The 2025 Orioles season has mercifully ended. If I had to choose one word to describe this past season I would have a hard time picking between disappointing and embarrassing. Maybe I’d combine them and create a new word like disabaressing or embapointing.
This season featured a 20 point loss, a spoiled 8 run lead, Kyle Gibson, a fired manager, getting swept twice by the Twins, kisses from Jeff Hoffman, tons of very sad Charlie Morton post game press conferences, more games where the O’s got no hit through 6 innings than I can count, a Kyle Stowers revenge game, saying goodbye to multiple fan favorites at the deadline, and closer Keegan Akin.
It wasn’t all bad though, I had fun on opening day.
I started today’s blog thinking it would be funny to do a write up on all 70 of the players that suited up for the Orioles and then I wrote the Henderson and Holliday blurbs and I realized I wasn’t going to finish before opening day 2026.
So instead only players that finished the season with the O’s and contractually could be on the team next year will get a grade and full write up.
I also started this process thinking I would be recapping and summarizing each player’s season but I got bored of that because this season was awful. So instead it turned into more of a “what each player needs to fix in order to be their best self in 2026”.
I think you’ll notice a trend of harsh grades, because this season was very disappointing and even though I lay a lot of blame at the front office’s feet for that, the players still under performed so the grades reflect that.
You’ll also notice a trend of optimistic outlooks for a lot of guys because I believe in their talent. Either in seasons past or in spurts this year they’ve shown us their potential and I believe they can bounce back next year.
They’ll need the front office to bring in talented players to help them and they’ll need veteran leadership but as long as the front office doesn’t biff another offseason there is a path for them to be contenders again next year.
Also as a note I’ll be using this blog as a final resting place for some of the Orioles related images I had saved on my phone that I need to clear out
REPORT CARDS
Gunnar Henderson – B
.274/.349/.438 | HR: 17 | RBI: 68 | WAR: 4.8 | SB: 30 | wRC+: 120
It was always going to be difficult for Gunnar to replicate the 9.1 WAR he put up in 2024. There are franchises that have been around for decades that haven’t had a single player do that even once. So it would be unfair for me to declare that as his new standard but I landed at a B grade because it felt like there was a lot of meat left on the bone for Gunnar this season.
As far as what I liked about Gunnar’s season I think base running is an underrated and exciting part of any player’s game and Gunnar is as good of a base runner as there is in Major League Baseball. He increased his number of steals which is good but he’s also great at going first to third, second to home and he regularly hustles out infield singles. This is all what people mean when they say a guy plays the game the right way.
He’s also exciting to watch play defense. He sprints after shallow fly balls, he throws rockets across the infield on the run and rarely gets through the first 3 innings without getting his jersey coated in dirt. According to the defensive metric his defense was worse this year but those defensive metrics are pretty weighed down by his performance at the beginning of the season and I attribute those struggles to missing spring training. Over the course of the season he’s had months of really good defense.
Gunnar Henderson FRV by month this year – April really tanked the whole season
There were 2 major areas where Gunnar regressed this year. He was much worse against left handed pitching and he hit for a lot less power. The lack of power was mostly due to the fact that when he was hitting the ball hard he was pounding it into the ground and when he was getting the ball in their air it just wasn’t with much force at all. His home run/ fly ball rate plummeted and his infield fly rate shot up.
Gunnar’s career Infield fly ball % and home run to fly ball rate descending from 2022 to 2025 – He posted career worsts in both stats this year
He still has elite bat speed, hard % and average exit velo so he definitely still has the tools to be the player he was in 2024 he just needs to calibrate them a little bit. I wouldn’t expect him to need to make a major change, maybe it means changing where he stands in the box by a couple inches or just being more selective about which pitches he’s going after.
The lefty thing is interesting. The sample size with short side platoon stats are always a little funky. There was an element of him missing spring training and part of how that manifested itself was that he couldn’t hit a lefty for the first 2 months of the season but I don’t think that’s the whole story.
His K% against lefties was pretty much the same as it has been his whole career if not better but the BB% was cut in half. That means something about how lefties were pitching him made it so he wasn’t walking against them but it also didn’t result in him striking out more.
Gunnar’s left on left BB% and K% – The K% was the same as ever in 2025 but the BB% was cut in half
As I peruse his batted ball splits his line drive rate was up, his ground ball was down, his fly ball rate was almost the same and his in field fly rate was actually way down especially compared to what he was doing against righties.
