The Orioles joined in on the free agency frenzy on Saturday evening signing Tyler O’Neill and Gary Sanchez to deals that made industry experts say things like “huh… interesting” and “I guess that makes sense”. Both deals were for significant amounts of money and point towards these two guys playing a large role on the 2025 Orioles.
The two signings also appear to have provided answers on if some of the Orioles outgoing free agents will be returning while also posing a few questions about some of the guys currently on the roster. In this blog we will dive into what signing O’Neill and Sanchez means for the rest of the Orioles offseason.
Who is Tyler O’Neill
O’Neill signed for 3 years 49.5 Million which is the largest free agent deal the O’s have signed in the Mike Elias era. O’Neill is 29 and coming off the second best season of his career. The 3 year deal seems like a win win where it felt like 16.5 AAV was a good get for O’Neill and at the same time with the price of other free agents on the market the Orioles getting a guy who just hit 31 homers for that price also seemed like a good move. If I had to pick a winner in these negotiations I would give a slight edge to Boras and O’Neill just because I could see a world where O’Neill’s health issues could have prevented him from getting multiple years but at this money and length the O’s aren’t exposed to too much risk.
O’Neill was not on my radar for the Orioles to target this offseason but in hindsight it feels very obvious. Mike Elias was telling every reporter who asked that the Orioles were looking to get a right handed bat in the outfield because the O’s had struggled so much against lefties and Tyler O’Neill is right handed and absolutely crushes lefties.
This past season O’Neill slashed .313/.429/.750 against lefties which made him a 215 wRC+ hitter when a southpaw was on the bump. That kind of situational dominance is huge for a lineup, a big reason the Orioles got off to such a hot start last season was because Adley and Gunnar were absolutely smoking left handed pitching, once those 2 guys cooled off the lineup really struggled against lefties culminating in the playoffs with Cole Ragans and the lefties out of the Royals pen making the O’s look like they’d never seen someone pitch with their left handed before.
When you look at O’Neills career so far a few things jump out. First that he had an incredible 2021 season, he hit 34 homers, OPSed .912, won a gold glove and racked up 6.1 WAR in just 138 games. If you could somehow get that kind of production out of him 16.5 million would be an absolute steal.
The bad news is that this guy cannot stay healthy to save his life since that 2021 breakout season he has played 96, 72 and 113 games. You could convince yourself that he’s trending in the right direction but last year he had 4 different IL stints so it would be wise for the Orioles to assume he is going to miss some time and plan accordingly. If you are the Orioles front office and O’Neill averages more than 100 games per season during this deal it would feel like a big win.
O’Neill has the kind of the baseball savant page that when you see if you think to yourself “Oh I know exactly what kind of hitter you are.” and you can also see why an organization that is analytically driven like the O’s would like him as he plays almost perfect 3 true outcome baseball, 98th percentile in barrel rate, 2nd percentile in K rate with a healthy dose of walks. He also has a hit spray chart that lets you know this guy likes to pull the ball in the air which will play great with the Orioles newly brought in left field wall.
This begs the question: Is Tyler O’Neill the worst player that a team has modified its outfield dimensions to benefit? But I thought about it and the actual answer is the Orioles pitching staff from 2018-2021.
Anyway the word you hear a lot around Tyler O’Neill is streaky. Just off the top of my head I know there have been games when I wasn’t worried at all about pitching to Tyler O’Neill and there were games when he was basically Barry Bonds. Besides mine and many others’ eye test the data bears this out as well, last season his wRC+ in April was 207 and then in May it was 43, he climbed back up to 162 in July and then back down to 73 in August. This kind of inconsistency can drive fans crazy but I don’t mind having a few streaky players on the roster, it’s nice when a guy you don’t consider to be one of your best players wins you a few games during a hot streak and as long as the corresponding lows don’t stretch on for multiple months then it’s ok.
As far as O’Neill’s defense he has 2 Gold Gloves so that means he was at one point a good defender but it’s been several years since he rated out as a good defender which makes you think that maybe the injuries took away the speed and therefore the defense. I’m sure from his perspective he just needs to get healthy and he’ll be back to his gold glove form but like I mentioned earlier I wouldn’t hold my breath on O’Neill starting his own iron man streak in Baltimore so we might have to be understanding of some bad defense. I am interested to see if the O’s will play him in left field which is no longer quite as cavernous or if they treat him more like a RF/DH type. He does do the full body javelin throw all the time so that will no doubt lead to some fun screenshots throughout the season.
