You can make at least a little bit of a case for a handful of Orioles, but probably only one of them will make it.
In the version of the 2025 season that we all thought or at least hoped that we’d be getting back before the season began, the recent release of All-Star ballots would be a time for excitement at the worthy set of Orioles who should be All-Stars. In the version that we are actually getting, the Orioles are an awful team and what we are going to get is the one mandatory pity All-Star.
Who will end up being that All-Star? Are there any players who should be but probably won’t be? As bad as the season has been, and as bad (or injured) as many of the Orioles who might have been imagined as All-Star contenders before the season have been, there are still a handful of O’s with cases to be made to make the American League team this year.
These are my guys who I think are worth at least cursory consideration: Ryan O’Hearn, Gunnar Henderson, Tomoyuki Sugano, and Jackson Holliday. Everybody else, tough luck. Here’s how each case looks:
Ryan O’Hearn
- Position: DH
- His numbers through today: .316/.397/.500 in 54 games, 1.6 bWAR, 1.8 fWAR
- The competition: Rafael Devers (BOS), Brent Rooker (SAC)
There is absolutely no chance that any Oriole is going to be elected as a starter with the current state of the team. Even if the Orioles won every game between now and the end of All-Star voting, this would probably remain the case. A better Orioles team might get some votes for O’Hearn as a DH. That’s just not how it is. Devers probably gets the edge for hitting homers and being on the Red Sox, not that the Red Sox are any great shakes either.
However, I do think there’s a decent chance that O’Hearn is selected by the players as a reserve. He is having something of a career season at age 31, a pinnacle he has reached after hanging on and grinding through a number of tough years with Kansas City before finding more of a place with the Orioles.
That kind of career narrative is one that I think will resonate with players, and the fact that O’Hearn is batting substantially better than any primary AL DH other than Devers only helps his case. If the Athletics didn’t have any other All-Star-worthy players than Rooker (.814 OPS to date), he might get in and edge out O’Hearn, but I think there’s a different “the only Athletic” contender, as we’re about to see.
Gunnar Henderson
- Position: Shortstop
- His numbers through today: .265/.325/.438 through 57 games
- The competition: Bobby Witt Jr. (KC), Jacob Wilson (SAC), Jeremy Peña (HOU)
Henderson is hitting better of late and he’s now the best player on the team by bWAR. He was an All-Star last year and, again, if the Orioles were better, he’d probably get some more votes from fans – especially because, if the Orioles were better, part of that would likely involve Henderson repeating his MVP-caliber season of a year ago. As with so many other things about 2025, we’re just not getting the world we wanted or the one we thought we’d get.
Witt, to my annoyance for a variety of reasons, is repeating something like what he did a year ago, when he was MVP runner-up. His batting numbers are pretty good, he’s stealing a bunch of bases, and he has a lot of defensive value. Sacramento’s Jacob Wilson is a freak in the modern day game, hardly ever striking out (6%) and batting .372 so far this season. He’s got to be an early AL Rookie of the Year favorite. Peña of the Astros has broken out at the plate – at least so far – and it will be a real snub if he doesn’t get an All-Star bid.
Even if there were going to be four AL shortstops on the roster, which is unlikely on its own unless one of the guys from the last paragraph gets injured, Henderson’s also got to compete for the fourth slot with Seattle’s J.P. Crawford and New York’s Anthony Volpe.
Tomoyuki Sugano
- Position: Starting pitcher
- His numbers through today: 3.23 ERA, 4.58 FIP in 75.1 IP over 13 games
- The competition: The eleven AL pitchers who currently have an ERA under 3, particularly the four who currently have an ERA under 2
Returning to the topic of good narratives, I think that it would be a good narrative for Major League Baseball if a Japanese player came over late in his career and was immediately an All-Star. Doing this while having some measure of success in a way that looks entirely unlike other successful major league pitchers, which Sugano is doing thanks to his miniscule strikeout rate, makes it even more interesting as a possibility.
Last year, there were seven starting pitchers named to the AL All-Star team. That works in Sugano’s favor, because the more spots there are, the more he might slip in. On the other hand, he’s a long way away even from being #7. At least by ERA, the current #7 pitcher in the AL is reigning Cy Young Tarik Skubal, who is more than a run under Sugano at 2.16. Many guys are doing freakishly good things, including last offseason’s mega-free agent signing Max Fried, and the offseason’s big-time trade guy, Garrett Crochet.
How does Sugano squeeze in to that? He doesn’t, unless the Orioles are without any other All-Stars through the fan voting and player reserve selections, and then the commissioner’s office decides to pick up the narrative of Sugano qualifying.
Jackson Holliday
- Position: Second base
- His numbers through today: .263/.316/.433 through 58 games
- The competition: Brandon Lowe (TB), Gleyber Torres (DET)
Second base is the position with the worst hitting across all of MLB. To be an above-average hitter while playing that position is to stand out. Holliday is largely doing this over the last month or so, although he’s not doing as well to begin June as he just did in May. He is hitting for more power than Torres and with a better OBP than Lowe. The fWAR leader at this position is actually Toronto’s Ernie Clement, who is getting the edge on defensive numbers.
The lack of strong competition does give a decent chance of Holliday making it in as the pity only Oriole, especially if he surges between now and when the rosters are named. Son of a seven-time All-Star makes his first All-Star team in the same year his younger brother is a possible #1 overall draft pick is also a pretty good narrative for MLB, if it wants to choose that over the other options.
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Looking at these few choices, it seems like O’Hearn has got to be the favorite unless he goes ice cold over the next several weeks before the rosters are announced. He really is the second-best DH in the AL so far and this is not a position where it would make sense to slot in any other team’s pity All-Star.
As the best Orioles batter up to this point, O’Hearn be a fine pity All-Star for the O’s, probably not one who would annoy people many years later like when Ty Wigginton was chosen instead of Nick Markakis in 2010. That was dumb. O’Hearn making the All-Star team would not be dumb. It would be exciting for him, fun for Orioles fans, and maybe it would even buff up his trade value a tiny bit.