My brain refuses to wrap itself around the fact of Taylor Ward being on the Orioles. I’m well aware that they traded for him since I wrote about that here on Camden Chat when it happened. It’s just not real yet. Spring training hasn’t done enough for the idea to sink in that the O’s have this guy – presumably an everyday corner outfielder – for the year.
Ward is coming off a 2025 season with the Angels where he socked a career-high 36 home runs. As we all remember quite well, the 2025 Orioles were
lacking in home run threats in the lineup, with no one hitting more than 17 homers as an Oriole. Acquiring Ward was one part of Mike Elias’s plan to fix that. Maybe he’ll do something to make me happy to remember him as the season goes along.
Here’s how two of the big projection systems look at Ward for this season:
- ZiPS (FanGraphs): .243/.328/.454 with 27 home runs, 2.7 WAR
- PECOTA (Baseball Prospectus): .232/.317/.411 with 22 home runs, 2.4 WAR
We will all be hoping things turn out more like ZiPS for Ward than that PECOTA projection. If Ward hits only 22 home runs, not many people are going to fondly recall the trade, without even getting into what happens with Grayson Rodriguez in Los Angeles.
What do you expect from Ward this season? Do you think he’ll be bombing balls over Walltimore 2.0 for the year, or will he just be bombing his way out of the starting lineup?
