Three reasons to consider moving to Basallo, Kjerstad or Mayo

As the trade deadline approaches, the Orioles find themselves in the position of being a virtually guaranteed playoff team while also having a roster that could certainly use some pitching help heading into October.

If the Orioles want to make a big move at the trade deadline, there are three prospects that should be of interest to every team: Samuel Basallo, Heston Kjerstad and Coby Mayo. Basallo and Mayo are currently among MLB.com’s top 20 prospects, and Kjerstad was until recently the playing time threshold to move from prospect to prospect status. With Jackson Holliday hopefully untouchable, those three will be the most attractive players that could be available to sellers this year.

While some fans would be reluctant to trade any of these players, I certainly wouldn’t lose sleep over the idea of ​​trading at least one of them to significantly improve this year’s team. Here are three reasons why.

The Orioles have won plenty of games over the last two years without them.

Since the start of the 2023 season, the Baltimore Orioles are 156-92 in the regular season, a winning percentage of 62.9%. They won those regular season games without any appearances by Basallo and Mayo and only 27 by Kjerstad.

While Kjerstad has already shown he can contribute to a major league roster and I would expect Basallo and Mayo to do the same if they aren’t traded, it seems hard to believe the Orioles’ World Series chances this year will hinge on either of those players.

I have no doubt this trio will be important to future teams if they aren’t moved, but future versions of the Orioles shouldn’t be a priority over the 2024 team trying to win the World Series right now.

I’m not asking the Orioles to trade these three players to get a better starting pitcher, but I hope they realize that this may be the only year they’ll have a starting pitcher like Corbin Burnes. The Orioles haven’t had an ace like Burnes since Mike Mussina, and it would be a shame if they didn’t try to realistically maximize their chances of winning a World Series with him by keeping players they barely needed to get to this point.

Keeping O’Hearn and/or Santander makes moving Kjerstad and/or Mayo much easier

While Basallo didn’t make the big leagues due to being 19 in AA, Kjerstad’s lack of big league playing time and Mayo still being in AAA are largely due to being stymied by other solid hitters.

However, two of those solid hitters could leave Baltimore after this season: Anthony Santander will be a free agent and Ryan O’Hearn has a team option after this year.

If both O’Hearn and Santander leave, that would free up around 1,000 at-bats that could be used elsewhere, with Kjerstad and Mayo appearing to be the two players who would end up claiming the most.

However, there are plenty of good reasons to try to keep O’Hearn and Santander in Baltimore for the next few years.

After providing a 120 OPS+ In 2022 and 2023, Santander’s OPS+ stands at 130 this year, after a strong June. It’s unlikely that Santander’s June OPS of .960 will continue through the end of the year, but even if it slows down, it seems pretty reasonable to expect it to finish 2024 with another OPS+ around 120.

Santander also enjoy a clean bill of health since 2022 and if he plays more than 150 games again this year it will be the third year in a row that he has done so.

Meanwhile, O’Hearn successfully proved that 2023 was no fluke and that the player he was in Kansas City is nothing like the player he is now. O’Hearn’s OPS+ jumped from 122 to 136, making him the team’s third-best hitter behind Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg.

It’s worth noting that O’Hearn hasn’t been allowed to see lefties regularly, but his production as a platoon hitter is hard to dispute.

O’Hearn will be 31 next April and Santander will be 30, so there’s no need to worry too much about either hitter suddenly suffering a major decline due to aging. The 2025 Orioles would have a formidable lineup with both players playing regularly, and I suspect they’d be useful to the 2026 and 2027 Orioles as well.

There’s certainly a chance that Kjerstad and Mayo’s ceilings include being better hitters than O’Hearn and Santander in the coming years, but this deadline is more about allocating the team’s resources in the best possible way than trying to guess what those four players’ OPS+ will be in 2026.

Keeping O’Hearn and Santander after this year and using Kjerstad or Mayo in a trade to get him started is a better use of the team’s payroll and prospect capital than letting Santander walk and missing out on a big name at the deadline because they weren’t prepared to include Kjerstad or Mayo.

The team’s track record of developing promising position players means the future should be perfect.

The Orioles are all but assured of a playoff berth thanks to contributions from Mike Elias’ draft picks, such as 2019 No. 1 pick Adley Rutschman and 2021 No. 5 pick Colton Cowser.

However, they are also in this position because the No. 30 pick in the 2020 draft became Jordan Westburg and the No. 42 pick in the 2019 draft was Gunnar Henderson. They also included Joey Ortiz, the 108th pick in the 2019 draft, in the Corbin Burnes trade.

The Orioles have produced several quality major league players outside of the top five picks in the draft and it’s very likely that Basallo (international signing) and Mayo (#103 in 2020) will continue that trend, whether it happens in Baltimore or elsewhere.

I don’t expect management to find perfect clones of Basallo, Kjerstad and Mayo if they are traded, but I don’t think it’s particularly far-fetched to expect other position players to become top-100 prospects without being top-5 picks when that’s happened several times already.