Gunnar’s batted ball data against lefties in 2024 and 2025
He wasn’t walking against lefties and he wasn’t hitting the ball quite as hard. If you cut your walk rate in half and 2 out 3 of your fly balls that were homers last year are just fly outs this year that will be enough to make you a bad hitter.
The question is then, is this an aberration or is this who he is vs lefties? In 2023 he had a wRC+ of 74 against lefties which is not that different from his 71 wRC+ against lefties this year. That makes you worry.
I’d lean towards aberration though. Gunnar is a lot better hitter today than he was in 2023. If he gets his walk rate against lefties back to the very consistent 10-12% he’d had his entire career that by itself would make him a lot more effective and I think he can improve his HR/FB enough to get himself back to being an above average hitter vs lefties, maybe not the 137 wRC+ from 2024 but something around 110-115 would be fantastic.
Jackson Holliday – C+
.242/.314/.375 | HR: 17 | RBI: 55 | WAR: 1.2 | SB: 17 | wRC+: 96
The goal for Jackson Holliday this year was to prove that he’s a big league player. A goal that he sort of accomplished. He did successfully play an everyday starter’s workload of games and by WAR he was a positive player. Both of which didn’t feel like a certainty coming into the season. So in that sense it was a big step forward.
However when you look at the end of year stats his .242/.314/.375 slashline is not very impressive, he was maybe the worst base runner in the league and his defense at second was not great. I don’t think you look at what Holliday did this year and say “Great, sign me up for 10 more years of that!” but he is still just 21 and he took a step forward this year so you hope that he can take another step forward next year and get that OPS into the mid/high .700s, play better defense and not get picked off so much.
Is there reason for that optimism? I’d say yes.
I really liked how he was hitting to start the season. At the end of May he was slashing .270/.320/.439. So two through two full months he was a well above average hitter. Around that time he was promoted to the everyday leadoff hitter and we saw him change his approach to being very aggressive at the plate.
The consequences of this were that he pretty much stopped walking, made a lot of contact and we saw both his OBP and SLG dwindle over the next few months. This was frustrating because Holliday’s whole thing coming up through the minors was that he worked counts and had great command of the strike zone and by swinging first pitch so much he wasn’t leveraging one of his best tools.
My take on this aggressive stretch was that it was necessary to help Jackson improve as a hitter and it will serve him going forward. In the minors he was used to taking a lot of pitches and getting deep into counts and one of the hardest parts of his transition to the majors was that he was taking strike 1 and falling behind in counts so much and against big league pitchers it’s just not viable to start every at bat 0-1.
I believe the idea was “Jackson we want you to attack every first pitch you think you can get your bat to so that you get used to swinging first pitch and send a message to pitchers that they can’t just groove in strike 1 and then we’ll dial it back.”
It did take awhile but from August 16th, when his OBP dipped below .300, until he hurt his knee on September 15th he slashed .286/.426/.449. That version of Holliday that he sustained for an entire month is pretty much exactly what everyone hoped he would be when he climbed his way to being the number 1 prospect in baseball.
Adley Rutschman – D
.220/.307/.366 | HR: 9 | RBI: 29 | WAR: 1.2 | SB: 0 | wRC+: 91
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Adley was looking for a bounce back season after a disastrous end to the 2024 season and he just didn’t get it. For the first few months of the season his expected stats were not just better than actual stats, they were WAY better. Numbers like xwOBA and xBA all said that he should have been performing better than ever but after the effect of his 2 homer opening day wore off his stats never looked good. Remember I mentioned Holliday’s good numbers through the first 2 months of the season? Well over those same 2 months Adley slashed .200/.300/.332. Bleck.
In June it seemed like he was about to turn it around. That month he hit .309/.381/.509 and looked a lot more like the old Adley before being sidelined with an oblique injury. When he came back from the injury he looked like Badley Rutchman again.
Is he washed? How much of this under performance is due to injury? It’s confusing to evaluate.
I look at his numbers and I don’t see a reason for such a steep decline. His approach at the plate is still great.
Adley’s plate discipline savant percentile – all well above average
His hard hit percentage was better than ever this year
Adley’s year over year hard hit% – there’s a noticeable uptick in hard contact in 2025 but no increase in production to show for it
There’s been no major change in where he’s hitting the ball
Adley’s year over year percentages of how often he pulls the ball vs going opposite field – there was no major change this season.
