In 2025, O's expecting Adley to improve while Gunnar might improve some too

In Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson the Orioles have two young, talented players that could be considered faces of this franchise. Two players that were their first two selections in the 2019 MLB Draft. The first two players selected by Mike Elias after he was hired by the Orioles.

In the 2025 season, based off their play last year, the Orioles surely expect improvement from Rutschman after his disappointing second half. Henderson could improve too, but he had a season in 2024 that put him among the very best players in the game.

Can Gunnar find another gear?: Asking more out of Henderson based on his 2024, is asking a lot. He improved his batting line in each stat category, hitting .255/.325/.489/.814 in 2023 and last year that was .281/.364/.529/.893 as his OPS+ increased from 125 to 159.

How good was he in 2024? He was the third-best position player in baseball-reference Wins Above Replacement and ranked fifth in FanGraphs.com's WAR.

Via baseball-reference.com, Aaron Judge led all at 10.8 followed by Bobby Witt Jr. at 9.4 and then Henderson at 9.1. Juan Soto was fifth by the way, behind Jarren Duran at 7.9. Via FanGraphs, it was Judge leading the way at 11.2, Witt at 10.4 and Shohei Ohtani at 9.1 with Soto at 8.1 and Henderson at 8.0.

Gunnar was the fifth Oriole (seventh occurrence) to finish with an fWAR of at least 8.0, along with Cal Ripken, Jr. (3x; 10.6, 1991; 9.8, 1984, & 8.5, 1983), Brooks Robinson (8.1, 1964), Frank Robinson (8.2, 1966), and Jim Gentile (8.0, 1961). Once again, at age 23 he is keeping pretty good company.

He could find a higher gear and after finishing 11^th in the majors in OPS could break into the top 10. Is a .900 OPS in his future? Probably yes. But he sure delivered big-time last season in winning his second straight Most Valuable Oriole award in 2024.

Adley’s expected improvement: While Henderson’s OPS has increased each year of his brief career, O’s catcher Rutschman lost 100 points in 2024, going from .809 to .709.

His second-half falloff puzzled a lot of people and there were a bunch of theories about that.

For quite a while he was having a solid season. Rutschman started the All-Star game in July and in 79 games through June 30 he hit .294/.350/.471/.821 with 15 homers and 55 RBIs. He was on a 30-homer, 100-RBI pace. He was doing exactly what the team hoped he would.

But then, in 69 games from July 1 through the end of the regular season he batted .194/.278/.286/.564 with four homers and 24 RBIs.

“We’ve been in regular contact with Adley,” O’s manager Brandon Hyde told me last month from the Winter Meetings in Dallas. “We've put some plans in place and collaborated on some things that we feel like, that he feels like, that he wanted to kind of get back to. That kind of went away the second half. We know what kind of player he is and is going to be. We are doing a lot of things with him to get him back offensively and defensively to be the player that he is.”

So, what has to be different and better for him next year?

“I think his approach was a little different last season than the first couple of years,” Hyde explained. “He has always been a very patient hitter with the ability to hit the ball to all fields. You know, very selective/aggressive. He was very selective on the first pitch last year then would get over-aggressive at times on the second pitch and kind of run himself into some bad counts. I think you are going to see him get back into really good counts offensively like he did the first couple of years.

“That’s when the walks are going to show back up. He’ll get better pitches to drive. That’s been the player he’s been his whole life.”