Gunnar Henderson is hitting .202. Taylor Ward, who had 36 homers with the Los Angeles Angels last season, has one in Baltimore as of May 16, in 204 plate appearances.
Pete Alonso has been doing better of late, but all that’s done for him is get him to .220 with eight homers.
Tyler O’Neill – remember him? The two-time 30-homer guy has two, and a .169 batting average, after a 2025 that saw him hit .199 with nine homers.
It’s depressing, is what it is.
I don’t even know where to start, so, let’s just start with Henderson, who had 37 homers and a 9.1 WAR in 2024, averaged 6.9 WAR from 2023-2025, and is sitting at 0.3 WAR through 45 games in 2026, and he hasn’t homered since April 26, a span of 17 games.
Seems that he’s pressing – his walk rate is a career-low 6.4 percent, his strikeout rate is a career-high 28.6 percent, and his batting average on balls in play is .238; his BABIP was over .300 in each of his first four MLB seasons.
I was hoping to look at his numbers on FanGraphs and find that he was just the victim of bad luck, but, nope – his expected batting average is just .223.
Ward is a vexing case, because his walk rate (21.5 percent) is nearly double his previous career high, and his K rate (17.9 percent) is by far a career-low.
The average exit velocity – at 88.5 – is also a career-low, as is his hard-hit rate (36.4 percent).
Next, Alonso: his walk (11.0 percent) and K (24.6 percent) rates are at his norm; his BABIP (.246) is below his career average (.268).
His average exit velo (94.3) is actually a career-high, and his hard-hit rate (52.5 percent) is just off his career-high from last season, when he hit 38 homers with an .871 OPS with the New York Mets.
He should be fine going forward.
O’Neill, who signed a three-year deal in the 2024 offseason, was a bad idea from the get-go.
His one good season was all the way back in 2021, when he hit 34 homers with a .286 batting average and .912 OPS, and was worth 6.3 WAR.
The O’s got him off a 31-homer season in Boston in 2024 in which he benefitted from luck – his .241 batting average was 30 points higher than his expected batting average (.211), and his .511 slugging percentage was 22 points higher than his expected slugging percentage (.489).
What baseball giveth, baseball will later taketh away – his average exit velo this year is a pedestrian 89.0, and FanGraphs gives him credit for two (2!) barrels this season among his 46 batted balls, from among his 79 plate appearances.
That’s two more than me, for those counting at home.
In his one really good year, in 2021, he had 57 barrels out of his 318 batted balls from among his 537 plate appearances.
What’s wrong with the O’s, then?
As I said above, I think Alonso, hitting a modest .245 with an .827 OPS, four homers and three doubles in 53 at bats in May, will be fine.
I’m really worried about Henderson, who is hitting .175/.400 with just two extra-base hits in 57 ABs in May, and Ward, who is hitting .150/.568 with one extra-base hit in 40 ABs in May.
At least Ward is working counts – he has 16 walks this month.
Otherwise, the offense is a mess – the best two hitters are the catchers, Samuel Bassallo (.279/.819, 5 HRs, 16 RBIs) and Adley Rutschman (.278/.853, 6 HRs, 24 RBIs), one of whom you can DH when he’s not catching, at risk of losing the DH if the catcher that night needs to come out.
Those are the two guys with .800+ OPS; Ward is on the cusp, at .799, and that’s all walks (43, which leads MLB).
He’s getting on base, which is good, but with little else going on around him, he’s doomed to just die out there after taking the free pass.
Whatever Dustin Lind, the hitting coach, and his assistant, Brady North, are doing, I’d scrap the approach they’ve been teaching and start over – in fact, if I’m first-year manager Craig Albernaz, I might just start over with new guys in those jobs.
Bottom line: either their guys are banged up and not telling the training staff, or they’re not being coached to be successful.
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Chris Graham