You look at the plate discipline metrics and chased outside the zone less and on balls in the zone he whiffed less than ever.
Adley’s year over year plate discipline metrics. All signs point to a better hitter than ever in 2025
Certain stats like his line drive % are down a few percentages but that doesn’t explain him going from a regular .800 OPS guy to whatever this is.
I’m trying to find the smoking gun for Adley’s struggles and I just can’t. Which leads me to believe that if he can just get healthy this offseason he can be back to who he used to be. He’s only 27, he should still have multiple really good years left.
Ryan Mountcastle – D
.250/.286/.367 | HR: 7 | RBI: 35 | WAR: -0.4 | SB: 3 | wRC+: 81
Another case of it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
With the left field wall being moved in I thought there was a chance that Mounty might hit 30+ homers this year and establish himself as the middle of the order first baseman of the future for this team and that’s just not how it worked out.
Instead he had a career low in homers, batting average and OBP. He posted a career worst K rate and a career worst BB rate. Worst of all he lost his job as primary first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles.
There are a lot of players who have to balance striking out a lot with hitting a lot of home runs in order to be a productive hitter. Unfortunately for Mountcastle his power has fallen off to the point where he is not a productive hitter.
Over the past 2 seasons combined he’s slashing .262/.299/.401 which is good for a 99 OPS+. There are positions where you can get away with starting a below average hitter as long as they play good defense but first base is not one of those positions.
So is his career over? I don’t think so.
Mountcastle is a strong change of scenery candidate. This year he set a career high for max exit velocity at 116 mph and just a few weeks ago had a new career high for exit velocity on a home run at 114 mph.
Those are both special numbers. 99% of baseball players will play their entire career and not hit a ball that hard and hitting the ball hard is an important part of being a good hitter.
Max exit velos aren’t everything but being able to pop exit velo numbers in the mid 110s points to someone with one of the tools that it takes to be an elite hitter. Also, it’s not like Mounty is O’Neil Cruz or Jordan Walker where he struggles to hit .200. Mountcastle hit .270 in 2023 and 2024.
He’s got the exit velos and he’s got the contact skills. What’s holding him back is the plate approach. Way too much chase and way too much whiff. He doesn’t have to become Juan Soto but if he could just get the walk and strike out numbers up to a reasonable area he could be a great hitter.
Obviously that is much easier said than done. Mounty has been a better plate approach away from being a great hitter pretty much since he entered the league 6 seasons ago.
So why does he need to leave the Orioles to do this?
Reason #1 is that he’s been on the Orioles for 6 years and he’s had these same issues and they’ve made very little progress correcting them.
Reason #2 is I think they’ve just messed with him too much. Moving the wall back impacted him far more than anyone else on the roster. He had to force himself to stop pulling balls in the air which is how power hitters do power hitting and become an opposite field line drive guy. Which has been fine but it doesn’t highlight his best skills.
Then this year they moved the wall back and he tried to start pulling the ball again and it got him off to a bad start and undid all the work they did to help him with his plate approach. Then he got hurt and then when he got back they gave his position away.
So I’d like for Mountcastle to work with a different group of coaches and see if he can get in a situation where he’s comfortable pulling the ball in the air again. Once he’s hitting homers again, pitchers will be more cautious about throwing it in the zone and that would help him get his walks and OBP back up.
On the other hand if he goes to another team and puts up another mid .600s OPS season with serious strikeout problems he could easily end up following Trey Mancini’s post Orioles career path.
If Mounty is moved here are the teams I’d be interested to see him join. The Marlins (Their cooking something there), The Reds (Small ballpark lots of homeruns to all fields), The Guardians (they’d probably turn him into Juan Soto), and The Rockies (he might set the record for longest homer of all time).
Colton Cowser – D
.196/.269/.385 | HR: 16 | RBI: 40 | WAR: 0.6 | SB: 14 | wRC+: 83
You know if this many bright young students are getting failing grades I’d be tempted to look into getting some new teachers but IDK.
Cowser had a weird year. He broke his hand in the fourth game of the season and missed the next 2 months and I think it’s underrated how much breaking your hand impacts your season. These athletes in general tend to rush back before their injuries have fully healed and Colton hasn’t complained but if you gave him some truth serum I think he’d tell you it bothered him.
