Adley Rutschman is officially back. The Orioles activated their catcher from the injured list as expected ahead of Monday’s game against the Blue Jays. Rutschman had been gone for more than a month due to a strain of his left oblique. Before returning to Baltimore, he played out a short rehab assignment at the Triple-A level over the last week. Let’s hope this is the start of some stability and sanity returning to the O’s catcher rotation.
Also activated on Monday afternoon was Keegan Akin, who’s
been on the IL for about a month due to shoulder inflammation. As corresponding moves to get these players onto the roster, the Orioles also optioned reliever Yaramil Hiraldo to Triple-A Norfolk and designated catcher Jacob Stallings for assignment.
It is not exactly uncommon for players who suffer an oblique injury to have those effects linger even after they’ve been deemed healthy enough to play again. One demonstration of this just on the 2025 Orioles seems to be Gunnar Henderson, who suffered an oblique injury in spring training, ultimately missed the first week of games, and spent the first month-ish of the season playing like a shell of himself. Maybe that’s continued on in some fashion and that’s why he’s got only 11 homers at this point. Or maybe it’s all a coincidence.
The question now about Rutschman will be whether he can avoid something like that happening. After disappointing with his batting performance through the end of May, Rutschman was in the middle of a strong month of June at the time he got hurt. He was batting over .300 for the month and he’d hit three home runs through 15 games. He was striking out less and walking more than he’d done in a miserable May.
Those things were all positive signs. Now, Rutschman has to pick up where he left off, so that the story of his career does not continue to be one of decline after an initially quite-promising debut season got everyone’s hopes up. What he particularly needs to show is behind him is whatever led to his only being able to hit .207/.282/.303 over the second half of last season.
Through the end of May, Rutschman wasn’t countering that narrative of decline. He got hurt in June before he could prove a durable improvement had been made. If he goes back to stinking for most of the rest of the season, there will have to be a giant question mark next to what he actually might be able to contribute to a hopefully-improved 2026 Orioles team. Seeing Rutschman play well over the last two months would be a cause for more optimism about next year.
Akin has the exact same ERA that he had a year ago - 3.32 - although his strikeout rate is down substantially, his walk rate has more than doubled, and he’s allowing hits at a worse rate than a year ago as well. I would guess either the bad numbers will start coming down or else the good ones will start going up over the final two months. He’s a free agent after the 2026 season, and may have been a trade candidate if not for this injury.
Stallings is dropped from the roster after playing in 14 games, in which he batted just .114. There’s no way for even a fifth-string catcher to be acceptable while batting .114. He’s been supplanted by the later-arriving Alex Jackson, who has only seven hits but they’re all for extra bases.
Hiraldo threw a scoreless inning against the Rockies on Saturday. If one or two more relievers are traded before Thursday’s deadline, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hiraldo back before too long.
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