If you’re a franchise stuck in a frustrating cycle of seeing your homegrown stars spend the bulk of their career elsewhere, Samuel Basallo is the player to break it with.

The Orioles’ 21-year-old top prospect’s eight-year, $67 million contract extension that includes an option for 2034 and could be worth $88.5 million with incentives, signed less than a week after his much-anticipated major league debut, is unprecedented in these parts. No player on his proverbial rookie contract has re-signed with the Orioles beyond his expected free agency since Adam Jones in 2012.

The debuts — and optimal early-career contract extension windows — for fellow top prospects Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, and so many others came and went without a deal.

This is different for a lot of reasons, but there’s only one that matters: because Basallo himself could be different.

I’m glad for the opportunity to say this. I had a conversation with someone in the organization this week about the push-pull of wanting to make this point. But it needs to be said how and why Basallo’s skillset is such that he could be better than all the top prospects that came before him.

The hesitance came from a few places. One is that it feels like it would just be hyping the next new, shiny thing. Let’s not forget that Rutschman single-handedly helped turn the Orioles into a winner from the moment he arrived, Henderson is an elite player who is still only getting better and I think has an MVP award in his future, and Holliday is nine months older than Basallo with all the pedigree and skills you can ask for.

The other thing weighing on my mind as I tried to decide how to talk about Basallo is this: the players mentioned above all scuffled in the majors, at times, and that has been hard for some fans to accept. Even the best need time to adjust and evolve. So I’m weary of setting high expectations when they already exist and aren’t always linearly met.

But you only need to have watched the last few games to see what’s been clear to me for years. I’ve seen Basallo hit so many jaw-dropping home runs on pitches that grown men (let alone kids) don’t even make contact with (let alone drive). I’ve seen him mature, physically and emotionally, and believe the conviction others have when talking about his drive to be a special ballplayer, not just a good one.

He’s a hard contact machine that only is improving in that category. In his first full professional season, he had a 42.1% hard-hit rate. Last year, it was up to 48.6%, and that felt like a big jump — until he had a 57.4% hard-hit rate in Triple-A this year.

There’s going to be loud contact all over and around the zone, because Basallo can make a lot of contact. That’s going to be used against him as he acclimates to the big leagues. Pitchers are going to try and get him to chase, and he’s gotten better at forcing them into the zone through the high minors, but there’s always another level to that in the majors. They’ll also try to get him out around the edges on pitches that most players, sometimes even Basallo, can’t drive.

The Yordan Álvarez comp is an easy one. Basallo aspires to be like him for a reason. But if he can grow as a catcher as well, and he has the raw talents and mindset to do so, you’re talking about a player with even more value than his idol.

There’s only one No. 1 overall prospect in the game at a time, and when you’ve had three (Rutschman, Henderson and Holliday) this decade then agitating for a fourth is a choice, but there’s a sense in the organization that Basallo is somehow underrated nationally.

Well, now is his chance to prove that — and to prove he’s worth something the Orioles haven’t engaged in for a long time.

There are multiple reasons he is the first to sign a long-term deal, of course. Basallo agreed to a $1.3 million contract as an amateur, which is significant money, but there’s typically more incentive for players signed from the Dominican Republic to lock in massive career earnings like this as well given the circumstances many players come from there. There’s also the fact that Basallo isn’t exactly selling off all of his free agency.

If the 2034 option is picked up, Basallo will still hit free agency at age-30 and would probably still be a coveted slugger at that age.

There’s also the ability for the new ownership group to flex its financial clout in a way its predecessors couldn’t under John Angelos’ direction. When Rutschman and Henderson and so many others debuted and were in this early-career extension sweet spot, the Orioles were not in the business of spending money or committing to do so long-term, given the family’s infighting over control of the team and potential plans for a sale.

Holliday debuted after David Rubenstein’s group took over last spring but, as with Henderson and Jordan Westburg, is represented by Scott Boras, the most powerful agent in the game (who prefers his clients to maximize their value in free agency.)

Basallo being the first one to sign a longer deal makes sense another, way, too. There’s always been a worry that if one of the drafted homegrown players got a gaudy new deal, it might somehow reflect poorly on the others who hadn’t.

Basallo, the first product of this front office’s international efforts under Koby Perez, has no such peers to worry about.

On the field, he may turn out to be peerless, too. That’s the kind of talent we are talking about. And for once, the appreciation of that won’t have a looming free agency date spoiling that.