He also missed some time with concussion-like symptoms. Ask Heston Kjerstad if having a concussion makes it hard to hit a baseball.
We also just found out he played a large chunk of the season with broken ribs. Even though I think it is a bad move on the team’s part to let guys play through injuries like this, I do appreciate guys who want to play through injuries. It would have been very frustrating to play through pain the way he was and struggle the way he did and not want to give up and just go on the IL until you feel better but Cowser felt like the team needed him and gritted through it.
Cowser is a streaky player and missing 2 months at the start of the year and then dealing with a concussion likely robbed him of at least one hot stretch that would have helped his overall numbers.
It may sound like I’m making a lot of excuses for Cowser and I am but I am still giving him a poor grade because excuses or not all I can do is evaluate what happened and what happened with Cowser this year was not great.
The number 1 biggest concern is the strikeouts. Last year he had a 30% K rate which is very high but at least he paired it with a 9% BB rate and finished the season with an OBP of .321.
This year the K rate jumped to 35% which is alarming and he also walked less and had worse BABIP luck and suddenly the OBP is down at .269 which is unacceptable.
He has a 81% in zone contact rate. That is on the lower side BUT there are good hitters with similar contact rates. Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Schwarber to name a few, so it’s not impossible that Cowser could find success, but he will have to improve in some key areas.
Cowser and Schwarber actually bear a lot of similarities. Look how similar these numbers are!
As an editor’s note when I was working on this before the last couple games of the season and Cowser’s numbers were even more similar to Schwarber’s at the time. But in the last few games he actually increase his Z-contact% by 2%. I’m still making the comparison.
And you might say that’s crazy to compare those two players as Cowser wraps up an 86 wRC+ season and Schwarber will likely finish top 3 in NL MVP but look at Schwarber’s savant percentile rankings in 2017 and compare it to Cowser’s this year.
I know that Schwarber’s bars are a deeper shade of red but if you look at the actual stats Cowser’s hard hit% and Average Exit Velo are actually better compared to 2017 Schwarber but worse compared to the league as a whole
I’d say those are 2 similar players.
I’m getting distracted by delusions of Colton Cowser grandeur; the point is that it is within his grasp to be a good big league hitter.
He’s got a lot to work on though. He has got to strike out a lot less and walk more. Again I know that’s easier said than done but I’m not asking him to be Luis Arraez, I’m not even asking him to be Teoscar Hernandez at around a 25% K rate. He just has to get that K rate under 30% and when I say “has to” I mean he has to or he will not be a starter in this league.
35% to 29% K rate is a big improvement to ask for but he had a K rate right at 30% his rookie year so all we’re really asking for here is a slight improvement on his rookie season. In general if he could just be a slightly more consistent version of his rookie self that’s all the Orioles really need.
To recap here is Colton Cowser goals for next year:
K% < 30%
BB% > 10%
Stay healthy and spread out your production a bit more evenly throughout the season.
One last quick note I wanted to add here is that much has been made of the Orioles not having anyone reach 20 homers this year and it is a real reason for concern but if Cowser was healthy the whole season he would have hit 25+ bombs so there’s that.
Jordan Westburg – B-
.265/.313/.457 | HR: 17 | RBI: 41 | WAR: 1.9 | SB: 1 | wRC+: 115
Jordan Westburg has been very consistent in his first three seasons with the Orioles. When he’s in the lineup he feels like he can be depended on to produce at the plate and play excellent defense either at third or second base.
The issue has been that he has struggled to stay in the lineup. Through 3 seasons Westburg is yet to top 110 games (although in 2023 it wasn’t due to health reasons). Some guys are just injury prone. Think of Byron Buxton or Royce Lewis or someone not on the Twins but is it fair to call Jordan Westburg injury prone?
Not quite yet.
I look at the injuries he’s had and they seem flukey. Last year the big injury that knocked him out was caused by getting hit by a pitch. This year he rolled his ankle rounding second, hurt his hand sliding into a base and aggravated a hamstring trying to beat out a ground ball.
The hamstring thing is a bit concerning because that kind of injury can hang around but in general none of those injuries should continue to plague him going forward. For example I am much more worried about Adley’s oblique injuries this year than any injury that Jordan Westburg has suffered so far in his career.
