Is It Time for Baltimore Orioles to Hit Panic Button On Adley Rutschman?

Even though the Baltimore Orioles are on quite the roll right now, there is still a lot of ground to make up.

A strong recent stretch has given the franchise some hope once again that they might be able to salvage the season. The Orioles started as one of the worst teams in baseball, but have started to play better thanks to a nice winning streak.

However, they did dig themselves into quite a hole, and it is going to take time to get back to the .500 mark. Fortunately, June has just started, and the team has a couple of months before the trade deadline to prove what they are.

Coming into the year, expectations were once again high for the franchise, but they will have a lot of work to do to reach that.

One of the main reasons for the struggles has been that one of their stars simply hasn’t been producing going back to last year.

What’s Wrong With Adley?

Tim Kelly of Bleacher Report recently wrote about the struggles of Orioles star catcher Adley Rutschman being a big problem for the franchise.

“What's happened to Adley Rutschman? He's hitting just .214 with a .646 OPS, which follows up a second half that saw him hit .207 with a .585 OPS in 2024.”

It wasn’t too long ago that Rutschman was considered one of the best catchers in baseball. However, there has been some noticeable regression for about a year now.

Going back to the second half of the 2024 campaign, the All-Star catcher of Baltimore hasn’t been the same player. The power numbers are way down, and these struggles are starting to hit for almost a year now.

While slumps happen, sometimes for half of a season in some cases, this feels like a lot more than that.

The Orioles rely on Rutschman to be a significant contributor in their lineup, and his struggles cost them in 2024 and have done the same in 2025.

Unfortunately, there haven’t been too many signs that he is going to be breaking out of it anytime soon.

While Baltimore is playing better, they do need their star catcher to start producing like in years past if they are going to be a contender as they desire.

With the struggles lasting for almost a full season now, the organization should be highly concerned about the situation with a player they thought was a building block for the franchise.