Bloop, instead of blast: Basallo earns 2nd career walk-off hit in odd fashion

BALTIMORE -- Prior to Aug. 13, the Orioles hadn’t recorded a walk-off victory during the 2025 season. In fact, they were the only MLB team that hadn’t walked one off at that point.

Now, Baltimore can’t stop winning in walk-off fashion. And the latest such occurrence on Tuesday night brought one of the weirder endings fans will see across the big leagues this year.

The O’s notched a series-opening 3-2 win over the Pirates in the 11th inning, but not until after a replay review initiated by first-base umpire Alan Porter, the crew chief.

With the bases loaded and no outs in a tie game in the bottom of the 11th, Samuel Basallo lifted a fly ball the opposite way to shallow left field, where Pittsburgh’s Tommy Pham attempted to slide and catch it. Pham was unsuccessful, and it was initially called a foul ball.

Hold on a second, though ...

“It looked like it landed fair,” said Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore’s runner on third at the time. “So that’s why I was pointing to the dugout to challenge, which they were going to anyway.”

Henderson’s eyes were right. Not only did Pham’s glove touch the ball in fair territory, but the ball then hit the chalk of the foul line as it hit the ground. For a few moments, everybody held still -- Henderson near third, the rest of the O’s and Bucs players around the field and the fans throughout the stands.

After the review, the call was overturned. The Orioles had their fourth walk-off win of the season -- and their third in four games -- and Henderson sprinted to celebrate with his teammates, including Basallo, who had a Gatorade tub dumped on him as a reward for a bit of an unorthodox RBI single.

“Once we saw [the replay] on the board, it was just like a matter of time. Because, obviously, it hit the line, even after he touched it,” Henderson said. “It was kind of funny because it just kind of delays the reaction of everybody. It was definitely an anticlimactic kind of walk-off.”

Basallo may only be 17 games into his MLB career, but the 21-year-old is getting used to coming through with the heroics for Baltimore.

In his third big league game on Aug. 19 in Boston, Basallo drove in the go-ahead run on a groundout in the 11th inning of the Orioles’ 4-3 win over the Red Sox. On Friday, the O’s No. 1 prospect (and MLB Pipeline’s No. 8 overall) recorded his first walk-off hit, belting a game-winning solo homer with two outs in the ninth inning of a 2-1 win over the Dodgers.

When Baltimore used an improbable four-run rally in the ninth to notch a walk-off 4-3 win over Los Angeles on Saturday, Basallo was on the bench, having exited the game in the sixth, when he took a foul tip off his right hand.

On Tuesday, Basallo returned to the lineup and came up big again, this time in a spot in which he knew he didn’t need to deposit a ball over the outfield wall to win it.

“In that situation, I’m not trying to hit a home run,” Basallo said via team interpreter Brandon Quinones. “I’m trying to hit the ball at a good angle, trying to hit the ball well.”

Interim manager Tony Mansolino was pleased with the young Basallo’s approach in the spot.

“Contact is king, right, with the runners in scoring position?” Mansolino said. “I think a lot of the modern game, a lot of modern analytics for a while, said three true outcomes -- home runs, walks, strikeouts -- and I get it. But when runners are on second and third base, you put the ball in play, you’ve got a chance to score the guy.

“So maybe I am old and a dinosaur here, but I really love contact, I really love putting the ball in play.”

Basallo is only the fourth player since 1974 to record multiple walk-off hits within his first 17 MLB games. Coincidentally, the three others were also catchers -- the Reds’ Tyler Stephenson (2020 and ‘21), the Dodgers’ Will Smith (2019) and the Orioles’ John Stefero (1983).

The O’s (67-77), who have won six of their past seven games, hope to get plenty more walk-off hits in the future from Basallo, who signed an eight-year, $67 million extension on Aug. 22.

Friday’s home run may have been a bit more impressive than Tuesday’s single -- which had an exit velocity of 75.7 mph and a launch angle of 51 degrees for a hit probability of only 7%, per Statcast -- but Basallo enjoys all walk-offs the same.

“I was just happy,” Basallo said. “These are moments that I’ve been dreaming about my whole life, so really just trying to take it all in and really just celebrating that moment exactly as if I hit the home run the other day.”