{"id":229333,"date":"2025-10-16T15:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T15:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/229333\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T15:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T15:38:11","slug":"jon-meoli-what-can-the-orioles-expect-from-gunnar-henderson-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/229333\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Meoli: What can the Orioles expect from Gunnar Henderson in 2026?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orioles\u2019 young core.<\/p>\n

As ubiquitous as that phrase has been, it\u2019s growing outdated. Yes, the players pile into spring training houses together<\/a>, are close friends off the field and are all products of a miserable rebuild that yielded all the high draft picks that produced them.<\/p>\n

But, to fairly assess the Orioles as a team after a massively disappointing season is to assess them individually. They\u2019re all at different stages of their careers. They have reached different highs and fallen to different lows as major leaguers. There\u2019s a lot more nuance than putting a blanket over them all can deliver. <\/p>\n

As the offseason progresses, I\u2019m going to try to assess each with that nuance in mind to see if that impacts my overall view of the player and the team he\u2019s a big part of. We\u2019ll start with perhaps the most fascinating of all, shortstop Gunnar Henderson. <\/p>\n

2025 in review\"Baltimore<\/p>\n

Shortstop Gunnar Henderson, who will turn 25 next season, was drafted in the second round in 2019. (Florence Shen\/The Banner)<\/p>\n

It says plenty about Henderson that, in what was considered a down year for him, he was still really good. Henderson was worth 4.8 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs, and hit .274 with a .787 OPS and 17 home runs in 154 games. <\/p>\n

That pales in comparison to his 2024 season, but considering Henderson missed part of spring training and the first week of the season<\/a> with a rib injury and started slowly once he was back, it\u2019s not far off those marks. <\/p>\n

He had a .681 OPS on May 1, then had an .806 OPS and 126 wRC+ from May 1 on \u2014and that\u2019s including a slow September. Throughout, the power just wasn\u2019t there. His slugging percentage of .438 for the season was far below last year\u2019s .529, and even if the gulf of his expected slugging from year to year was less wide, we\u2019re still talking about drastically less power than expected. <\/p>\n

What did we learn?\"Baltimore<\/p>\n

An injury cost Henderson valuable time during spring training in 2025. (Ulysses Mu\u00f1oz\/The Banner)<\/p>\n

Spring training matters, for starters. It didn\u2019t help that Henderson faced an outsize proportion of lefties (and All-Star-caliber ones at that) once he returned, either. But, if we are going to take anything away from Henderson\u2019s season, it\u2019s that he\u2019s a young player who\u2019s still getting better. <\/p>\n

You could see that at shortstop, where he went from 25 errors to eight while solidifying his ability to make the plays he\u2019s supposed to make and continuing to execute the hard ones as well. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a lot of credit to be given for him being a constant source of effort and passion for this team. You could see how frustrated he was with himself when things weren\u2019t going well, but he grinded until the end in this lost season, and that tells you a lot about him as a player and a person. And that\u2019s encouraging, because the talent is not in question.<\/p>\n

What about before that?\"Baltimore<\/p>\n

Gunnar Henderson watches from the dugout in the seventh inning of a game against the Toronto Blue Jays on July 30. (Ulysses Mu\u00f1oz\/The Banner)<\/p>\n

We only need to look at his 2024 season \u2014 when Henderson had an .893 OPS and 37 home runs with a 7.9 fWAR \u2014 to know what kind of player he can be. Similarly, he had plenty of pop in his first full season in 2023, hitting 28 home runs despite having just five by the end of May. <\/p>\n

For that reason, plus his athleticism, defense at a premium position and ability to get on base, Henderson entered this year considered one of the top young players in the game and comfortably on a list of players you could expect to win an MVP award at some point. <\/p>\n

Best case\/worst case for 2026\"Baltimore<\/p>\n

Henderson hit 17 home runs in 2025 after a combined 65 in his first two full seasons. (Ulysses Mu\u00f1oz\/The Banner)<\/p>\n

The above still feels true, especially considering the only thing that really held him back on that front was the power production. <\/p>\n

By and large, his exit speeds held in 2025. His hard-hit rate was 49.2%, down from 53.9% in 2024 and 52% in 2023. He hit ground balls slightly more often than in 2024 but not at a rate that would suggest this kind of dip in production. <\/p>\n

It all speaks to the kind of swing complication that\u2019s hard to fix over the course of a long season and can be addressed in the offseason. I\u2019d bet on Henderson being much closer to his 2024 home run total than this year\u2019s in 2026, and adding that to the player he showed he could be this year puts him back into MVP contention.<\/p>\n

The downside would be that Henderson overcorrects and his pursuit of regaining that power doesn\u2019t work or comes at the expense of the other things he does well. If this is too power focused for your liking, I\u2019ll just point out that players earn the biggest raises in arbitration and eventually get paid in free agency by slugging. <\/p>\n

Henderson will want to be better for his own sake, and for the team\u2019s, but to overindex toward power could take away from his overall offensive package. If that happens, the worst-case scenario going forward is that he vacillates between offensive extremes and never finds that sweet spot he showed in 2024.<\/p>\n

What can you count on going forward?\"\"<\/p>\n

Henderson stole 30 bases this season after combining for 31 steals the previous two years. (Ezra Shaw\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Remember how Henderson had a rough start to 2023<\/a>? Well, he obviously recovered that year and, until this season, didn\u2019t look back. But, as bad as we remember April 2023 was for him, both April and September this season were worse, by wRC+. <\/p>\n

All that is to say that we have probably seen Henderson at his worst, and it was still pretty good. That makes me think this year is about the floor that can be expected of a healthy Henderson. <\/p>\n

Development isn\u2019t linear; that\u2019s something we heard plenty this year and we hear all the time. At age 24, Henderson isn\u2019t close to his prime. He may not get better immediately, or every year, but he\u2019s going to keep improving. I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll do anything but ascend. And that kind of star power returning is going to be a fine starting point for the Orioles\u2019 return to contention. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orioles\u2019 young core. As ubiquitous as that phrase has been, it\u2019s growing outdated. Yes, the players pile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,363,48262,9895,99],"class_list":["post-229333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-orioles","tag-rangers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}