The Orioles need a different version of Taylor Ward

Taylor Ward has been a positive addition to the Baltimore Orioles this season, and when you look at what Grayson Rodriguez has been up to since the Orioles traded him, it seems like the Orioles were wise to make that trade this past offseason. However, the shape of Ward's offensive contribution has not been what the Orioles expected. It's hard to be upset about a .400 OBP, but when you come into a season expecting 30+ homers from a guy and halfway through the year he's on pace for less than 10, that's disappointing even if a metric like wRC+ is trying to tell you that he's been a better offensive player this year than last year when he hit 36 bombs.

When Ward was leading the league in doubles, the lack of home runs wasn't really an issue, but the doubles power has since subsided, and now all Ward is really left with are walks and singles. Since April 24th, Ward has six total extra-base hits over a span of 48 games. His OPS during that stretch is .705. Even with such a high OBP, the lack of slug, along with poor defense and base running, makes Ward a kind of one-dimensional player.

Taylor Wards lack of power is becoming an issue for the Orioles

To Ward's credit that one dimension is valuable especially on an Orioles team where so many of their regular starters have on base percentages below .300. If you took Ward's name out of the equation and just told Orioles fans this past offseason that the Orioles were going to trade for a leadoff hitter with a .400 OBP but he's not going to hit for much power, everyone would have been on board with that.

However, in reality, you can't take Ward's name out of the equation, and Ward's name comes with expectations. In 2025, he hit 36 homers and totaled 69 extra-base hits. That is the player that the Orioles traded for. If Ward continues at the rate he's been hitting since mid-April, when the doubles stopped, he's going to finish the season with fewer than 30 total extra base hits, and by the end of the year, his OPS will be in the low .700s. If the Orioles had somehow been able to see the future and seen that version of Taylor Ward, it's possible they wouldn't have targeted him in that trade.

The good news is that the reason that watching this version of Ward is frustrating is the same reason there should be optimism that he can be a more impactful version of himself the rest of the season: he's done it before, and he just has to decide to do it again.

Ward is not walking this much by accident. His swing rate is historically low. Somewhere between last year, when he was a power hitter, and this year, when he's an on-base machine, Ward decided he just wasn't going to swing nearly as much. The on-base results have followed, so there is clearly something to this plan, but in order to consistently work counts and draw walks, Ward has taken a fair amount of meatballs right down the heart of the plate simply because he wasn't in swing mode.

If Ward went up to the plate thinking about doing damage instead of thinking about walking, he'd be looking for those meatballs, and he would turn a fair number of them into extra base hits. He might swing and miss at a couple or roll over a few of them for easy outs, and he'd walk a lot less, so his OBP would steadily decline, but his overall offensive contribution would be more impactful.

This isn't to say that Ward should abandon his good plate discipline altogether and start swinging at everything, but if he could find a happy medium between being ultra passive and overly aggressive, there is a better player to be had than what the Orioles are getting right now.

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