Orioles' single more important player looks like he's turning a corner

Coming into the 2026 season, there were aspects of this Baltimore Orioles team that people were skeptical of. Obviously, the rotation and the bullpen were subject to plenty of scrutiny, but even more specifically on a player-by-player basis, people really didn't know what to expect from guys like Adley Rutschman, Colton Cowser, Jackson Holliday, and so on. There was one player, though, that everyone felt comfortable banking on for superstar production, and that was Gunnar Henderson.

Across the three seasons leading into 2026, his age 22-24 seasons, Henderson put up 20.2 WAR, slashed .271/.347/.487, hit 82 homers, 94 doubles, 21 triples, stole 61 bases, and averaged 155 games per season. That is elite production for a player of that age, and with him still yet to turn 25, he's at an age where he could potentially get even better. At the very least, there was no reason to believe he was about to experience a massive decline in production.

Which is why it was so shocking to look at Henderson's stats a quarter of the way through this MLB season and see that he was slashing .197/.253/.393 with 57 strikeouts to just 13 walks. Or maybe not that shocking because if you watched most of the Orioles game this season, Henderson has looked even worse than what those numbers reflect.

Gunnar Henderson can change the Orioles season by just being his usual self

With so many players on the 2026 Orioles playing so terribly, it's hard to point the finger at Henderson and hold him responsible for where the Orioles sit in the standings. Even with his poor play, Henderson's OPS has hovered around .700 for most of the season, and he's still been a positive player by WAR. On a given day, half the hitters in the Orioles lineup have an OPS below .600, and the Orioles have had 19 players on their roster this season who have contributed negative WAR. So compared to many of the players on the team, Henderson's struggles really aren't that bad.

However, being a superstar means you don't get compared to most of the players on your team. You get compared to yourself and to other superstars. Compared to his own standard and the standard set by his contemporary superstars, Henderson's performance this season has been the biggest disappointment out of anyone on the team, and he is more responsible for the Orioles being where they are in the standings than any other single player on the roster. That may sound harsh, but with great ability to hit the baseball comes great responsibility to hit the baseball.

The good news is that the same way that Henderson playing poorly hurts the Orioles more than anyone else, if Henderson plays up to his superstar potential, he more than anyone else has the ability to lift the Orioles out of the hole that they've dug themselves.

The best news yet is that in the last week, Henderson has returned to form, just in time for an Orioles homestand that could decide whether or not they will be sellers at this upcoming deadline.

Over the last seven games, Henderson is slashing .419/.438/.613. He keeps that up for another week, and he'll be almost back to his career averages. The biggest change he's made in this stretch has been that he has upped his aggressiveness at the plate.

That is a little surprising because typically when you think about a player striking out too much, you'd think that aggression would be the problem, but for Henderson, it was actually that he was being too passive and allowing pitchers to get ahead of him in the count, and once he was in two-strike counts, he was just getting whiped out by back-foot breaking balls. So now Henderson is swinging early and often and doing damage before he can be put in a compromising situation at the plate.

This does go a little against the player Henderson would like to be, as he's always been someone who has worked counts and drawn walks, so switching over to a swing-happy approach was likely at least a little difficult. Henderson does not have to play this way all season, though, if he does enough damage on first and second pitch strikes, pitchers will be wary to go in the zone early in the count, and he can go back to angrily chucking his bat after drawing walks.

Henderson can't save the Orioles season by himself, but if he plays like the MVP candidate he's shown he can be for the rest of the season and a few more guys pitch in here or there, he can lead the charge back into the playoff picture.

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