Take a trip back through the time with me, if you will, to May 21, 2022. That was the day that Adley Rutschman made his major league debut — and the fortunes of the Baltimore Orioles were forever changed.
It had been a long, slow, painful rebuild for the Orioles, who at that point were in the fourth year of Mike Elias’s organizational overhaul. The O’s had amassed a ghastly 147-277 record since the start of 2019, including a 16-24 mark to begin the 2022 season. Orioles fans knew that winning wasn’t
“strategically relevant” to the team during that span, but there’s only so much of such brutally bad baseball that anyone can take. They’d forgotten what winning even felt like.
And then, like an oasis in the desert, there he was. Adley Rutschman, the Orioles’ next great hope, had arrived. In 2019 he’d been the first draft pick of Elias’s Orioles tenure, selected #1 overall after a legendary college career at Oregon State, and fans breathlessly tracked his minor league progress as he soared up the organizational ladder. When he took the field at Camden Yards on that memorable May 21, Orioles fans finally felt like something great was about to happen.
They were right. Practically from day one, when he tripled in his MLB debut, Adley was everything the Orioles had hoped for. He brought a potent bat, posting an OPS of .806 or better in each of his first two seasons. He had a great arm, throwing out 30% of base stealers in his rookie year. He was the pitcher whisperer, greeting hurlers at the base line after every inning and giving them big ol’ bear hugs at the end of every O’s win.
And Rutschman’s arrival coincided exactly with the Orioles’ renaissance. Starting with his debut, the Orioles were 12 games over .500 for the rest of 2022, barely missing out on the playoffs. The next year, his first full season, they won 101 games and ran away with the AL East crown. Adley had some help, of course — the subsequent call-ups of other homegrown studs like Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, and Grayson Rodriguez infused more talent onto the roster — but Rutschman was the face of the Orioles’ rebuild. He was an All-Star, a Silver Slugger, and a Rookie of the Year runner-up. He finished in the top 12 in the AL MVP voting in each of his first two years. The Orioles seemed well on track to be a perennial contender, led by someone who was emerging as the best catcher in baseball.
Now let’s return to the present day, where we’re faced with the harsh reality that Rutschman might never be that player again. And his future as an Oriole is very much up in the air.
Whatever has gone wrong with Adley, it began partway through the 2024 season. On June 21, Rutschman was having a typically fantastic season, batting .305/.352/.485 after a five-hit night in Houston. And then, for reasons that remain unclear, he completely collapsed. For the rest of that year, he hit .192 with a .574 OPS in 77 games. His once productive bat disappeared. His defense appeared to decline, too. And once again, as Adley went, so did the rest of the team. The Orioles, who at one point were 24 games over .500, had a losing record from July to the end of the year, sneaking into the playoffs only to get swept out of them.
Though Rutschman and the Orioles publicly denied that an injury was to blame, Orioles fans grasped onto that theory as the only reasonable explanation for Adley’s downward spiral. He simply had to have been hurt. Surely, after a full offseason to rest his body and get healthy, he would come back in 2025 as the happy, productive player he’d always been, right? …Right?
My friends, I’m sorry, but he did not.
Rutschman started the season well enough — including two home runs on Opening Day in Toronto — but before we could exclaim, “Adley is so back!”, he took another ride on the struggle bus. By early May, his average dipped to a .195 and his OPS to .615, both season lows. Then, just when he was showing signs of finding himself, with an .890 OPS in June, he was struck by injury. For real, this time. The O’s placed him on the IL on June 20 with a left oblique strain.
Rutschman spent more than a month on the shelf. He returned in late July, played 17 games, and then headed back to the IL, this time with a right oblique strain. Again he missed more than a month. Adley returned for the final week of the season and went 1-for-14. Another dismal season was finished, this one his worst yet. All told, Rutschman batted .220/.307/.366 with nine home runs in 90 games.
So…what happened? Why has the Orioles’ one-time franchise cornerstone — the former #1 prospect in all of baseball — suddenly lost his groove at age 27? It’s hard to pinpoint the root of the problem. His underlying stats such as barrel percentage, exit velocity, and hard hit percentage were all just as good or better in 2025 than they were in 2022-23. He still has an above-average walk rate. He’s not chasing pitches out of the zone.
Is it bad luck? A mechanical flaw? Or are injuries really to blame? Rutschman is looking for answers, telling reporters his top offseason priority is to meet with team staff and “to make the necessary adjustments to be able to move forward and obviously perform better.”
If he can’t turn things around, though, his tenure with the Orioles might be running short. The O’s promoted top prospect Samuel Basallo, a catcher, in August, and immediately signed him to an eight-year extension. Basallo got plenty of playing time behind the plate while Rutschman was sidelined. For now, at least, it doesn’t look as if Rutschman is going to get Wally Pipp’d; the O’s can easily carry both players on the roster in 2026, with Adley getting most of the playing time at catcher and Basallo backing him up while playing first base and DH. Still, if the Orioles are committed to Basallo as their catcher of the future, that could leave Rutschman — who has two years until free agency — on the trading block.
It’s a strange thought to consider that Adley Rutschman, the man who once seemed destined to lead the Orioles to their next championship, could soon find himself in another uniform without having reached his fullest potential. Things just haven’t gone quite as planned, either for Adley or the Birds.