Tyler O'Neill's Contract Is A Sunk Cost for the Orioles. It's Time To Move On

If the Orioles had a front office that had a clue, Tyler O’Neill would have never been granted a contract worth $18M, and especially not with a player option he could execute to stick around a few more years longer at the same rate.

And if they were serious about winning, they’d be working through the process of buying him out or letting the rest of the league know that they are willing to eat a vast majority of what’s left on his deal to try to get him off their roster. But Mike Elias, their baseball czar, doesn’t operate that way, so instead he thrust an automatic out into an already feast-or-famine lineup and he makes the horrible defensive outfield he constructed even worse by inserting O’Neill into right field at least a couple of times a week.

It needed to end a long time ago, and it should end before the Orioles depart for Seattle a tough road swing. But it won’t. And with Dylan Beavers making strides toward his return from the Injured List and with defensive-ace Enrique Bradfield Jr headed back to AAA after his injury rehab, O’Neill needs to be gone within the next few weeks.

It really is that bad.

He is an overly-jacked up baseball player with no flexibility who cannot move in the outfield or on the base paths. He provides nothing as a situational hitter, moving runners around. His power is sapped. He doesn’t fit as a starter or on the bench. And, most damning of all for Elias, a guy hired and overpaid explicitly to his lefties, is arguably the worst among every qualified hitter in Major League Baseball hitting southpaws since signing with Baltimore. (At the same time youngster Coby Mayo is mashing them).

And, somehow, things keep getting worse.

How Bad Is It?

There are 341 hitters with at least 300 plate appearances over the past two years. Here’s where O’Neill ranks:

.346 SLG – 300th

.289 OBP – 274th

.635 – 30tth

He is striking out 25% of the time as an Oriole and, honestly, after a tear of home runs early last season in Toronto (where the Canadian always rakes) and Fenway Park, he’s pretty much looked like a guy who knows he can’t really do it anymore in any facet of play, even as his managers and general manager have tried to gaslight their fans about his production.

But where it truly gets sad is what O’Neill has done, or, rather, hasn’t done against lefties. It’s kind of tragic, honestly.

There are 309 qualified hitters against lefties since the start of last season. Here’s where the jewel of Elias’s position play haul of the 2025 offseason ranks:

.136 BA – 309th

.224 OBP – 305th

.262 SLG – 300th

.486 OPS – 304th

33.6% K rate – 294th

You won’t get anything real for him. But this overmatched staff also isn’t going to turn him around or fix this now. We’re 1 ½ seasons in. Somebody else, maybe could tweak something to find something useful here.

But having him block a roster spot on a team that needs to look at young players doesn’t make sense and hasn’t for quite some time. Elias – now intent on trying to demand toughness from 21-year-old catchers while not being tough enough to answer questions about firing his manager last May – needs to buck up and eat the contract and move on.

And if there are truly baseball gods, the guys who employ Elias and his underlings will soon do the same thing to him.

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