Adley Rutschman is back to looking like the player Baltimore thought it had at the top of the draft, and it has come at the moment the Orioles needed it most. Through 14 games in the 2026 MLB season, taken before play April 28, the catcher is hitting.333 with a.627 slugging percentage, a 1.020 OPS and three home runs.
Rutschman has played in only half of Baltimore’s games so far because of injury, but he is still tied with Taylor Ward for the team lead in fWAR at 0.9. That is enough to show how much he has mattered to an Orioles club that has been battered by injuries and has leaned on him to help keep the team afloat in the American League East.
For a player who was the No. 1 pick in the 2019 MLB draft out of Oregon State and made his major league debut in 2022, the early 2026 numbers stand out because they look nothing like the version that scuffled in 2025. Last year, Rutschman hit.220 with a.307 on-base percentage and nine home runs in 90 games, a season that left some around the league treating him like an afterthought.
The rebound is sharper when set against the rest of his career arc. In 2022, he hit.254 with 13 home runs and an.806 OPS in 113 games and posted a 5.6 fWAR, which ranked in the top 25 across baseball. He followed with a 2023 season that ended at 5.5 fWAR and an.809 OPS.
Even that strong 2023 campaign had two very different halves. Before the All-Star break, Rutschman hit.275 with 16 home runs and a.441 slugging percentage. After the break, in 234 plate appearances, he hit.207 with three home runs, a.282 on-base percentage and a.585 OPS. The slide did not erase his value, but it did leave room for doubt about where his bat was headed next.
That is why the start to this season has landed so hard in Baltimore. The Orioles have been managing injuries to Rutschman, Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg, but they have also found production from Jeremiah Jackson and Leody Taveras. Rutschman’s early surge has given the lineup a needed spark while the roster remains in flux, and the first month suggests his 2025 season may be the outlier rather than the new normal.
For Baltimore, that matters because the club does not need Rutschman to be merely useful. It needs the version that can carry an offense for stretches and change the tone of a series. Through the first month, he has looked like that player again.