From a fun perspective O’Neill has homered on 5 straight opening days which I knew but I had to look up just to be sure because it’s such a crazy stat. I guess fit makes sense for a guy who is already hurt that he plays his best before he has a chance to hurt himself. O”Neill is also well known for being jacked which is fun, Red Sox fans would post a picture of him squeezing a baseball with his biceps when he hit a homer last year which always made me laugh.
The current roster isn’t guaranteed to stay the same but right now vs lefties here is the lineup we could put together:
- Gunnar Henderson, SS
- Jordan Westburg, 2B
- Adley Rutschman, DH
- Ryan Mountcastle, 1B
- Tyler O’Neill, RF
- Colton Cowser, LF
- Gary Sanchez, C
- Coby Mayo, 3B
- Cedric Mullins, CF
Farewell Tony Taters
Part of the reason that Tyler O’Neill wasn’t on my Orioles free agency radar was because I felt strongly that the Orioles should prioritize bringing back Anthony Santander as their main position player free agency move. With the O’Neill signing it is all but guaranteed that the Orioles are saying goodbye to Tony Taters.
From a front office perspective I can understand the thought process that they are trying to get most of Santander’s production for a fraction of the cost and by some numbers O’Neill had a similar season to Santander, he had a wRC+ of 131 to Santander’s 129 and he had a WAR of 2.6 to Santander’s 2.9 but where I think the O’s will miss Santander is the games column, Tony has played 152, 153 and 155 games over the last 3 seasons he has been a consistent presence in the middle of the order and I don’t think the .3 difference in WAR captures how much more valuable it is to have a consistent switch hitting power bat in the middle of the lineup than it is to have a streaky platoon hitter. If O’Neill had to hit against righties more often I guarantee both his wRC+ and WAR would have been worse so he’s being protected by his limitation while Santander is out there everyday.
Let’s say for example Santander signs somewhere for 5 years 125 million that would mean that the difference between Santander and O’Neill on an AAV basis is about what they paid Gary Sanchez. I like Gary Sanchez but would you rather have Santander and X cheap backup catcher or O’Neill and Sanchez?
If it turns out Santander costs way more than I think and the Orioles end up allocating serious free agent money to the pitching staff and the spin is “we had this much budget and we couldn’t get the pitching we wanted and Santander so we tried to get a budget version” then I’ll let it go but if the free agency ends and the O’s have O’Neill, Sanchez and someone like Andrew Heaney for 15 million and Santander signs somewhere in the neighborhood of 5/125 then I will be greatly disappointed.
I’m already neck deep in hypotheticals so I’ll just add one more: If I find out that getting the comp pick was the reason they let Santander walk I will January 6 the Warehouse.
O’Neill’s impact on the guys still on the roster
When Scott Boras was asked about what they envisioned O’Neill’s role to be on the team he said this:
“He expects to be an everyday player and play everyday in the outfield.”
When I hear that, what I immediately think is that Heston Kjerstad is not going to play as much outfield as we thought.
Now an agent’s quotes at the winter meetings are not contractually binding so it’s very possible that O’Neill plays plenty of DH and platoons with Kjerstad and there are plenty of ABs to go around but even if Boras is exaggerating O’Neill’s desire to be in the field the O’s now have 4 outfielders on the roster who expect to get lots of playing time and that can create discomfort.It’s not like there are 600 PAs available at DH as Mountcastle, O’Hearn, Rutschman, Sanchez and Mayo are all going into the season expecting to get a good chunk of their ABs at DH.
Kjerstad will be 26 this season so this is a big prove it year for him. He has played well in the limited chances he has gotten but has never gotten extended run due to injury and roster crunch so he needs this year to be the year that he gets a chance to be in the lineup and build some momentum on offense and defense. So with O’Neill joining the team it will be interesting to see how the Orioles navigate trying to win, trying to please their new addition with the superstar agent who reps half the team’s young stars and trying to develop Heston.
It is possible with how Mullins struggled against lefties last year that we see a Mullins/Kjerstad/O’Neill shared platoon rotation with Mullins and Kjerstad taking turns sitting so that nobody rides the bench too much.
It could like this
Day 1
LF: Cowser
CF: Mullins
RF: O’Neill
Day 2
LF: O’Neill
CF: Cowser
RF: Kjerstad
Day 3
LF: Cowser
CF: Mullins
RF: Kerstad
And obviously Cowser won’t play 162 so there would be days where he would sit, and there would be DH days for Kjerstad and O’Neill even in a crowded DH room and of course there would be injuries that would open up large chunks of playing time. It would be just my luck to write a whole thing about how the outfield was too crowded and then 2 weeks into the season we get some sort of Mayo, Mateo and O’Hearn outfield game because O’Neil sprained his quad squatting 500 lbs and Heston got an ear infection or some sort dumb ailment that keeps him out for months.
