Orioles Designate Sam Huff For Assignment

The Orioles have designated catcher Sam Huff for assignment, per a team announcement. Fellow catcher Yohel Pozo, whom they claimed off waivers from the Cardinals last week, has been recalled to take his spot on the roster.

Huff, 28, appeared in 14 games with Baltimore but has slashed just .121/.147/.182 in 34 plate appearances. He’s gone down on strikes a whopping 19 times (55.9%) in that small sample.

Once a well-regarded catching prospect in the Rangers system, Huff has played parts of six seasons in the big leagues. He carries a career .232/.284/.401 batting line in that time, though an outrageous hot streak in his first call to the majors skews that production a bit. Huff went 11-for-31 with three homers and three doubles during a 10-game cup of coffee back in 2020. Since that time, he’s a .217/.271/.360 hitter in 273 plate appearances and has fanned at a 38.5% rate.

Huff has had his share of success in the upper minors. The former fourth-round pick is a .252/.332/.463 hitter in parts of six Triple-A seasons (1352 plate appearances). That’s more than enough bat for a catcher, but Huff’s poor hit tool has been exposed at the game’s top level and made it difficult for him to stick on a major league roster. He’ll be traded, placed on outright waivers or released within the next five days now that he’s been designated for assignment. Waivers could add another 48 hours to the process, if he’s not waived until the end of that five-day period.

Pozo’s overall production in the majors isn’t all that different, but the shape of it is. His .247/.273/.363 isn’t all that different from Huff’s line in a similar sample, but unlike Huff, Pozo has terrific bat-to-ball skills. He doesn’t impact the ball all that much when he makes contact, but his 12.6% strikeout rate is less than one-third of Huff’s career 37.9% rate. If nothing else, Pozo will put the ball in play far more often. He’s also a more accomplished Triple-A hitter in roughly the same number of plate appearances: .316/.338/.536.

Baltimore’s top two catchers are currently on the injured list. Adley Rutschman has been sidelined since July 18 due to a wrist injury. Samuel Basallo landed on the IL just a couple days later due to inflammation in his shoulder. The O’s have been using Huff and Chadwick Tromp behind the plate but received virtually no production from either player. Both Huff and Tromp have been strikeout prone, though Tromp is “only” at 29.5% in 44 plate appearances … none of which has resulted in a walk.

The O’s haven’t given a definitive timeline on the return of either Basallo or Rutschman. They announced over the weekend that Basallo would be shut down from baseball activity for a few days in order to give the inflammation in his shoulder some time to calm down, however, so it doesn’t sound as though he’s on the verge of returning anytime soon. The O’s can try to get by with a Tromp/Pozo combination for the time being, but the recent claim of Pozo in and of itself shows that president of baseball operations Mike Elias is open to bringing in some new names, even if it’s just a small-scale pickup.