One Unexpected Orioles Trade Could Change Everything at the Deadline

The Orioles broken player development apparatus outdid themselves by shattering Gunnar Henderson for a full year after breaking Adley Rutschman for over two years running. It’s really quite an accomplishment.

It also begs the question - if delusional owner David Rubenstein is really a Mike Elias superfan and is buying Elias’s fan-fiction about “unlucky” injuries being the biggest problem with this team and not their horrible construction, then Birdland might be stuck with this feckless mook ruining careers and continuing to watch all his top prospects regress at the MLB level.

And if a player as talented as Henderson could be headed to August with an OPS below .700, and with nothing happening on the base paths despite 40/40 potential and with him a mess at shortstop – and if there is no chance he is signing a buy-low extension with Scott Boras as his agent – then dealing Henderson with two years of control beyond this one would indeed change everything at the deadline.

For the Orioles and whomever landed him. And there would be ample suitors.

The Case For Dealing Gunnar

You could tell me has to get better here, and plenty of people have come on “The Daily Flock Show” and said they expected as much, but seeing Rutschman become a shell of himself since late June of 2024 and seeing how multiple staffs here couldn’t reach him or help him, there seems to be internal rot and interpersonal disconnections and this is bigger than just baseball. And whatever Henderson is experiencing here went well beyond a mere “slump” or “funk” a long time ago.

Henderson entered the Detroit series on Monday having played 157 games since Aug. 1 of last year (a span of 703 plate appearances) with just 23 homers and 70 RBIs and a scary slash of: .230/.306/.398 - .704 OPS. Gulp. The on base is brutal, he is pulling the ball 42% of the time and has a wRC+ of just 97 (100 is average) in that span.

The longer we get removed from him being an MVP candidate and the deeper we get into this iteration of Henderson – frustrated, making low IQ decisions in the field and on base, prone to extended periods of time without power – the less he will fetch. The rest of the industry knows they aren’t going to be able sign him, either, if they trade for him and he gets back to being the guy from 2023.

He’s probably better at third than short, and with three playoffs of control there is more than sufficient time to facilitate a switch if need be. And the return for him could be quite rich.

Look at how the Nationals reset their entire org with the Juan Soto trade. Now no one who cares about the Oriole would want Elias or anyone in The Warehouse involved in making this trade, but could you also trust him not to totally break Gunnar and get less for him at next year’s deadline or whenever he does depart?

If you believe this core will never gel and that these overly-coddled and over-hyped Orioles prospects bring out the worst in each other and this baseball culture needs to be torn up and rebooted, getting an absolute boatload of emerging talent for Elias’s first two picks, Henderson and Rutschman, with a commitment to increase the payroll massively in 2027 to fold in multiple established everyday players and a closer and a starter, well, perhaps you could sell that.

The Case Against Trading Henderson

Well, at one point he looked like a top 10 talent in this entire sport. He seemed can’t miss and on an historic arc of ascent and the kind of unflappable competitor who would come through in the clutch. Like he would be more than up for all the big games and the mundane ones, too.

You would certainly think that’s still in him. But, again, do you trust these people, if still in charge in 2027, to pull it out of him?

The dark reality is that the vast majority of prospects who will be dealt at this deadline will end up being marginal major leaguers at best. And Elias would almost certainly botch the return for Henderson. And a change of scenery to an organization that knows what it’s doing at the MLB level prepping players and helping them make adjustments might make Henderson a superstar again.

And that’s a scary proposition.

Regardless, with this team in such a two-year nosedive, everything needs to be on the table, and no one should be untouchable and everyone has a price. Wayne Gretzky got traded in his prime. Stuff happens in the big leagues.

If Elias is here, I am 10000% convinced they will never win anything remotely significant during their remaining two years of control with Henderson. And that would probably hold for whatever package they got back for him. But watching another year of this with Henderson here would probably be most heartbreaking of all scenarios.

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