As far as his performance there are some nits I could pick about Westburg as a player. I’d like to see him walk more for example but if I could pick between Westburg having an OBP of .350 or Westburg playing 150 games next year I’d pick the increase in availability over the increase in BB%.
Same as with Cowser, if Westburg would have played even 120 games this season he would have cracked 20 homers.
Coby Mayo – C
.217/.299/.388 | HR: 11 | RBI: 28 | WAR: 0.2 | SB: 3 | wRC+: 95
Mayo had a weird season and I mostly blame the front office. I already wrote a whole piece on it that you are welcome to check out so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much but basically my gripe is that it was very poor process to come into the season with both Mounty and Mayo on the roster and then make them split time at first in way that was frustrating for everyone involved.
In the offseason they needed to decide if they thought Mayo was good enough to replace Mountcastle. If they thought yes then they should have moved Mountcastle and had Mayo take his lumps at first knowing you had Ryan O’Hearn there to stabilize things if it went south.
If the answer was no then they should have traded Mayo before they had to demote him to AAA to start the season then give him sporadic playing time for half the year so that he doesn’t get into a rhythm and looks terrible and tanks his trade value.
Of course they chose to not make a decision and made the whole process as painful as possible for everyone.
Anyway Mayo looked disastrous for most of the season. It got so bad that even his most staunch defenders were beginning to lose hope but he turned it around in September and not only had a hot stretch but played so well his end of season numbers don’t look terrible anymore.
It really shouldn’t be surprising that he turned it around. A lot of the Orioles prospects have needed about 200 plate appearances to get their footing.
Adley Rutschman through his first 176 PAs in 2022: .210/.295/.389
For the rest of that season .282/.401/.481 (please bring this version of Adley Rutschman back)
Gunnar Henderson through his first 184 PAs in 2023: .201/.332/.370
For the rest of that season: .276/.332/.534
Mayo through 210 PAs this year: .184/.262/.326
For the rest of the season: .301/.393/.548
I’m not saying he’s going to be a .900 OPS guy next but it does look like after a very normal 200 PA scuffle he found his footing.
Which honestly makes the front office’s indecisiveness around him even worse because he could have reached 200 PA by the end of May if they had had courage and clarity of purpose.
Anyway a good month doesn’t make Coby Mayo a perfect player now, there are still things he needs to work on. It’s hard to judge him by the end of season numbers because it’s such sporadic playing time followed by a massive cold streak and a scorching hot streak it’s hard to tell what’s real but looking at his month by month splits it give you an idea of who he is.
Coby Mayo’s 2025 advanced stats by month
Looking at this you can see there’s concerns around the strikeouts. Even in his good September he ran a 28% K rate which is high, the 10% walk rate is good but you can see from his August numbers he runs the risk of having that K rate shoot up into the high 30s when things aren’t going well which is bad.
Coby Mayo’s 2025 platoon splits
He also struggled against righties which is tough because most pitchers are righties. Now the Orioles are terrible against lefties so even if Mayo continues to struggle against righties he should have a role as a platoon guy but that’s his ultimate role it would be disappointing.
So there’s still a lot of work to be done but at least he was able to show something before the season ended, this would have been a very different write up of September hadn’t happened.
Dylan Carlson – D+
.203/.278/.336 | HR: 6 | RBI: 20 | WAR: -0.4 | SB: 3 | wRC+: 74
I am including Dyland Carlson because he actually played for the O’s a lot this year and contractually they have the option to go through arbitration with Carlson if they want to.
I was intrigued when the O’s brought Carlson in. He was a high draft pick and had a great rookie year with St. Louis before things petered out for him. So there is some talent you can dream on and the Orioles have the success story of Ryan O’Hearn in their back pocket so it wasn’t the craziest thing to think they could help someone like Carlson. But that’s just not what happened. He looked just as bad with the Orioles as he did with the Rays and Cardinals last year and at this point I don’t think there’s much reason to think that will change.
It’s nice that he can play center and switch hit but he doesn’t do either of those things very well. He’s out of options so I don’t expect the O’s to bring him back. If nobody else wants him in free agency I would be happy to sign him to another minor league deal and have in Norfolk as outfield depth but that’s as far as I’d go.
