Henderson is one of five Orioles who’s in the double digits for home runs so far.
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In the 2024 season, the Orioles ended up with two players among the top ten in MLB in home runs for the season. Anthony Santander’s 44 homers trailed only Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. Gunnar Henderson, with 37 dingers, was in the top ten as well. The 2025 Orioles just don’t have anyone who is anywhere near that prolific. With just a couple of games to go before the All-Star break and the season well past its mathematical halfway point, Cedric Mullins leads the way with 13 homers.
In this week’s survey, I asked fans to think about who would end up as the Orioles leader in home runs by season’s end. Here’s how the voting went:
The question is made more complicated by the strong possibility that players will be traded away. With Ryan O’Hearn at 5% and Mullins at only 3%, it seems like fans are baking in an assumption about the trades. I agree with that. I hope that the Orioles will play so well between now and the trade deadline that not even the unsentimental Mike Elias can bring himself to sell off, but I’m not holding my breath.
Even if nobody gets traded, thinking Henderson is going to return to his 2024 power and easily blast past everybody else isn’t that crazy. He’s too good not to, right? Or so we have to hope. As for Jackson Holliday coming in second place, Orioles fans have been hearing about Holliday’s offseason “work out and eat ground beef every day” plan all through the season, and we’ve seen its results paying off in his physique and in his performance too.
Part of any unlikely Orioles second half surge would probably involve at least one player going on a heater through now and the end of the regular season. Whoever it is, hopefully he can hit his way to 30+ by the time we get to the end.
This week’s survey brought to you by FanDuel.