There are, unfortunately, a lot of choices for “struggling Oriole.”
The 2025 Orioles season is now more than 20% complete. It has not gone well so far. At 13-20, the O’s are fortunate to not be farther than five games out of the AL East lead. There are a lot of reasons why this is happening, including that Mike Elias had a bad offseason plan. Yet it also comes down to a number of players who are not playing well whose failure to this degree was not to be expected.
In a survey last week, I asked which struggling Oriole had you most concerned about his future. A strong majority of 60% chose Adley Rutschman. For a poll this week, consider the opposite: Which Oriole who’s not been very good so far do you have the most hope will turn it around?
There are quite a number of players who are not meeting expectations so far this season, which is what’s gotten the Orioles here. Yet for the most part, these aren’t guys in whom we had much investment in their ongoing success as Orioles. The ones who are getting me down are guys who I’ve been thinking about and rooting for across multiple seasons, and who I really thought, even as pessimistic as I am, would at a minimum would be okay for the O’s this season. That’s who’s on my poll this week:
Jordan Westburg will belong on this list if he doesn’t get things going once he returns from the injured list, but for now he gets a pass.
Heston Kjerstad
After the health problems that he had to get past just to get onto pro baseball fields at all, Kjerstad has been an easy guy to root for, kind of an underdog story even despite his being a former #2 overall pick. Prospect writers were mostly still believing in him as a top 100 prospect up until he passed out of the rookie threshold a year ago, and his initial 2024 results were solid until his season was interrupted by the Yankees hitting him in the head and giving him a concussion whose after-effects were not immediately recognized by the Orioles.
New year, concussion problems cleared. Kjerstad even had a path to regular playing time plowed by Colton Cowser’s head first slide into first base in the first series of the year. Time to rock, right? Sadly not. He’s batting .205/.247/.349 so far, with only two walks while striking out 25 times.
Dean Kremer
For over two years now, I have been hoping for the Orioles to construct a starting rotation where Kremer is farther back in the mix than the #3 guy. It keeps on not happening. Kremer is not a bad pitcher. His track record the past two seasons before this is a 4.11 ERA (96 ERA+) who was averaging a bit more than five innings per start. That’s fine. He should have been fine.
Kremer has not been fine. His strikeout rate has collapsed from where he was striking out 21-22% of all batters to just 13.3%. Many of the batters who he is not striking out are getting hits off of him instead, as Kremer’s batting average allowed is .277. There are only two Orioles batters who exceed that average, and against Kremer, ALL batters are hitting like that. He was good in his last start but before that his ERA was over 7, and even now it’s 5.73.
Ryan Mountcastle
“The Orioles will have to have a better first baseman than this by the time they’re good, won’t they?” That’s what I thought about Mountcastle four years ago, and he’s still here. Up until this year, that wasn’t a bad thing that he’s still here, as he just kept chugging along and cranking out cromulent seasons at the plate while getting solid marks defensively. It’s not exciting to have a first baseman with only 13 homers in 124 games, but the 112 OPS+ was perfectly fine.
The changing of the Camden Yards fences to some middle ground between the original design and the Walltimore adjustment seemed targeted to right-handed power hitters like Mountcastle specifically. He is just not delivering, batting .202/.243/.308 so far this season. The team’s free-fall against lefty pitchers is not entirely because of him, but he’s sure not helping (.443 OPS vs. LHP).
Cade Povich
The offseason’s signing of old guys for the starting rotation seems like it was aimed in part to not have Povich in the five-man Opening Day mix as part of Plan A. Grayson Rodriguez’s injury opened up a spot and Povich pitched his way into it in spring training. He showed out well in Triple-A a year ago, took some MLB lumps, and put together a strong final month. Would that carry over into 2025?
In a word, no. Povich has made six starts so far this year and only one of them was good. Most have seen him laboring and unable to complete five innings. He is giving up hits and particularly home runs like they are going out of style. Tough as it’s been, he’s two good outings away from some decent season numbers, if he can actually accomplish that.
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The poll is above, and you can let us know your thoughts in the comments below.