After a very uneventful start to the offseason, Mike Elias & Co got busy on a Saturday evening, making phones all over Birdland buzz with the notifications that the team had signed both free agent outfielder Tyler O’Neill and free agent catcher Gary Sanchez.
Both players are pretty familiar to O’s fans, having spent time in the American League East – O’Neill, 29, was with the Boston Red Sox last year, and Sanchez, 32, spent six years terrorizing us in pinstripes.
Let’s talk about O’Neill first. He spent his first six years in St. Louis, where his best campaign was in 2021, a year in which he hit .286/.352/.560 with 34 HR, good for a 5.3 fWAR.
It’s a three-year, $49.5M deal, but it has a player opt-out after the first season. So, if he’s as productive as we hope he’ll be, he may test the free agent market against next winter. For now, we’re getting a player who mashes lefties; O’Neill has a career .270/.376/.547 line (152 wRC+) against southpaws, with 32 homers in 437 AB. Last season for the Sawx, he was even better than his career numbers, at .313/.429/.750 with 16 HR in 128 AB, good for a 215 wRC+.
Against righties, he’s much more pedestrian: a career .239/.305/.446 line (104 wRC+) and 77 HR in 1438 AB.
Strikes out a lot (33%), walks a lot (11%), hits dingers, has huge arms. Think a right-handed Chris Davis, pre-collapse.
Oriole Park at Camden Yards being in its post-Walltimore era certainly helped in enticing O’Neill to bring his biceps to Baltimore. It’s not hard to envision a pretty strict platoon of Heston Kjerstad and O’Neill in right field, with the latter doing plenty of damage in a part-time role. That sort of role seems to suit O’Neill well not just because of his platoon splits, but because the guy is made of glass.
You thought Austin Hays got hurt a lot.
Tyler O’Neill has been placed on the IL 14 (!) times in 7 seasons. He had 3 IL stints in 2024.
Here are the body parts he’s injured:
Groin 3x
Left hamstring 2x
Left leg
Right knee
Head (concussion)
Right foot
Lower back
Right shoulder
Left middle finger
Left wrist
Right elbow— Jacob Calvin Meyer (@jcalvinmeyer) December 8, 2024
This signing also pretty much formalizes what we’d already mostly made peace with: that Anthony Santander is as good as gone.
Thanks for all the Taters, Tony.
Now, to the new backup catcher. Sanchez for one year at $8.5M seems like an overpay. His defense is poor, he doesn’t really hit all that well anymore, and I’m not quite sure what he does better than James McCann at this point.
Here’s Sanchez:
And McCann:
You’d think the team would want a defensive upgrade in their backup catcher position, especially with Adley Rutschman‘s evolving struggles back there, but what do I know?
Here’s Adley, btw:
Sanchez’s bat isn’t what it once was (he mashed as a youngster in New York, hitting 30+ homers twice, in 2017 and 2019), and is actually eerily similar to McCann’s: .220/.307/.392 with 11 HR in 280 PA last season (96 wRC+), compared to James’ .234/.279/.388 and 8 HR in 233 PA (89 wRC+).
However, there could still be more upside there, as Sanchez posted a 110 wRC+ as recently as 2023, when he was with the Mets & Padres.
It’s the backup catcher, who cares if they paid him a little extra? Maybe that’s what it took to only need to pay him for a single season, as the Birds can’t block Samuel Basallo for any longer than that.
MLB’s Winter Meetings are about to get started, and David Rubenstein already has his checkbook open. Let’s see what else Elias has in store.
(Pitchers, Mike. Good, expensive pitchers, please and thank you.)
