The 2025 Baltimore Orioles season has been a failure. A year removed from making the playoffs, the Orioles find themselves 7.5 games out of a playoff spot and spent Thursday’s deadline completing a sell-off of anyone they don’t expect to contribute to the 2026 roster.
However, the Orioles can still attempt to get something out of this season by aggressively giving opportunities to some of their top young players to see what they can offer to next year’s team.
The first player who should see way more playing time is already on the roster.
Coby Mayo has been on the major league roster since May 31, but hasn’t exactly had the kind of stable playing time that’d benefit a young hitter.
Just in the month of July, Mayo has had three separate instances where he went three straight games without a plate appearance. He has also had six games where he came off the bench to hit. The Orioles have played 53 games since May 31 and Mayo has been in the starting lineup just 27 times, or 50.9 percent of the team’s games.
Even with especially erratic playing time in July, Mayo has still shown signs of starting to put it together. He ended the month with an .878 OPS that included his first career homer off someone that wasn’t a position player. Mayo also had more walks than strikeouts, an especially encouraging sign for someone not exactly known as a contact hitter.
Ryan O’Hearn being traded while Ryan Mountcastle will be shortly returning from an injury does mean that Mayo will still be competing with a veteran first baseman for playing time. However, there’s still no excuse for Mayo to only start half of the team’s games in the final two months of this season.
Samuel Basallo should also be given every opportunity to begin his major league career in a low-stakes environment.
I’m pretty confident the Orioles were planning to call up Basallo the exact moment he’d still be eligible for the 2026 Rookie of the Year regardless of how this season went, but the lower stakes environment should give Basallo a longer leash as both a hitter and a catcher.
It’s pretty reasonable to envision a scenario where Basallo, like many other prospects, doesn’t exactly hit the ground running once he’s called up. If Basallo were to struggle in the final month of a playoff chase, the Orioles would’ve found themselves in a tricky situation of trying to balance Basallo’s playing time with their goal of making the postseason.
However, that won’t be the case this year. Unless Basallo strikes out 50 percent of the time and allows three passed balls per game, he should be appearing regularly, while keeping him under the threshold for rookie eligibility for 2026.
Basallo debuting in a low stakes environment is a privilege that hasn’t been afforded to any major prospect since Adley Rutschman and the Orioles should use that to their advantage as much as possible.
The opportunity to let younger players figure it out without the pressure of making the playoffs also might be more valuable for players without the pedigree of Basallo or Mayo.
Namely, Dylan Beavers.
Beavers, taken with the 33rd overall pick in the 2022 draft, has enjoyed a breakthrough campaign in his third full season in the minors. He has produced a .916 OPS in AAA and has done so while improving both his walk rate and strikeout rate compared to his 2024 season spent mainly in AA. The former Cal Golden Bear’s production is also very encouraging for his age. Beavers is just 23 and has the fourth-best OPS among AAA batters 23 or younger with at least 250 PAs at that level.
The Orioles were almost certainly going to give Basallo and Mayo playing time this season regardless of their record, but it’s hard to believe the same would be true for Beavers. If the Orioles were contenders for a playoff spot at the deadline, it’s pretty unlikely that Beavers would’ve seen any real chance at major league playing time in Baltimore. In fact, a .900 OPS AAA outfielder would’ve been a perfect trade chip if this team was buying.
As it stands, Beavers remains in the minors, with Jordyn Adams earning a call-up. Adams has produced a .565 OPS in AAA this year, which is a whopping 351 points worse than Beavers. Unless Beavers is nursing an injury, it’s hard to believe there’s any argument for promoting Adams that isn’t remarkably flimsy.
The Orioles have no excuses for once again finding themselves in a situation where winning games feels less important than trying to develop young talent. However, the least they can do is ensure they’ll give every chance to Mayo, Basallo and Beavers to enjoy two months of development without the pressure of a pennant chase.
BSL Analyst
Rose Katz is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, where she worked for The Diamondback as the online managing editor and a sports blogger. As a student, she spent almost all of her time on campus in The Diamondback’s newsroom or at Xfinity Center, Ludwig Field and Maryland Stadium. Rose gained intern experience with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN).