Jon Meoli: 5 factors that explain the Orioles’ uneven offense

Friday’s offensive breakout for the Orioles proved fleeting, with the rest of the weekend against Boston serving as a warning against sweeping judgements made about one baseball game out of 162.

The Orioles’ first month of the season has been lousy with such reminders, both good and bad. Their performances and the corresponding results have vacillated between hopeful and hopeless, and do so frequently. One day they look like the playoff team they expect to be and the next they look a lot like the one responsible for all of last year’s disappointment.

One thing that’s hard to dispute is that while not bad by any stretch, the offense hasn’t been as consistent or productive as you’d hope. There are five more months to change that, but this one is basically in the books. And here are the five things that jumped out to me about why this first month went the way that it did at the plate.

How do Taylor Ward and Pete Alonso have four home runs between them?

In trading for Taylor Ward and signing Pete Alonso, president of baseball operations Mike Elias made big bets on those two players providing some right-handed power in the lineup; they combined for 74 home runs in 2025. Ward’s power for the Orioles has come in the form of doubles — a league-leading 13 — with elite plate discipline helping him to an .883 OPS, albeit with one home run. Alonso has three home runs but has a .637 OPS, with his .336 slugging percentage on track to be the third-lowest of any month in his career.

There’s a reason: Neither is pulling the ball in the air as often as they historically have, and that’s traditionally how big league hitters slug. (See: Gunnar Henderson’s career-best 31.6% elevated pull rate and nine home runs). Alonso did so at an elite rate entering this year, pulling the ball in the air 20.5% of the time in his career but just 12% of the time this year. Ward’s is creeping up of late, with 15.4% of his batted balls pulled in the air this year compared to 17.8% a year ago.

Plenty of factors could influence this. Alonso said pulled elevated contact is typically a byproduct of him staying up the middle with his approach, and those “happy accidents” haven’t happened often yet this year, though he’s not concerned. Both are being pretty selective at the plate. If you’re going to see the ball deep and wait as long as possible to make a swing decision, it’s hard to fire quickly and get around on a ball to pull it when you’re catching it deeper in the zone. There’s also the influence of the deep left-field dimensions at Camden Yards, which we saw forced a change in Ryan Mountcastle’s approach earlier this decade. Whatever the reason, the lack of thump from those two is changing the complexion of this offense.

They aren’t getting going against starters

I asked manager Craig Albernaz after Friday’s big day at the plate whether he believed hitting was contagious, and as he typically does, he framed his response in a way I’d never considered.

“It’s one of those things where the game plan coming against the starter, you see the guys in front of you barrel the balls up, it’s more of a confidence boost to stick with the game plan,” he said. “That’s the toughest thing, where you have your game plan coming in, guys in front of you don’t have the success that you think they should or you want them to, and then you press or you kind of second-guess yourself.”

That felt relevant Friday because it was so rare for the Orioles to thump a starter like that. They’ve scored three or fewer runs off starters in 21 of their 28 games so far, and of their 59 runs against starters, 36 have come in the other seven games. There are some elite starters mixed in and also some that you’d expect a lineup like the Orioles’ to be able to succeed against. The team’s ability to fight back late in games and rally off relievers has been its singular strength so far this season, but as Friday showed, it’s a lot easier when they solve the opposing starter. They need to do that a lot more often.

They don’t see a lot of fastballs, and aren’t doing damage on secondaries

According to Sports Info Solutions, the Orioles are seeing 44.5% fastballs (four-seam and two-seam) this year, which is a tick above Detroit and second-lowest in the league. Against all other pitches, they have a .286 weighed on-base average, which is 16th-best in baseball. By slugging percentage (.355), they’re 17th. It’s not terrible, but both individually and as a team, the Orioles need to do something to dissuade pitchers from attacking them this way.

Henderson, Colton Cowser and Dylan Beavers are seeing fastballs far less often than last year. That alone seem to be bringing the team’s overall fastball rate down. But this is a league of adjustments, and the Orioles are as a team giving opponents a blueprint for how to attack them based on their inconsistent success against these game plans early in the season.

They’re doing better against lefties, but it’s still not a strength

The Orioles made a series of moves ahead of 2025 that, taken together, created a reasonable expectation that they’d hit left-handed pitching well: signing Tyler O’Neill and Gary Sánchez, for starters, with prominent roles for right-handed hitters like Jordan Westburg and Ryan Mountcastle.

For a variety of reasons, that plan fell flat as they faced a series of All-Star lefties in the first month of the season and notched a collective .492 OPS against them by the end of April. Things modestly improved as the season progressed, and the team ended up with a .661 OPS and 87 wRC+ against lefties.

This year’s high-profile right-handed hitting additions of Alonso and Ward, plus the combination of Westburg, Mountcastle, Coby Mayo and a revived Adley Rutschman gave similar expectations. It’s been better but still not great; this year’s club has a .687 OPS and a 94 wRC+ against lefties. Ward has a 1.016 OPS off lefties and some platoon replacements like Sam Huff, Jeremiah Jackson and Weston Wilson have enjoyed success off lefties.

But O’Neill, Alonso and Blaze Alexander have struggled against them. If there’s a bright spot, it’s that Beavers, Henderson and Samuel Basallo — all lefties — are hitting same-side pitching well. It’ll be interesting to see, if this continues, whether the Orioles end up with a more static lineup to keep their best hitters in more often, regardless of the opposing starter.

Situational hitting has been a challenge, too

In 120 plate appearances with two outs and runners in scoring position, the Orioles have struggled to push runs across; they have a .194 average and a .590 OPS in such situations, but to break it down more simply, they’ve made outs in 85 of those (29.2% success rate), with 34 strikeouts. By comparison, the league-average success rate is 33.3%.

I think there’s probably some noise here, even if it’s impacting the team’s results on the field in a way that they can’t go back and undo. Part of that is who is responsible. Of those inning-enders, they’re happening in parts of the batting order where you wouldn’t expect it. Alonso is tied for the league-lead with 16 inning-ending outs with a runner in scoring position, with Henderson at 10 and Basallo with 8. Those three are probably the team’s most feared run producers. Alonso has produced throughout his career in these situations. It’s good news the Orioles are presenting him with these opportunities, and it’ll go a long way if he does something with them.