What Orioles need from Adley Rutschman after 'confounding' stretch of once-promising career

What Orioles need from Adley Rutschman after ‘confounding’ stretch of once-promising career originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The Baltimore Orioles didn’t come even close to expectations in 2025.

They’ve added even more talent for this season, and now they’re going to make a run at a bounceback while playing in the most challenging division in baseball, the AL East.

The Blue Jays, Red Sox and Yankees all went to the postseason a year ago, and the Rays always find a way to be competitive.

For a while, the Orioles were the bottom dweller, but they weren’t supposed to be last year.

MORE: How Jose Ramirez is on pace to become Cleveland’s Derek Jeter

Things didn’t go their way, though, and one guy who certainly didn’t help: Adley Rutschman.

The one-time top prospect was meant to develop into the face of this franchise.

Instead, the Orioles are trying to figure out what his future might look like in Baltimore.

That’s all part of why MLB.com’s Brent Maguire has named Rutschman the Orioles’ X-faactor for the season ahead.

“Inexplicably, Rutschman has a .639 OPS and just 1.2 WAR in 148 games since the second half of 2024,” Maguire writes. “Injuries are partially to blame — he had multiple oblique strains in 2025 — but that doesn’t fully explain the drop-off from being one of baseball’s top players. For the Orioles to compete in a hyper-competitive AL East, a bounceback from Rutschman would be a huge boost.”

Rutschman, a former No. 1 overall pick, for a long time looked like a superstar.

Somewhere along the way, that vanished.

“Rutschman’s career arc has been confounding,” Maguire writes. “Selected first overall in the 2019 Draft, Rutschman was widely viewed as a generational talent at catcher and he certainly lived up to that hype to begin his career, racking up 11.1 WAR through his first two seasons thanks to all-around excellence. It was more of the same through the first half of 2024, when he was selected to a second straight All-Star Game thanks to 2.7 WAR and 16 homers.”

MORE: Luis Arraez is MLB’s perfect misfit in 2026

The season ahead is crucial to figuring out if this is the right roster construction to get the Orioles where they want to go.

Rutschman has to prove he’s still a part of the future in Baltimore.

More MLB news:

What Orioles need from Adley Rutschman after ‘confounding’ stretch of once-promising career

Tags: