Throughout the heyday of the Buck Showalter Orioles, Baltimore\u2019s bats became synonymous with one thing: power, and lots of it. Between 2013 and 2016, an Oriole led the American League in home runs for four straight seasons. In 2016, the O\u2019s led all of baseball with 253 home runs as the Birdland Power Company lit up the Baltimore sky with their constant fireworks.<\/p>\n
The Mike Elias Orioles looked to follow a similar blueprint, building a lineup full of long-ball threats. The peak of that power output came in 2024, when the O\u2019s were second in MLB with 233, led by Anthony Santander\u2019s 44 taters and Gunnar Henderson\u2019s record-setting 37 homers.<\/p>\n
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And then, last year, the power just dried up. The Orioles dropped from second to 11th in homers and no player finished with more than 17 long balls. Pundits often point to the Orioles\u2019 lack of pitching as their biggest weakness, but their power outage also precipitated the O\u2019s downturn last year. With 2026 just around the corner, the lack of power is something the O\u2019s are trying to fix to make 2026 a better year.<\/p>\n
The relative youth of this Orioles team makes it hard to say whether 2024 or 2025 was the true outlier with Baltimore\u2019s power output. But seeing a team drop from a .435 slugging percentage one year to a .394 slugging percentage the next year certainly falls outside of normal year-to-year variance.<\/p>\n
Any attempt at explaining the Orioles\u2019 dip in offensive output has to start on the injured list. The poster child for the Orioles\u2019 injury woes was big offseason signing Tyler O\u2019Neill. The Baltimore front office bet on O\u2019Neill as the cost-effective replacement for the departing Santander, a bet that completely failed to pay off in 2025. The 30-year-old outfielder spent more days on the IL (97) than base hits, and finished with 35 fewer home runs than Santander gave the O\u2019s in 2024.<\/p>\n
The injury shockwave was felt beyond the O\u2019Neill for Santander swap. Oblique injuries limited Adley Rutschman to 90 games in 2025, and consequently saw his homer output drop from 19 to 9 and his slugging percentage from .391 to .366. Colton Cowser spent 72 days on the IL between an early-season broken finger and a late-season concussion, resulting in a home run regression from 24 to 16. Ryan Mountcastle also saw an injury-related dip in power production, as a two-month stay on the IL with a hamstring strain coincided with his home runs dropping from 13 to seven and his slugging dipping from .425 to .367.<\/p>\n
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The Orioles\u2019 offense was undoubtedly dealt a blow when their slow start led them to trade Ryan O\u2019Hearn, Ram\u00f3n Laureano\u2014the team\u2019s leaders in slugging percentage\u2014as well as Cedric Mullins and Ram\u00f3n Ur\u00edas at the Trade Deadline. However, the offense was already on the road to deep regression by the time we got to July.<\/p>\n
In addition to getting healthier, the Orioles and Birdland alike will be hoping for a rebound from shortstop Gunnar Henderson. The 2025 season was a stark reminder that progression with young players\u2014even ones as good as Henderson\u2014is far from linear. In 2024, we saw the star shortstop put up one of the best seasons by an Oriole this century, breaking Cal Ripken\u2019s single-season record for home runs by a shortstop.<\/p>\n
This past season, Gunnar just wasn\u2019t the same Gunnar. The key metrics that usually go along with big power output\u2014exit velocity, hard hit rate, bat speed\u2014were all still for the Orioles\u2019 Country Boy last season. But his barrel rate, launch-angle sweet-spot percentage and chase rate all trended in the wrong direction, leading to a drop in Henderson\u2019s expected slugging percentage from .492 to .417.<\/p>\n
Gunnar\u2019s statistical profile paints the picture of a hitter who was pressing. After the star shortstop missed most of Spring Training and the first week of the regular season with an intercostal injury, it felt like he was always trying to play catch-up. It took until June for Henderson to really play like the All-Star caliber player he is, at which point the Orioles\u2019 season was mostly a lost cause.<\/p>\n
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After the fire sale at the Trade Deadline, his slugging percentage dipped from .464 through the end of July to .387 over the final two months of the year. Whether the result of a superstar talent trying too hard to carry a team in need of a spark, the 24-year-old taking his foot off the gas for a team clearly out of contention, or something in between, Henderson finished 2025 as he started it: lukewarm.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s enough evidence to suggest that the leader of the Orioles lineup can rebound to 2024 form in 2026. To do so, he\u2019ll have to lock back in against breaking balls in particular. After crushing breaking balls in 2024 (to the tune of a .298 average and .708 slugging percentage), Henderson was a completely different hitter against breaking balls this past season. His average dropped all the way to .228 against curves, sliders, and sweepers; his slugging went down to .415 and his swing and miss rate jumped up by nearly four percent. If he can get his timing back on hitting breaking pitches, 30+ home runs should be a realistic expectation for Henderosn in 2026.<\/p>\n
While a healthier team and a Gunnar Henderson bounce back are reasonable to expect in the coming year, the front office is clearly not resting on its laurels when it comes to fixing Baltimore\u2019s power problem. The two big offensive additions this offseason\u2014OF Taylor Ward and 1B Pete Alonso\u2014combined for 74 home runs last year. By themselves, both more than doubled the team-leading 17 home runs hit by co-leaders Henderson, Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg. If power was the lineup\u2019s problem in 2025, it\u2019s clearly the front office\u2019s mission to build a more potent group for 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout the heyday of the Buck Showalter Orioles, Baltimore\u2019s bats became synonymous with one thing: power, and lots…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":466741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[47226,40931,18570,9145,9149,108929,22898,5917,1266,26092,3687,6172,212302,69196,68414,108928,212301,62,2627,69198,135282,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-466740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-adley-rutschman","9":"tag-anthony-santander","10":"tag-baltimore","11":"tag-cedric-mullins","12":"tag-colton-cowser","13":"tag-gunnar-henderson","14":"tag-jackson-holliday","15":"tag-jordan-westburg","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-orioles","18":"tag-pete-alonso","19":"tag-power","20":"tag-power-output","21":"tag-ramon-laureano","22":"tag-ramon-urias","23":"tag-ryan-mountcastle","24":"tag-slugging-percentage","25":"tag-sports","26":"tag-taylor-ward","27":"tag-the-orioles","28":"tag-tyler-oneill","29":"tag-united-states","30":"tag-unitedstates","31":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115769310226531419","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}