Jon Meoli: Adley Rutschman helped Baltimore fall in love with the Orioles again. Trading him is devastating.

“I guess I’m going to have to get a new jersey now.”

When I took a break from pacing and deep exhales Monday afternoon for a water-cooler chat about the Orioles’ trade deadline and the momentum building toward an Adley Rutschman trade, that was the response to the news of his pending departure.

That’s what happens when nearly a decade’s worth of hope and potential — with plenty of it realized — is wrapped up in a player who is traded. Rutschman, the former top pick and three-time All-Star, was dealt to the Boston Red Sox on Monday.

The same reasons the Orioles took him No. 1 overall back in 2019 were the reasons a Baltimore fan would have bought his jersey in the ensuing years: He was a safe pair of hands they could trust to deliver the Orioles back from the miserable depths they were in when he joined the organization.

For a while he did that, and while his own ups and downs coincided with the team’s, he had little to do with the underperformance that made so many Orioles available to other clubs at this year’s trade deadline. He’s back to being the player they wanted to build around, and moving him now is a devastating end to his story here.

Rutschman was cemented as the face of a rebuild that was still in its early stages, and he was among the only sources of hope for Orioles fans still smarting from the collapse of the mid-2010s club.

It was only fitting and likely intentional that Rutschman was unveiled at Camden Yards on the same day that former Orioles star Manny Machado returned to town with the San Diego Padres, about a year after Machado was traded away at the 2018 All-Star break in a move that represented the beginning of the end for that previous era of baseball in Baltimore.

This was only going to be about the future, and the future was built around Rutschman. Part of his appeal in that draft was that you knew what you were going to get with the consensus best player in college baseball — offensive potential from both sides of the plate, premium defense behind the plate, and leadership. He was that guy from the moment he joined the organization.

There was plenty of fanfare as he moved through the minors in that 2019 season, which took attention away from the 108-loss season underway in Baltimore. Affiliates sold his shirts in the team store — rankling top prospects who preceded him — and all the key metrics the Orioles track offensively had improved since his college days, bolstering their conviction.

He’d have been in Baltimore sooner if not for the pandemic in 2020, but that was hardly a lost season. He and Gunnar Henderson, plus a handful of prospects at the team’s alternate training site in Bowie, were essentially lab rats for the new hitting program that coaches Ryan Fuller and Anthony Villa were building for the Orioles’ farm system.

They had no better ambassador than Rutschman, whom they used to help promote the program once larger camps resumed for the broader minor league population.

Rutschman dominated the high minors in 2021 and became the game’s top prospect entering the 2022 season. An elbow issue in spring training delayed his start that season, and once he was healthy, it was just weeks before his Orioles debut, which came May 21 of that year.

That’s when they started selling the jerseys. And that’s when the Orioles started winning.

Rutschman joined a team that was 16-24, and after a modest adjustment period, they heated up as he did, with a 10-game winning streak in July bringing them back to relevance.

He ended that year with an .806 OPS and finished second in AL Rookie of the Year voting; the Orioles finished above .500 for the first time since 2016. They were 67-55 after he joined the club, a .598 winning percentage — and that was just the beginning.

Rutschman was an All-Star for the first time in 2023 as the Orioles won the AL East with 101 wins. His .809 OPS was a big part of it, as were the contributions from the likes of Henderson, Jordan Westburg, Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez, all of whom came from the farm system.

Even though they were swept out of the playoffs, it felt like this group, headlined by Rutschman — with more talented players on the way — was building something special in Baltimore.

It needs to be said that that team did more than just win on the field. They were a special group off of it, and Rutschman was at the heart of so much of that. The Bird Bath, which somehow still exists, stemmed from the spring training talent show that year in which Rutschman and his young teammates put on what they described as a “human fountain show,” spitting and spraying water synchronously. One of my enduring memories from that season was seeing the picture of Rutschman, Henderson, Colton Cowser and Ryan Mountcastle in bright velvet jumpsuits before a game.

All the good play and good vibes continued into 2024, when for around three months the Orioles were in many ways the best team in baseball. Rutschman was on a power surge in the first half, and the Orioles left New York on June 20 after a series win over the Yankees at 49-25, the class of the sport.

It was never that good again.

A lot of Rutschman’s struggles from that point seemed to stem from a foul tip that hit his hand the last weekend in June against Texas.

His hard contact dipped almost immediately, and he had a .564 OPS from July 1 on. Combined with injuries to Bradish, Mountcastle, Westburg, John Means, Tyler Wells and Félix Bautista that forced them to miss all or most of the rest of the season, the team limped into the playoffs and exited again without a win.

Rutschman wasn’t at his best in 2025, either, with a pair of oblique injuries landing him on the injured list; little went well for him before the first one occurred in June. He’d been back on the roster for a few days when the team’s massive deadline teardown occurred at the end of July, and in early August, they called up catcher Samuel Basallo and quickly signed him to a long-term contract extension. There was a new catcher of the future, and perhaps that was the beginning of the end for the incumbent.

It sure felt that way in September when I saw a billboard promoting Birdland memberships for the coming season that featured Basallo, not Rutschman, alongside Henderson and Jackson Holliday.

But come on — this was Adley Rutschman we were talking about. And disappointing as the preceding season-plus had been for him, there were plenty of mitigating circumstances, and this was still the same player and person the Orioles had bet so much on at the beginning of all this.

And to his credit, he made good on that. With a simplified swing and approach that undid some of what had hampered him the last two seasons, Rutschman had a scorching April and was an All-Star for a third time. He’s on the injured list for a third stint, this time with wrist inflammation, but the Orioles didn’t arrive at this deadline in purgatory because of Rutschman.

Trading him, though, makes it clear they were less in the middle than they seemed. Rutschman was the player who was meant to take them to the good place — and let’s be clear, he did. For several years, this worked, and he was at the center of it.

So forgive me for quickly short-circuiting when I try to rationalize this at all. I understand the reasons, and I understand how you arrive at this decision if you strip out the sentiment that comes with the obvious rebuttal of “But he’s Adley Rutschman.”

The problem is that he is Adley Rutschman. There was a time, yes, when he wasn’t, and, trade or not, his time here wasn’t likely to extend past free agency after the 2027 season. But make no mistake — the player himself is still Adley Rutschman. The Orioles helped make him that, and he helped make the Orioles what they are today.

That’s why so many people are going to need a new jersey. Players like Rutschman helped Baltimore fall back in love with this team. Players like Rutschman gave this team its identity. And it’s devastating that his time here ended this way.