Tyler O’Neill – F
.199/.292/.392 | HR: 9 | RBI: 26 | WAR: -0.3 | SB: 4 | wRC+: 91
2025 went about as poorly for Tyler O’Neill as you could possibly imagine. It’s just not great that the first guy the Orioles sign to a multi year contract in 7 years is a negative WAR player immediately.
The O’Neill signing is frustrating because in the 7 years leading up to him joining the Orioles he had only managed to play triple digit games twice. So the fact that he was hurt all year feels predictable.
I do see the vision for it though, the Orioles were terrible against lefties and O’Neill was one of the best hitters in baseball against lefties in 2024 and because of the injury risk you didn’t have to pay a premium. It’s a move that makes some sense.
It just didn’t work out this year. He only managed to play 54 games and he put up a wRC+ against lefties. He both confirmed anyone’s worst fears about him from a health perspective and fell far short of giving the Orioles the real benefit they were looking to gain from his skill set.
Now the fact that he’ll most likely pick up that option makes planning for 2026 much more difficult. It feels like the O’s have to plan for him to be in the lineup regularly but also have to be prepared for him to miss time. This year it almost worked out because Ramon Luareano was so good for so cheap but there’s guarantee they’ll find a Laureano every year in fact most likely they won’t.
So the question is what can the Orioles expect from Tyler O’Neill in 2026?
He still has talent. His whole career he’s been very good at hitting the ball hard and pulling it in the air which is a recipe for success. He also usually walks a lot which helps offset how much he strikes out.
If you look at his expected stats this year they would have you believe that if he’d managed to stay healthy for any extended stretch of time he would have turned it around.
Everything that was true about Tyler O’Neill before he was an Oriole is still true. I don’t think he’s washed and I don’t think he can’t hit lefties now it all just comes down to can he be healthy and that’s something nobody knows.
History would suggest he won’t be healthy and I’m not optimistic he will be healthy which is why this contract was ill-advised to begin with. I mentioned earlier I’m not concerned that Jordan Westburg is injury prone but if Westburg was 8 years into his career and had only managed to play 100+ games twice and 140+ games zero times then I would be concerned.
If by some miracle O’Neill stays healthy he’s shown that if he plays more than 100 games he’ll give you 30 homers which would go a long way for this Orioles team.
I get how it’s hypocritical of me to always be writing about how the Orioles front office needs to take more risks and then when they sign Tyler O’Neill I say “Not that kind of risk!” but that’s just how I feel.
Jeremiah Jackson – A+
.276/.328/.447 | HR: 5 | RBI: 21 | WAR: 0.8 | SB: 0 | wRC+: 117
Finally someone for whom I can say this season was a great success.
When the Orioles did not get a lot of press for signing Jeremiah Jackson to a minor league contract in the offseason. He was 24, had been in the minors for 6 seasons and was coming off a season where he had an OPS of .618 in Double A.
He played decently for the Orioles double A affiliate but when he got promoted to Triple A Norfolk something clicked and he lit it up until the Orioles had no choice but to give him a shot in the big leagues.
It maybe wasn’t the shot he was imagining because they did make him play the outfield despite only having appeared in the outfield in 3 total games in minors this year but it was a shot that he took full advantage of. In 48 games he hit .276/.328/.447 mostly hitting at the very top of the order while learning a new position. It was very impressive.
If you look at his expected stats they would suggest that he was perhaps. He does chase and whiff quite a bit and towards the end of the season once teams had seen him a bit his production dipped.
However the Orioles do not need Jeremiah Jackson to be a top of the order bat. That sort of production is just icing on the cake. Good teams rely on utility players who can play multiple positions and hit well enough to keep the lineup afloat. It helps them give important players days off and get through injuries. For the past few years the Orioles relied on Ramon Urias to fill this role and he was well suited for the role.
Jackson doesn’t have the glove that Urias had but he appears to be a stronger hitter and if the Orioles feel like he can stick in the outfield then he graduates from utility guy to super utility guy which is even more valuable.
Jackson might be the answer to the question; How do you make a roster where you have to plan to give Tyler O’Neill a lot of playing time but you also have to be prepared for him to miss most of the season?
Having a guy who is your backup second baseman, third baseman and right fielder is very valuable. It would also allow the Orioles to carry three catchers if they want to.
