The failures didn’t break Tyler O’Neill, but everything else seemed to try.
O’Neill joined the Orioles over the winter and couldn’t stay away from the injured list, making three trips due to neck inflammation, a left shoulder impingement and right wrist inflammation. He couldn’t get any momentum going in his first season of the three-year, $49.5 million contract signed on Dec. 10.
The opt-out clause isn’t worth mentioning anymore. O’Neill must rebuild his value, and the Orioles are counting on him being a presence in the heart of their lineup and in their clubhouse.
The 54 games played are four more than O'Neill's career low set in the pandemic 2020 season, and he finished with a .199 average, six doubles, nine home runs, 26 RBIs, a .684 OPS and a minus-0.6 bWAR.
Everything suffered, including the defense of a two-time Gold Glove winner. His minus-1.1 dWAR also was the worst of his career, and Statcast calculated his outs above average (OAA) at minus-4.
The entire team needs a reset after going from back-to-back postseason appearances to last place. O’Neill is at or near the front of the line among players.
“I think that a lot of it comes from just not being on the field,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said last week. “Tyler O’Neill is a two-time Gold Glove winner. He knows how to play the outfield. I think the intermittent time out there and just kind of where he’s been physically has dramatically affected his ability to do what Tyler has done his whole career, both on defense and at the plate.
“Tyler is a guy that this team desperately needs in 2026 to go forward and be the guy that he can be. I’m very fond of him, I think very highly of him in a lot of ways. I don’t think there is anybody who should judge Tyler on the 2025 season. I think we’ve got to give him another shot, we’ve got to give him ’26, and I think we’ve got to kind of look back on what his career has been up to this point and use that more as an evaluative tool than the unfortunate circumstances of the injury list and things that cropped up here in ‘25.”
O’Neill didn’t provide the expected number of starts but he presented evidence that he could be impactful, like the 31-homer version from 2024. He homered for the sixth Opening Day in a row to extend his record and went 4-for-4 with a double and RBI on March 31 against the Red Sox. He was hitting .316/.386/.526 on April 9 but didn’t make it through the month before suffering the neck injury.
The month of May lasted six games for O’Neill before the shoulder impingement that kept him out until July 4. And the season took one more swipe at O’Neill with his wrist injury after he homered in four consecutive games from July 25-29. He was 9-for-16 with 10 RBIs from July 24-29.
O’Neill will drag a four-game hitting streak into 2026. He needs to avoid tacking onto his 17 career stops on the IL.
“I know the player that I am,” he said in the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium. “I know the way that I can produce on a day-to-day basis. The guys around me know what I can do, how I can produce, so that’s always there. I always have confidence in myself, and even when things are not going good and it’s a grind, going 0-for-4 and things suck, you’ve just got to keep going.
“I always feel like in those deep stretches, I’m only one swing away, and that’s all it takes. It takes one barrel to find the timing again and find that click. It’s kind of how I view things, again just very confident in my skill set.”
"From what I see as an evaluator, the talent is there," said president of baseball operations/general manager Mike Elias. "I mean, the power, the swing, the way he moves in the outfield, that player is in there. He wasn't able to express the type of production that he's done in his best years this year because he wasn't available that much. That's been part of his history, and we know that.
"I think he's a tremendous roster fit for our group when he's up and running and going good, and he's a guy that can carry a lineup when he's doing that. It's really high impact, middle-of-the-order threat when he's on a roll. Just talked to him extensively. He's frustrated, too, and now that we've had him for a year, we're talking with him and trying to plan out ways to do as best as we can to keep him in tip-top form for as much as possible next year, because I do think he can really raise the ceiling of this team, and I'm optimistic about it."
Mansolino talked about the club loving veteran players multiple times this month in response to questions pertaining to leadership in the clubhouse. Robinson Chirinos and Rougned Odor didn't give the Orioles much production at the plate but they were important voices in the ears of the kids.
“It’s hard to predict what’s going to be here and what isn’t,” Mansolino said, knowing that he also fit in that category. “What we can predict is that Gunnar (Henderson) and (Jordan) Westburg and (Kyle) Bradish and likely Dean (Kremer) and all these guys, Adley (Rutschman), they’re going to be here next year, and those guys all have the makings to be great leaders and those guys have all won here in the big leagues.
“Do we invite more veteran players and more veteran leadership? Without a doubt. Do we think we also have some growing leaders and guys that can kind of take that part or that necessity and move it forward for us? Absolutely.”
Did O’Neill’s name go missing from this spontaneous listing of players? Absolutely. But it wasn’t done intentionally.
“Tyler’s got all the traits to do it,” Mansolino said. “I am very fond of Tyler and I think he’s unfortunately misunderstood because he wasn’t here enough, because he was hurt. But I think Tyler is a huge piece to this thing in a lot of ways. Obviously, both on the field with his immense potential and what he’s done here previously in his career, and then also, you know, just his natural way of kind of going about things.”
Mansolino shared a story to back his opinion.
“One of the young hitters was kind of frustrated in New York,” he said. “I walked down in the tunnel to, I guess, ‘encourage’ might be one way to say it. Maybe that might not be the best way. But Tyler kind of beat me to the punch and picked the kid up. Just kind of reminded him that he was going to be all right. And those types of moments, when you see Tyler do that, gives you a good feeling and makes you feel like, yes, he’s going to be able to do that for us here, as soon as he can keep himself on the field.”