Orioles can't afford to let Tyler O'Neill keep making this same mistake

Tyler O'Neill has not been a good baseball player since he joined the Baltimore Orioles. Putting aside the fact that he's been mostly hurt as an Oriole, the reason they signed him was to help with their struggles against lefties, and in his first season with the team, he was dreadful against them, slashing .157/.254/.392 and striking out in over 30% of his at-bats against them.

To a degree, these struggles can be overlooked. As mentioned, he was hurt, and hitting is hard. What isn't hard is effort. There is no such thing as an effort slump, and you can't injure your hustle bone. Out of all the players on the Orioles, O'Neill should be especially incentivized to show his efforts. He's one of the highest-paid and was arguably the worst player on the team last season. Yet, early in the season, O'Neill has already had multiple incidents where his hustle and effort were obviously lacking.

Tyler O'Neill has not been good enough for the Orioles for him to not hustle

O'Neill doesn't have to sprint to first base every time he hits a routine grounder, but having multiple plays early in the season when his manager, the fans, and his teammates can see he's not hustling is disappointing. This isn't the first time this has come up. O'Neill was benched in St. Louis for jogging the bases and getting thrown out, and did the same thing early in his Orioles tenure, which, of course, went completely ignored.

This season, O'Neill's hustle issues have manifested in pop-ups. Again, O'Neill doesn't need to try to break the record for fastest time home to third every time he hits an infield fly. But during the Orioles first game against the White Sox, he hit a fly ball down the left field line that fell fair. Adley Rutschman was off running and scored from first, but when the camera turned, it found O'Neill only on first base because he assumed it would be foul or caught and didn't run it out. If he had even lightly jogged, he would have ended up on second.

This did end up mattering as the next hitter smacked a single that would have scored O'Neill from second but not from first. The Orioles held on to win by one run, but it was close, and O'Neill's lack of hustle could have cost them the game. O'Neill's manager was asked about this play, and he covered for him a little bit but did say that they'd like to see O'Neill charge out of the box in that situation and that they said something to him.

In the very next game, O'Neill hit a Bermuda triangle pop fly that landed just outside the reach of the diving centerfielder. The ball hung up long enough in the air that, combined with how the ball kicked off the centerfielder's glove, O'Neill could have ended up on second base. However, despite being less than 24 hours removed from his manager mentioning him getting out of the box a little harder, O'Neill was not moved and lightly jogged to first and no further.

The game was close; the Orioles are fighting to get their season on track. They could have really used a runner on second.

The Orioles are a young team and a deep team, and both are relevant. Being young is relevant because O'Neill is one of the few veterans on the team, and his lackadaisical approach to base running could be contagious. What young player wants to be the try-hard running out his pop-outs when the veterans won't do it, even after the coaches say something?

The Orioles' depth matters because they don't need O'Neill. They currently have six players on the active roster who can play the corner outfield, and it's not like O'Neill's bat demands that he be in the lineup. If O'Neill is insistent that he doesn't need to play as hard as the other players on the team, then the Orioles should be willing to let one of the many players equally qualified and doubly eager to do so.