An Adley Rutschman Rebound Should Have the League on Notice
It may be early in the season, but Adley Rutschman looks better than ever before.
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We’ve just surpassed the one-month threshold in the 2026 MLB season, and several players have already shattered expectations.
José Soriano owns the lowest ERA in baseball, Munetaka Murakami leads the league in home runs, and it took 14 outings for Mason Miller to allow his first earned run of the season.
But amid all of that, one storyline has flown under the radar: the reemergence of Adley Rutschman.
The former No. 1 pick in the 2019 draft out of Oregon State is quietly putting together his best season in quite some time.
Despite playing in only half of the Baltimore Orioles’ games so far due to injury, Rutschman is tied for the team lead in fWAR with Taylor Ward at 0.9.
The 28-year-old catcher has injected life into an injury-riddled Orioles roster and kept them afloat in the American League East.
If Rutschman keeps this up and Baltimore gets Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg back, along with continued production from breakouts like Jeremiah Jackson and Leody Taveras, this lineup has all the makings of one of the best in baseball.
But should we believe Rutschman is truly back to his All-Star form? Let’s take a closer look.
Stats were taken prior to play on April 28.
Why Adley Rutschman’s Early-Season Numbers Should Have the League on Notice
Rutschman broke into the league in 2022 with sky-high expectations, and he delivered.
In just 113 games, he hit .254 with 13 home runs and posted an .806 OPS. His 5.6 fWAR ranked in the top 25 across all of baseball, instantly establishing him as one of the sport’s most valuable players.
Around the league, many viewed Rutschman as the next great catcher of his generation, stepping into the void left by Buster Posey and Joe Mauer. That trajectory seemed to hold in 2023. Rutschman essentially mirrored his rookie production, finishing with a 5.5 fWAR and an .809 OPS.
But in 2024, things started to shift.
That season, Rutschman looked like he was on track for his best year yet. Before the All-Star break, he hit .275 with 16 home runs and a .441 slugging percentage.
The second half is where things took a turn. In 234 plate appearances after the break, Rutschman hit just .207 with three home runs, a .282 on-base percentage, and a .585 OPS.
Fans and analysts across the league struggled to explain the drop in production, but many believed 2025 would bring back the old Rutschman. Spoiler: it did not.
The two-time All-Star hit .220 with a .307 on-base percentage and nine home runs in 90 games. After that, many around the league began to view him as an afterthought.
That brings us to this season. Through 14 games, Rutschman is hitting .333 with a .627 slugging percentage and a 1.020 OPS, along with three home runs.
Now, this is a very small sample size, and Rutschman has gotten off to strong starts before. But watching him this year feels different compared to previous seasons, and the numbers support that.
Rutschman’s quality of contact has improved significantly. His hard-hit rate sits at 47.7%, the highest of his career. His average launch angle is back up to 18.1 degrees, much closer to where it was during the first half of 2024. As a result, his fly-ball rate has jumped to 65.9 percent, which is also a career high.
Rutschman has also been much more aggressive early in the count compared to past seasons. The switch-hitting catcher owns a 19.6% first-pitch swing rate.
But the biggest difference might be how he has adjusted to off-speed and breaking pitches, an area that gave him serious trouble last season. In 2024, Rutschman hit just .150 against off-speed pitches and .210 against breaking balls.
So far this season, he is hitting .429 against off-speed and .400 against breaking pitches, a strong sign that he addressed that weakness over the offseason. He’s maintained his production against fastballs while eliminated a key weakness in his game thus far, and that is a recipe for success.
There was some concern that injuries could derail his season when Baltimore placed him on the 10-day injured list with left ankle inflammation on April 11. However, Rutschman has shown no signs of slowing down.
Since returning, he has gone 7-for-17, with all three of his home runs this season coming during that stretch.
The importance of his reemergence cannot be overstated. When he is on, the team feels different, more dangerous and more hungry.
It is also worth noting that his performance comes at a time when the Orioles have Samuel Basallo in the majors, splitting time with him behind the plate.
You could interpret that in a couple of ways. Maybe Rutschman feels pushed and does not want to lose his starting job, or maybe Basallo has alleviated some of the pressure off.
Either way, it is still a small sample size, but Rutschman looks much more like the All-Star level player he once was, and that should worry the rest of the league.
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Written by
Thomas Kelson is an intern at Just Baseball and a graduating senior at Rutgers University, where he studied Journalism and Media Studies with a specialization in…