches are you swinging at?” Bunselmeyer said. “We know you have the ability to hit bad ones, but can you hit bad ones that are kind of in a little bit better spot for you? Changeup down and away, off the plate, is probably never good. But maybe one that’s up you have a chance to get to a little bit better. But that’s the biggest thing, if he’s swinging at good pitches, odds are, he’s probably going to hit it hard.”
In the long run, the Orioles believe Basallo’s focus on swinging at pitches he can hit hard will benefit him up the ladder.
He said: “I’ve learned a lot from this level, from at-bat to at-bat, how pitchers are pitching me and just taking it every at-bat for the challenge. … My biggest thing is to try to be more focused on making better swing decisions and making sure I’m hitting pitches I can do damage with. Guys aren’t leaving pitches over the middle here at this level. It’s not like Delmarva, where guys are going to make a mistake middle-middle.”
