In 1976, Sylvester Stallone brought us Rocky, the story of a talented but unknown boxer who would go onto rise to superstardom. Nearly 40 years later, Stallone and others provided us with a new version of that same story and relaunched the franchise with Creed. Throughout the 2023 season, a similar parallel narrative played out amongst the Orioles catching prospects.
In Samuel Basallo, the Orioles have their Rocky Balboa—the burgeoning star from humble origins who could prove to be baseball’s best catching prospect since Adley Rutschman. Then there’s Creed Willems—who not only shares a name with his movie counterpart, but at times this year looked like the lesser, but still compelling, version of Basallo.