Baltimore Orioles Star Prospect Suffered Concerning Injury in November

The injury news keeps on coming for the Baltimore Orioles.

First, it was revealed that Kyle Bradish would start the season on the injured list. Then, it was announced John Means will also miss the beginning of the year after being behind schedule during his recovery from Tommy John surgery.

Now, Roch Kubatko of MASN.com informed Orioles fans that their star prospect Samuel Basallo suffered a stress fracture in his right elbow that was detected in November. He's currently unable to throw a baseball right now.

The 19-year-old is still able to catch bullpen sessions, but he's not throwing and likely won't see game action at the position until April.

Basallo has had a meteoric rise since joining Baltimore's organization in 2021.

He played his first full season of professional baseball last year and finished with a slash line of .313/.402/.551, 20 home runs and 86 RBI across three minor league levels.

In 2023, Basallo was ranked by MLB Pipeline as the Orioles' No. 5 overall prospect, but outside the Top-100. Now, he's listed as the 17th best prospect in minor league baseball.

Baltimore views him as a potential franchise cornerstone and has practically moved him into the untouchable category.

He was a main reason why the front office walked away from deals to acquire Dylan Cease and Jesus Luzardo.

Missing any sort of time for his development is concerning.

However, general manager Mike Elias isn't too worried about the stress fracture.

"This is something that we see a lot in throwers in his age group. We've had some of them recently since I've been in the organization, and it's typically a bump in the road, it's not a big deal," he said according to Kubatko.

Hopefully that's the case and not just lip service.

The Orioles were also going to give Basallo reps at first base to see if he quickly took to that position. With Adley Rutschman likely commanding the starting catcher role for the future, moving the rising prospect to first would open up a more clear path to playing time in the bigs.

This injury seemingly won't hurt that idea, but his stress fracture is certainly a setback that Baltimore wished to avoid.