O's Gunnar Henderson on his AL Player of the Week award

Orioles rookie Gunnar Henderson got alerted to the news the way likely many of his fans did as well. He saw it on his phone Monday afternoon that he had been named the American League Player of the Week. It was his first such honor and first for the Orioles since Ryan Mountcastle was POW in the AL in June of 2021.

Henderson hit .526/.550/1.053 (10-for-19) during the week with one double, three homers, five runs scored, six RBIs, one walk, and two stolen bases in five games, hitting safely in all of them.

For the period, he led the AL in batting and on-base percentage, ranked second in slugging and OPS (1.063), tied for second in home runs, third in total bases (20), tied for third in hits, and tied for fifth in RBIs.

“Feel like it’s a testament to the hard work,” he said of the honor today during batting practice in the Orioles dugout. “Just everything I had gone through at the beginning of the year. Just trusting the process and put in a lot of hard work and feel like that has been the biggest thing.”

His OPS was just .659 at the end of April and had dipped to .643 by early May. But as he started to make some louder contact and more often drive baseballs, he felt he was headed in the right direction.

“Felt like it was just developing over the course of it and felt like (there were) about two and half weeks of swinging the bat well. Some of them went right at people. But the confidence was growing and I knew my swing was getting in the right place. Just put in the right work each and every day and the confidence was building and building and knew they would start falling pretty soon.”

And now in 57 games for the year, he is batting .236/.349/.455/.804. That OPS tops his OPS of .788 last year which ranked 25 percent above league average. His current mark is 24 percent above the league. What kept him going through some of those tough times?

“All the hitting coaches and guys around that had seen people go through the experience that I was going through. Just experiences they had been through themselves. Just getting the input they had and what got them through it. Pretty much a team effort from the coaches and players.

“Just tried not to do too much, not forcing it. Just trusting myself and knowing there was a learning curve. Especially at this level and everyone goes through it.”

Sunday Henderson hit a 462-foot three-run homer onto Eutaw Street with a 113.8 mph exit velocity. It was both the hardest-hit ball and farthest-hit ball by an Oriole this year. It capped a weekend where he went 8-for-13 in the sweep of Kansas City. Over his last 15 games, he is batting .354 with a 1.133 OPS to go with five homers and 13 RBIs. His OPS is .908 since May 1.

His blast Sunday tied for the sixth-longest home run at Oriole Park in the Statcast era (since 2015) and is the third-longest by an O’s batter in that span, behind a 465-foot homer by Manny Machado on June 2, 2017 vs. Boston and a 464-foot blast by Austin Hays on June 7, 2022 vs. Chicago-NL. It was the farthest home run and second hardest-hit ball by an O's rookie in the Statcast era, behind a 115.5 mph long ball by Trey Mancini on April 12, 2017 at Boston.

He’s gone from slumping to smoking at-bat. The weather is heating up and so is he.

“When you are in the heat of it (some struggles), it’s the hardest thing to do to trust it (your process). I mean, when someone says to trust the process, it’s very hard to do. And to do it in the heat of things. But once you get through it you are very thankful you got through it and know how to get through it in the future," he said.