60% of the respondents in our survey chose Rutschman as the most concerning Oriole so far.
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The Orioles were supposed to be better than this and so far they aren’t. Even if you entered the season concerned about the starting rotation, they’ve been way worse than anybody could have feared. What’s really been dragging me down in thinking about the team, not just for this year but for the next couple of years beyond this, is how much some key hitters in the lineup have just been disappointing up to now.
In this week’s survey, I asked fans whose struggles are the most concerning out of four choices. That could mean different things to different people. A whole lot of folks were on the same wavelength, with Adley Rutschman coming in with a strong majority of votes:
It’s not hard to figure out why Rutschman’s struggles get the top billing. After all, this isn’t just a 2025 problem for him. He’s been disappointing going back into the second half of last season. Through the team’s first 31 games, Rutschman has been merely unexciting rather than the out-and-out bad that he was for much of last year. It’s an improvement, but it’s still not enough to help anyone feel like he’s reverting to the form of earlier in his career.
Mountcastle’s distant second is also not hard to figure out. He’s just been plain bad. After last night’s game, his batting line for the season is .208/.252/.323 and he’s hit only two home runs for the season. He was supposed to be one of the prime beneficiaries of the left field fence moving back in. That just hasn’t happened up to this point.
Henderson’s hitting is going to become increasingly concerning if he doesn’t start picking it up soon. Maybe the intercostal injury from spring training has lingered longer than anyone involved wanted to acknowledge, or he just really needed the exhibition games to get into form and he’s had to do that in real games instead.
This week’s survey brought to you by FanDuel.