The Orioles may have a catcher on the roster, but they still don’t appear to have their answer.
Carlos Narváez was supposed to give Baltimore some breathing room behind the plate after the club moved on from Adley Rutschman. Instead, his first extended shot in orange and black only sharpened the need for an upgrade.
The glove held up. The bat did not.
Narváez came to Baltimore as part of the package that sent Rutschman and Jake Rogers to Boston, and while he was more than a throw-in, he was never the centerpiece of the return. That honor belonged to one of the four prospects in the deal, either Anthony Eyanson or Enddy Azocar. Still, Narváez mattered because he looked like a workable stopgap - someone who could buy the Orioles time while they figured out the long-term picture.
That picture is still cloudy. Samuel Basallo is part of it, but the organization seems to want him at DH for at least half of his time. That leaves a real opening at catcher, and Narváez’s chance to seize it went sideways fast.
He entered 2026 with a decent amount of buzz after a strong 2025, when he posted a 100 OPS+ and earned praise for his defense. FanGraphs and Baseball Reference both pegged him at 2.8 WAR. In Boston, he was expected to split catching duties with Connor Wong and form a steady, if unspectacular, tandem.
Instead, his season unraveled. He was serviceable through May, batting .220/.298/.321 with seven extra-base hits in 37 games.
The defense kept him in the lineup. But by the end of June, the bat had gone ice cold.
He hit .097/.143/.129 that month, then followed it with a .172/.242/.276 line in July.
That was enough for Boston to go shopping. As the Red Sox surged to a 21-4 July and pushed back into the playoff race, they went after a bigger name at catcher and paid heavily to get him, landing Rutschman from the Orioles on August 3. Narváez headed the other way.
Baltimore handed him an everyday role almost immediately. Basallo was on the injured list, and Yohel Pozo was the only other active catcher on the roster. For the moment, Narváez was the guy.
The offense never arrived. In his first 15 games with the Orioles, the Venezuelan-born catcher went 3-for-41 with two walks and 14 strikeouts.
He improved only slightly after that, hitting .139/.244/.167 from August 25 through the end of the season with one double, three walks and 10 strikeouts. Across 33 games with Baltimore in 2026, he finished with one extra-base hit and zero RBI.
The bat was a problem, but Narváez still has a calling card that matters. Defense.
Baseball Savant credited him with five fielding runs in 2026, good for the 76th percentile among all fielders. His best trait was blocking, where he piled up 13 blocks above average, a mark that landed in the 99th percentile.
Nine of those came with the Orioles, even though he had half as many block opportunities there as he did with Boston. He also drew positive marks for pitch framing, and before 2026 he had strong numbers in steal prevention, though that can be influenced by the pitcher working with him.
Even with that defensive value, the Orioles sound like a team that wants more. MASN’s Roch Kubatko said last month that he expects Baltimore to be “in the market for another catcher with more offensive upside” than Narváez this offseason. That lines up with what Mike Elias said in August, when the Orioles president of baseball operations explained that the “plan with [Basallo] was always to kind of rotate him though and have him catch more like half or fewer than half of the games.”
That kind of setup demands a true primary catcher. Right now, the Orioles don’t seem to have one in the organization.
Narváez still has value. He’s a major league-caliber defender, he’ll be just 28 for the entire 2027 season, and he still has minor league options.
If Baltimore upgrades the position, he becomes a useful piece of depth rather than a stopgap forced into too much responsibility. That would also be a better place organizationally than where the club spent much of 2026, leaning on Pozo and Sam Huff for significant big-league time.
There are at least a couple of catching prospects who could enter the conversation in 2027. Creed Willems spent most of 2026 in Norfolk and hit .254/.347/.414, though his defensive work behind the plate remains a question.
Ethan Anderson is not far behind him. He got a brief look in Triple-A last year, but he was excellent in Double-A, batting .271/.363/.518, and could be the better offensive fit in the near term.
Narváez will be part of the Orioles’ catching plans in some form. His defense and roster flexibility make sure of that.
But he already missed his best chance to convince the club he should be the everyday answer. If Baltimore wants to compete, it looks like it will have to find someone else.
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