The other thought I had was would they trade Heston Kjerstad? With all the big markets being active in pursuing the top starting pitchers in free agency the best way for the O’s to acquire a top of the rotation pitcher could be through trade. The O’s farm system is not what it was and it is hard to imagine a team parting with an Ace for a Jud Fabian and Dylan Beavers package so someone like Kjerstad who is no longer a prospect but is still a bundle of potential will be cost controlled for many years could be the O’s most valuable asset if they don’t want to part with guys like Holliday and Basallo.
Speaking of trades, one of the names that has come up a lot is Ryan Mountcastle. Before the signing the O’s would have been really hesitant to put Mountcastle in a deal because they have so few right handed bats but with the addition of O’Neill it does feel like it makes Mountcastle a bit more expendable. However if I were the Orioles I would hold off on trading Mountcastle for now. With the wall moving back in, Mounty can start being a pull hitter again and if he can stay healthy it feels like a good bet that Mountcastle will have his best offensive season of his career.
But if you are trying to trade for Framber Valdez and the Astros are saying just put Mountcastle in the deal and you can have him it would be hard to say no, so I wouldn’t consider Mountcastle untouchable just make sure you aren’t trading him at the nadir of his value.
Gary Sanchez
Sanchez was a 2 time all star with the Yankees in his early 20s and looked like he was set to become their franchise catcher before a steep decline starting in 2020 leading to him being traded to the Twins in the Josh Donaldson trade.
From there Sanchez has bounced from the Twins to the Mets to the Padres to the Brewers and now the Orioles. His best stretch came in 72 games with the Padres in 2023 where he slashed .218/.292/.500 and was an above average offensive player for the first time since 2019.
The most interesting part of the signing is the amount. You don’t pay your backup catcher 8.5 million unless you expect them to play a significant amount of games. Last year Adley Rutschman “wore down” over the course of the season and even though he was splitting time at catcher with James McCann pretty generously so when you factor that and the money in I would expect that we see Gary Sanchez play even more than McCann did last year to try to keep Adley fresh.
The other interesting part of the signing is that it means that the O’s will not be bringing back James McCann. In 2 years with the O’s McCann slashed .234/.279/.388 with a wRC+ of 89, he was poor on defense and he was abysmal in his playoff at bats. It’s never a good sign when the best moment of your tenure with a team is when you got hit by a pitch.
That being said the young guys really looked up to McCann so his leaving will leave a leadership vacuum in the clubhouse and with both McCann and Santander leaving it is a complete mystery as to who will even try to fill that role. As a fan you want your best players to be leaders so that would mean Gunnar and Adley but some guys just don’t have the personality for that. It will definitely be something to watch as the season begins next year, who is going to step up and lead?
I don’t think it’s fair to expect Gary Sanchez to come in and be the leader just because the backup catcher before him was, so let’s focus on what it would be fair to expect from Gary Sanchez.
I mentioned Gary’s best recent season was 2023 with the Padres but in 2024 he signed with the Brewers and had what you could fairly call a disappointing season (and then we almost tripled his salary???) where he slashed .220/.307/.392. The average and the OBP were in line with what you expect from him but the slugging was way down. He battled 2 different injuries throughout the season, a calf and hamstring. Leg injuries have a way of sapping your power so the hope is that he will bounce back and slug somewhere in the mid to high .400s. I’m not saying the O’s need San Diego Gary, they just need the happy medium between San Diego Gary and Milwaukee Gary. If Baltimore Gary can just be an above average hitter playing 2-3 times a week as the backup catcher and spot DH then this contract will have been a success.
Elias Denies Comp Pick Allegations
Throughout the offseason Mike Elias has been adamant that the O’s are in on everyone and that they now have more financial freedom than ever. However, a few days ago Ken Rosenthal came out with an early report that the O’s have been “reluctant” to sign free agents that have the qualifying offer attached.
This is the kind of report that has to drive Orioles fans crazy. It basically means that while the team has been swept out of the playoffs in back to back years and the front office cares more about the 2025 draft than the 2025 playoffs.
Yesterday Elias was asked point blank if they out on signing guys with qualifying offer and he firmly denied those rumors although he did throw in that when there are “rules that create wrinkles you have to weigh that” and he made sure to remind everyone how competitive the market is and that he made a trade for an Ace last year and that’s not something every team can do every year which to me felt like some pre excuse making.
I want to believe Elias that they are not avoiding free agents with the QO attached but I’m going to need more than a word salad about “wrinkles” and the “the market” and with how the rumors are flowing I don’t think he is going to beat the comp pick sicko allegations.
The Dishwasher 
Leave a comment