Even if his numbers fell to what the expected stats claim they should be he could still fill a valuable role. Here’s the thing about those expected numbers though, some guys just always out perform them so there’s guarantee that Jackson’s numbers will fall. Also Jackson could still get better, just because he was a little older and wasn’t a top 10 prospect when he got called up doesn’t mean that he can’t improve.
Heston Kjerstad – Truant
.192/.240/.327 | HR: 4 | RBI: 19 | WAR: -1.1 | SB: 1 | wRC+: 57
When it comes to Heston Kjerstad there is genuine concern about his real life outside of baseball health.
We did just get an update yesterday that said that he was getting treatment for a “medical condition” but we don’t know what that is. It could be related to his myocarditis or his concussion or something new. Elias did share that they expect Kjerstad to be ready for Spring Training. Maybe we’ll find out more then or maybe not.
As far as baseball goes it’s hard to tell where his struggles end and his medical condition begins. He did manage to play in 54 games and in those games he was terrible. If he was perfectly healthy and playing the way he played you’d be pretty justified writing him off. 300 plate appearances is a tad early to write someone off but he’s 26 and he’s a bad defender so if he’s not going to hit it’s hard to keep him on the roster.
But now there’s this mystery illness part of it all. How much was it affecting him? Did it impact him physically? Was he not able to focus at the plate? Not that he was a superstar across his limited playing time in 2023 and 2024 but he was an above average hitter by wRC+ despite never getting consistent playing time and I was optimistic that if they gave him real run he could be a very solid middle of the order bat.
That optimism seemed dead when he hit the IL in June after slashing .192/.240/.327 but now that maybe it was some medical issue that caused that performance am I allowed to believe again?
I’m not saying that the Orioles should go into 2026 expecting to get a lot of production from Heston Kjerstad, that would be foolish. However, if Kjerstad performs well at spring training next year I will be nooticing.
Assuming he does look good (which is likely assuming too much) I’m still not sure how he would fit on the roster given that Dylan Beavers looks like a real guy and the Orioles are going to prioritize getting him playing time. I don’t know how you justify having both Beavers and Kjerstad on the roster.
Most likely he’ll start next season in triple A and have to wait for an injury or something to get another shot at the big leagues. It’s interesting how when someone comes up it feels like there’s a lot of stress around how are we going to get him playing time and development and get the most out of him and now that he’s had these struggles it feels like if he can be minor league outfield depth that would be a big win for him.
I’m reading what I’m writing here and I realize that I sound very optimistic on Kjerstad and I just want it on the record that I am totally open to the possibility that we may never see him in the majors ever again. This condition seems serious, there’s not a great fit for him on the Orioles and I don’t know how many other teams would want to even bother giving him a minor league contract just based on his health.
Dylan Beavers – A+
.227/.375/.400 | HR: 4 | RBI: 14 | WAR: 0.7 | SB: 2 | wRC+: 125
I’ve got to admit I was not familiar with Dylan Beavers’ game. I was part of a chorus of voices demanding he be called up earlier in the season because “there was no chance that he could win rookie of the year next year.” After watching him for a couple months I now believe he can win rookie of the year next year.
As I mentioned in the Coby Mayor section it’s pretty normal for rookies to struggle with the transition from AAA to MLB but Beavers hit the ground running. At the plate his approach is rock solid, he refuses to chase and forces pitchers to beat him. It felt like every single Dylan Beavers at bat went to a full count. Sometimes he walked and sometimes he struck out but he made them earn it every time he came to the plate.
He’s not a perfect player, his batting average dipped heavily in September and he struggled against lefties in general but his steady approach at the plate made it so he was an effective hitter through it all.
When it comes to rookies making their end of season debut I actually don’t even care that much about the results. I consider it a feel out period where the most important thing is that they get a taste of what it’s like but the fact that Beavers looked so comfortable at the plate bodes really well for him.
Samuel Basallo – B+
.165/.229/.330 | HR: 4 | RBI: 15 | WAR: -0.3 | SB: 0 | wRC+: 55
Basallo didn’t come out the gates quite as hot as Beavers but like I said when it comes to these late season call ups it’s much more about the experience and the reps than the results. The experience Basallo got will be very instructive as far as helping him know what he most needs to work on this offseason in order to have a strong rookie season.
We saw him chase and strike out a lot and he had some rough moments behind the plate so those will be areas to work on.
