Ryan O’Hearn Left Kansas City, Learned To Hit in Baltimore

Ryan O’Hearn has been the best hitter on an underachieving Baltimore Orioles team so far this season. Moreover, he’s been one of the best hitters in the game. The 31-year-old first baseman/outfielder boasts a 185 wRC+, a mark currently topped by only Aaron Judge, and Freddie Freeman. Over 180 plate appearances, O’Hearn has left the yard nine times while slashing .340/.428/.558.

He began to bash after leaving Kansas City, where he posted a .683 OPS over parts of five nondescript seasons with the Royals. He was designated for assignment and subsequently dealt to the Orioles in exchange for cash consideration in January 2023. Baltimore then dodged a bullet. The O’s also DFA’d him, only to see him go unclaimed, allowing them to assign him to their Triple-A roster. Called up to the majors two weeks into the 2023 campaign, O’Hearn proceeded to do what he hadn’t done with his old team: square up baseballs on a consistent basis.

Since the start of the 2023 season, the left-handed-hitting O’Hearn has the highest batting average (.286) and on-base percentage (.346), and the second-highest wRC+ (130) among Orioles who have come to the plate at least 250 times. Playing primarily against opposite-handed hurlers, O’Hearn has logged 1,042 plate appearances over that span.

How did he go from the waiver wire to laying waste to big league pitching?

“I think it’s just been an evolution of hitting,” O’Hearn told me over the weekend. “It’s been taking something from every hitting coach I’ve had over the years, learning something different from all of them. When I got here in 2023, the three hitting coaches — Cody Asche, Matt Borgschulte, and Ryan Fuller — had a plan for me. They showed me something I was doing wrong. It was focused around my posture. I would land hunched over, and that was one of the things we worked on.

“Dan Hennigan — he was the director of hitting for the Houston Astros — has also helped me understand a lot of things,” added O’Hearn. “I’ve worked with him every offseason for the past three years. We’ve worked on hitting breaking balls. He taught me what staying connected means. A lot of hitting coaches say, ‘Stay connected,’ but they either know what it means or they don’t explain it correctly.”

How would O’Hearn explain it?

“It’s the distance between the barrel of the bat and my back shoulder; the distance between them [should be] the same until contact,” he said to my question. “Think about that. I’m turning with the barrel of my bat and my left shoulder, and the distance remains the same until contact. Then my hands release through the ball. That’s staying connected. If the hands start to go, that’s not connected.”

Asked if staying short to the ball is part of the equation, O’Hearn responded by saying that the often-heard phrase is generic and can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. To him, getting the barrel to the ball more efficiently is simply a matter of executing what Hennigan — “The first hitting coach to explain it to me and actually have it make sense” — taught him.

The lessons learned have helped him up his contact rate. O’Hearn fanned 26.8% of the time during his Kansas City days, and that number is just 17.3% as an Oriole. Improved plate discipline has played a part. O’Hearn’s O-Swing% has declined in recent seasons, while his walk rate has gone up.

He has also gotten better versus same-handed pitchers. With his old club, O’Hearn slashed 169/.244/.257 with a 35 wRC+ over 164 left-on-left plate appearances, while with Baltimore, he has a .268/.324/.402 line and a 108 wRC+ across 106 PAs. This season especially stands out. Increasingly showing that more reps versus southpaws are merited, O’Hearn has gone 10-for-29, with just four strikeouts to go with three free passes.

Improving his results against lefties has required no secret formula. As much as anything, it has been his getting more opportunities to face them, paired with the aforementioned fine-tuning of his stroke. As for the better plate discipline, let’s just say that he’s continued to mature as a hitter.

“I’m just getting better, man,” said O’Hearn. “Trying to get better. Hitting is an endless search to be good. Nobody ever masters it. I’m sure if you asked Aaron Judge, he would tell you that there are things he wants to get better at. So yeah, just trying to get better. Trying to get a little smarter, a little wiser, as I go forward.”

On an Orioles team that has gone backward, O’Hearn continues to move in the right direction. Amid little fanfare, he is an underrated hitter having a career-best season.