Since being drafted in 2021, Creed Willems has steadily worked his way up through the minor leagues. An eighth-round draft pick out of high school, Willems hung around on the Orioles’ prospect lists in the mid-levels, but never did enough to really cause a stir (if you don’t count his kickass mullet).
Willems spent all of 2025 with the Double-A Baysox, where he hit ..253/.338/.441 in 105 games. Just as he had done throughout his time in professional baseball, Willems hit righties pretty well but was
lousy against lefties. After the season he was eligible for the Rule 5 draft. The Orioles did not protect him, and no team selected him. That’s good for the Orioles, who got to keep him in the system without putting him on the 40-man roster, but maybe a bummer for Willems that no team wanted him badly enough to give him a shot.
Willems started the 2026 season with the Norfolk Tides and stayed there for the rest of the year (except for two rehab games with Frederick). At age 23, Willems was about three years younger than the league average. The C/1B/DH came out of the gate hot, cooled a bit, then had a scorching month of May. On May 31st, Willems had an .846 OPS through 47 games and people were starting to notice. When will Creed get a chance, we wondered.
The hot hitting cooled off, but Willems was still going well enough overall that it seemed like he might actually get to the majors that year. On June 30th, Willems was OPS’ing .798. On July 1st, the Tides were on the road at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and Willems suffered a freak injury. He slipped on a mat in the dugout and pulled a hamstring, landing him on the IL for about two weeks.
If you remember July in Baltimore, the situation got pretty ugly, catcher-wise. Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo were both injured around the middle of the month. Then, of course, Rutschman was traded to the Red Sox while Basallo was on the injured list. That’s how the Orioles spent a month with catchers like Chadwick Tromp, Sam Huff, Yohel Pozo, Jake Rogers, and eventually Carlos Narváez making starts. It was an ugly scene. And yet, Creed Willems was not recalled.
There are a couple ways to look at that. One is that Willems was on the IL from 7/2-7/20 and missed his opportunity to make the big leagues due to poor timing. Rutschman went on the IL on 7/20 and Basallo went on the IL on 7/22.
So yeah, timing could have been it. Or it could have been that Mike Elias had no intention of adding Willems to the 40-man roster and bringing him up. In fact, Elias went out of his way to acquire new catchers rather than turn to Willems. He selected Pozo off waivers from the Cardinals on July 23rd. He traded for Jake Rogers on July 30th. He brought Tromp into the organization in early July. And of course, Narváez came back in the Rutschman trade and spent the rest of the season being terrible.
We’ll never know if Willems would have gotten his chance if he hadn’t been injured. It was probably for the best that they didn’t add him to the team right after his injury because he was terrible at the plate for the rest of July and all of August. His overall numbers plummeted, though he rebounded nicely in September to make his overall numbers look more respectable.
Willems finished 2026 with 113 games played and a hitting line of .260/.351/.434. He hit 21 home runs but just five doubles. One interesting thing about his batting line is that, for the first time in his career, he did not have a large platoon split. In fact, he hit lefties and righties almost evenly, with just a bit higher OBP against righties.
Due to the impending owners’ lockout, we will not need to worry about Willems being subject to the Rule 5 draft. In all likelihood, there will not be one.
The problem for Willems is that he doesn’t hit well enough to be a starting catcher, but he doesn’t play defense well enough to be the backup catcher. He is also a first baseman and designated hitter, but the Orioles are pretty full up on players to fill those roles.
FanGraphs is a Creed fan, however, ranking him as the Orioles #15 prospect back in May. He has surely been pushed down that list with the influx in talent from the trade deadline deals, but that is still a pretty good ranking for Willems. Eric Longenhagen likes Willems’ bat and predicted in May that Willems should have been ready to debut in the summer. As for his defense, Longenhagen says:
Willems isn’t great behind the plate. He isn’t an especially smooth receiver or blocker, and it takes him awhile to get out of his crouch and release the ball on stolen base attempts. You can play him there occasionally, but it’s hard to see a team starting him there every day even if he hits his offensive ceiling. Willems thus projects as a hybrid sort of bench bat, a Mitch Garver type who catches once per week while playing a little first base and DH and pinch-hitting when he’s not in the bucket.
Willems did join the Orioles on the taxi squad at the end of the year, but he was never activated and will have to wait to make his MLB debut. Steve Melewski caught up with Willems during that time and posted a nice interview with him on his website.
If Willems is not shipped off via trade this off-season, I expect he’ll be back at Triple-A Norfolk to start the 2027 season. Basallo is committed to the Orioles long-term, Willems isn’t strong defensively behind the plate, and the Orioles are awash in 1B/DH types. That doesn’t bode well for him. But I hope he will force his way up when given the chance.
