The Orioles risk further alienating their fans with their handling of Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers.
John Beers is a staff writer for Camden Chat, where he’s been covering the Orioles since 2022.
There’s been a lot of talk in Birdland this week about the impending arrival of Dylan Beavers and Samuel Basallo and why the Orioles’ two most big-league-ready prospects are still mashing Triple-A pitching instead of getting their feet wet against major league competition.
The buzzword phrase that keeps being served up as the “reason” to keep Basallo and Beavers until this Friday, August 15th, is the “coveted” Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) draft pick. For those who thought they could stop caring about the draft a couple of years ago, the PPI pick was instituted by the MLB in 2022 to reward organizations that promote top prospects and have those players go on to win Rookie of the Year or finish top 3 in MVP/Cy Young voting before reaching their arbitration years.
The Seattle Mariners received the first PPI pick, the 29th pick in the 2023 draft, after Julio Rodriguez won the 2022 AL Rookie of the Year. The Diamondbacks and Orioles earned the 31st and 32nd picks in the 2024 draft after Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson won Rookie of the Year in 2023. There were no Rookie of the Year-related PPI picks in this most recent draft, but the Royals received the 28th pick for Bobby Witt Jr. finishing in the top three of MVP voting.
As the front office surely isn’t concerned about whether Basallo or Beavers may factor into MVP voting any time soon, this delay is almost surely to preserve their rookie eligibility for the 2026 season and thus keep hope alive (however unlikely it may be) that one of the two top prospects can earn Rookie of the Year next season. And yes, that means (in all likelihood) the front office is currently manipulating service time for the chance at the ~30th pick in the 2027 MLB Draft.
And, as Baltimore Sun beat writer Jacob Calvin Meyer recently explained, it wasn’t until yesterday that Beavers even had a glimmer of hope to be eligible to earn the PPI pick that’s keeping him in the minors. To be eligible to earn a PPI pick, the prospect must appear on two out of three preseason Top 100 prospect lists from Baseball America, ESPN and MLB Pipeline.
As of yesterday, Beavers is now on Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects list, coming in at No. 83. Beavers missed the cut on MLB Pipeline’s updated list, meaning he’ll either have to make ESPN’s preseason list or rise up MLB’s list through prospect graduations and/or reevaluation. As things currently stand, Beavers can’t earn the O’s a PPI pick no matter when he makes his debut.
The question also has to be asked, “Just how valuable is the PPI pick?” We know that this potential pick is likely to fall between the 28th and 32nd picks in the draft two years from now. Much like any MLB Draft pick, that pick range has produced a wide variety of results in recent years.
Between 2010 and 2021, 59 out of 60 players picked between the 28th and 32nd picks signed with the organization that drafted them. Of those 59 players, 15 never reached the major leagues or are yet to make the major leagues. There are also 20 players who made it to the majors and have so far produced a negative career WAR.
Of those 24 players with positive career WAR, only 16 have a career WAR above 2 and only seven have made an All-Star team (including 30th pick from the 2020 draft, Jordan Westburg). There’s also an Aaron Judge among those picks, proving winning the lottery is possible, though the chance is probably in the <1% range.
Now on the off chance that Beavers or Basallo win Rookie of the Year and earn the O’s a late first-round pick two years from now, the player selected likely won’t help the Orioles until the 2030s. Of the seven players drafted in the 28-32 range who went on to become All-Stars, it took them 3.5 years on average to reach the big leagues and no one reached the majors in less than three years.
Of course, the 2025 Orioles don’t really have anything to play for the rest of the season. Given that the O’s are completely out of contention, a glass-half-full Orioles fan may recognize the logic behind preserving the chance to add future assets—even if it means delaying exciting prospects’ arrivals in Baltimore.
However, glass-half-full Orioles fans are hard to find these days. As Kyle Goon of the Baltimore Banner recently reported, the tone-deaf approach of the front office has sent shock waves of dissatisfaction throughout Birdland. And as our Tyler Young broke down yesterday, the on-field product is doing little to distract from the growing burdens that come with being an Orioles fan.
The only thing that can make up for the profound disappointment that is the 2025 season is a swift return to contention in 2026. Unless Mike Elias & Co. go on an unprecedented spending spree this offseason, Beavers and Basallo will have a part to play in that attempted return to contention.
We’ve already seen the cornerstones of this franchise—Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman and Jackson Holliday—need 50+ games to adapt to the majors. It’s safe to assume that Beavers and Basallo may need similar adjustment periods. Even if they play in all 40 games after their presumptive call-up this Friday, there may still be some growing pains at the beginning of 2026. We have already seen a slow start doom the 2025 season, but the front office is still taking the first steps toward another slow start next year.
The handling of Beavers and Basallo feels like a microcosm of what’s been so disappointing about the David Rubenstein era of Orioles baseball. When Rubenstein took over as owner, we expected his Baltimore roots and love of the O’s to drive the direction of this team—a “do whatever it takes” approach. Instead, the private equity billionaire and the rest of the front office continue to run the Orioles like a private equity firm: maximizing profits and protecting the health of future assets instead of taking risks to try and bring success and happiness to Baltimore.