We also saw him mash some very impressive homers including the walkoff bomb he hit off Tanner Scott who is having a bad season but is still a very tough at bat for a left handed hitter and Basallo made it look easy. I’d say the swing plays.
He also looked comfortable at first base, making some good picks and even hitting split stretch which I had seen grainy footage of him doing but it was cool to see him bust it out at the MLB level.
The Orioles should really good about the fact they have this guy locked up for the next 9 years.
Alex Jackson – A
.220/.290/.473 | HR: 5 | RBI: 8 | WAR: 1.1 | SB: 0 | wRC+: 111
Considering that Jackson was the 6th catcher the Orioles rolled out, the fact that he was able to stay healthy and actually produce for them was really impressive.
Jackson has truly impressive bat speed and he makes sure to use every chance he gets. He whiffs and strikes out a ton but when he makes contact he makes the most of it. Of his 20 hits with the Orioles this year 13 were for extra bases.
I don’t know what Jackson’s fate will be. The Orioles have 2 catchers that they expect to play a big role in the team next year which doesn’t leave a lot of room for Jackson. If the Orioles wanted to use 3 catchers to avoid another Trevor Rogers at bat, I’d consider Jackson a candidate for that role. I think he’d be happy just to be on an MLB roster so he wouldn’t cause a stink over not getting much playing time and when he would play there’d be a decent chance he might go deep out of the nine hole.
If he’s not going to be on the major league roster I don’t know if the Orioles want to pay him an arbitration salary to be minor league catching depth when they have Maverick Handley already in Norfolk.
Jorge Mateo – C-
.177/.217/.266 | HR: 1 | RBI: 3 | WAR: -0.5 | SB: 15 | wRC+: 33
We might have reached the end of the Jorge Mateo era in Baltimore. It wasn’t a bad era, we’ll always have April 2023, nobody can take that away from us and he should have won the gold glove in 2022. That being said he just doesn’t fit on this Orioles team anymore.
His best attribute is middle infield defense and the Orioles two youngest and most durable guys play shortstop and second base. So he just doesn’t ever get a chance to do what he does best. They’ve tried to make him a backup centerfielder and that just flatly doesn’t work. Perhaps most importantly he cannot hit even a little.
He can still steal bases on command so if the Orioles managed to bring him back on a minor league deal he’d be a real weapon should they return to the postseason.
Luis Vazquez – C-
.160/.208/.240 | HR: 1 | RBI: 3 | WAR: -0.2 | SB: 2 | wRC+: 25
Luis Vazquez did what the Orioles needed him to do, which is play multiple positions on defense and try his best at the plate.
In general he was not a good hitter but he gave us a clutch hit in Texas and who could forget that.
Vazquez has a 40 man spot and I’ll be interested to see if he survives the offseason without getting DFA’d. My guess would be that they’ll try to sneak him through waivers at some point so that they can protect some guys in the rule V draft.
If he is on the Orioles next year I imagine his role would be to hang out in Norfolk and then come up and ride the bench when Jordan Westburg rolls his ankle at some point.
Emmanuel Rivera – C+
.250/.291/.283 | HR: 0 | RBI: 13 | WAR: -0.3 | SB: 1 | wRC+: 64
How many defense first utility infielders does 1 team need?! The answer this year was a lot. Rivera has been around the team for 2 seasons and I do like having him around. When he’s at third and the ball gets hit his way it feels like a certainty he’s going to smoothly glide over it and field it with apparent ease and fire it over to first.
He also has a contact first approach that we don’t get very much on this team and I appreciate a good changeup.
Of all the defense first guys hovering around the Orioles roster he is who I feel the best about at the plate. That said he’s not as versatile as Luis Vazquez so it’s harder to have him on the team when he can only play first and third.
Maverick Handley – C
.073/.133/.073 | HR: 0 | RBI: 3 | WAR: -0.9 | SB: 0 | OPS+: -39
Maverick was fun to have around for a few weeks. He’s got good vibes, he calls a good game and he’s a good receiver.
On the downside he can’t hit at all and he struggles to control the run game so with those 2 holes in his game it’s hard to imagine him getting regular playing time for the O’s unless there’s a bad injury situation.
Playing catcher for the Orioles is a dangerous endeavor so it’s good have Maverick hanging around in triple A in case something happens.
Check out part 2 for the pitchers grades
The Dishwasher 
Leave a comment