{"id":93991,"date":"2025-08-24T17:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T17:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/93991\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T17:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T17:27:07","slug":"rubenstein-orioles-hoping-for-more-extensions-with-young-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/93991\/","title":{"rendered":"Rubenstein: Orioles Hoping For More Extensions With Young Players"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orioles officially announced Samuel Basallo<\/a>\u2019s contract extension<\/a> at a press conference yesterday, with several players in attendance along with Basallo, GM Mike Elias, and team chairman\/CEO David Rubenstein.\u00a0 Among the many topics addressed was Rubenstein\u2019s desire to make such events a fairly regular occurrence, as the owner showed interest in extending more members of the Orioles\u2019 young core.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Orioles\u2019 ownership group is really well capitalized and we have the resources to do these kind of deals,\u201d Rubenstein told Steve Melewski<\/a> and other reporters.\u00a0 \u201cIt takes two to do deals, but we thought this was a perfect one, for the first one of this type\u2026.We have a lot of other talented people on the team who we hope will ultimately want to spend their entire career here or want to spend long-term arrangements with us.\u00a0 We\u2019re committed to doing more of these as soon as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basallo\u2019s deal represents an intriguing turning point for an organization that more or less eschewed long-term extensions for years under previous owner Peter Angelos.\u00a0 As MLBTR\u2019s Contract Tracker indicates<\/a>, Adam Jones<\/a>\u2019 six-year extension from May 2012 was the last long-term extension signed by the Orioles.\u00a0 Other multi-year deals within the last 13 years were short-term pacts to cover arbitration years, plus there was the unusual circumstance of the three-year extension signed by J.J. Hardy<\/a> just a few weeks before he was set to hit free agency in the 2014-15 offseason.<\/p>\n

Even as the Orioles amassed a wealth of young talent in their recent rebuild, extensions didn\u2019t follow.\u00a0 This naturally could\u2019ve been a product of the ownership turmoil the organization was going through for much of that period, and Rubenstein\u2019s group only bought the team in early 2024.\u00a0 It should also be noted that such O\u2019s building blocks as Gunnar Henderson<\/a>, Jordan Westburg<\/a>, Grayson Rodriguez<\/a>, and Jackson Holliday<\/a> are all represented by Scott Boras, whose clients have traditionally passed on signing early-career extensions.<\/p>\n

Still, it was noteworthy that the Orioles didn\u2019t lock up even any of the non-Boras clients until Basallo (who is repped by CAA) this week.\u00a0 The fact that the O\u2019s didn\u2019t spend much overall during the first full offseason of Rubenstein\u2019s tenure also created concern amongst Baltimore fans that things weren\u2019t going to change under the new regime, and the discontent only grew when the Orioles stumbled to a losing record after two seasons in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Management can now point to Basallo\u2019s extension as proof that the club is willing to both keep its cornerstone players in place, and to spend the money necessary to make those deals happen.\u00a0 The catcher\u2019s deal is also an example of how quickly contract talks can escalate, as Elias said negotiations began exactly a week ago, on the same day Basallo was called up from Triple-A to make his MLB debut.<\/p>\n

Could more extensions be coming soon?\u00a0 Henderson didn\u2019t comment on whether or not his camp had already had any talks with the O\u2019s, but expressed a willingness to consider any offer and stated that \u201cthe No. 1 thing for me is being on winning teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henderson\u2019s price tag is about to jump considerably, as the shortstop will enter the first of three arbitration years this coming offseason.\u00a0 His pro career has already seen Henderson bank a little over $8MM, counting his MLB minimum salaries, his $2.3MM signing bonus from the draft, and roughly $3.4MM from the pre-arbitration bonus pool.\u00a0 Between this bit of financial security already and escalating arb salaries, Henderson may have already made enough to feel comfortable in betting on himself all the way to free agency, like so many Boras clients.\u00a0 While the three years of remaining control mean that the Orioles aren\u2019t exactly under the gun to extend Henderson, he\u2019ll only get more expensive the closer he gets to the open market.<\/p>\n

Adley Rutschman<\/a> also declined to comment on any extension talks between his reps at Wasserman and the Orioles, simply telling the Baltimore Banner\u2019s Danielle Allentuck<\/a> and other reporters today that he was happy to see Basallo rewarded.\u00a0 The fact that the O\u2019s made such a hefty commitment to a young catcher like Basallo naturally led to speculation about Rutschman\u2019s future, and whether or not Basallo has now supplanted Rutschman as the team\u2019s long-term choice behind the plate.<\/p>\n

As one might expect, right now the Orioles believe there\u2019s plenty of room for Rutschman and Basallo to operate in tandem.\u00a0 Yesterday, interim manager Tony Mansolino told reporters (including Matt Weyrich of the Baltimore Sun<\/a>) that the O\u2019s could have both players in the lineup in a catcher\/DH capacity, or Basallo could play first base.\u00a0 \u201cThe fact that Sammy is so versatile, that\u2019s going to help that a lot\u2026Any time you have two guys that can catch at a high level, on a big league team, you have a massive advantage over teams that don\u2019t,\u201d Mansolino noted.<\/p>\n

Rutschman has two arbitration years remaining before he is scheduled to hit free agency following the 2027 season.\u00a0 As Weyrich notes, extending a player who has had some Major League success is much trickier than extending a player like Basallo right at the start of his career, so locking up Rutschman would represent another spending frontier for the Rubenstein ownership group.\u00a0 There\u2019s also the question of whether or not the Orioles still view Rutschman as worthy of a long-term investment, considering how his numbers have declined at the plate over the last two seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orioles officially announced Samuel Basallo\u2019s contract extension at a press conference yesterday, with several players in attendance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[52632,49,48,55062,19280,462,52630,82],"class_list":["post-93991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-adley-rutschman","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-rubenstein","tag-gunnar-henderson","tag-mlb","tag-samuel-basallo","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}