Tyler O'Neill joins Orioles on 3-year, $49.5 million deal after resurgent season, per report

Tyler O'Neill is staying in the American League East.

The former Boston Red Sox outfielder has agreed to a three-year, $49.5 million deal, according to the New York Post's Jon Heyman. The deal reportedly includes an opt-out after the first season.

The deal rewards a resurgent season for the former St. Louis Cardinals standout, who had a career year in 2021 but struggled to replicate that form until last year. In 2021, O'Neill finished eighth in MVP voting and won a Gold Glove while hitting .286/.352/.560 with 34 home runs. He hit only .229/.310/.397 in the next two seasons, leading to a change-of-scenery trade to Boston.

O'Neill didn't quite reproduce his 2021 numbers, but he made a good enough impression to land a multi-year deal in free agency. His playing style is still characterized by high risk, high reward at the plate. His peripherals are some of the worst of any MLB regulars when it comes to strikeouts and whiffs, but he makes hard contact any time he touches the ball and can draw a walk.

All of that makes O'Neill a natural replacement for Anthony Santander, a hitter with a similar profile who won a Silver Slugger in right field for the Orioles. Santander remains a free agent and is almost certainly not coming back now.

Baltimore also still has more on its to-do list after a somewhat disappointing 91-win season. Its 2024 ace, Corbin Burnes, remains a free agent, and the team is looking to either re-sign or replace him atop the rotation. Neither option will be cheap, but it won't be as expensive as what the Red Sox are trying to do at corner outfield with O'Neill on the way out.

What to make of O'Neill's deal?

With Anthony Santander and his massive, switch-hitting power reaching free agency — and a reunion in Baltimore appearing unlikely — the Orioles had a spot in their outfield to fill and a whole bunch of homers to replace. O’Neill represents a logical solution as one of the few available free-agent bats with 30-plus HR upside that wasn’t going to cost nine figures, let alone what Santander or another higher-profile free-agent outfielder in Teoscar Hernandez could command.

O’Neill is a mercurial player, one who looks like an absolute force of nature when he’s locked in but downright lost at the plate when he’s scuffling. Baltimore is buying that the best version of O’Neill can come close to replicating Santander’s production, and the right-handed slugger should benefit from the team’s decision to bring the left-field wall in from its notoriously deep distance over the past three seasons.

O’Neill will join Colton Cowser and Cedric Mullins to form Baltimore’s primary outfield. This puts young lefty bat Heston Kjerstad in an interesting position, with little left to prove in Triple-A but no obvious path to every-day at-bats as things stand. Perhaps there is room to rotate Kjerstad in against certain right-handers over O’Neill, but this seems like a heavy price to pay for O'Neill to merely be a platoon player.

Still, too many good hitters is a good problem to have, if that’s the situation in which the Orioles put themselves, and Kjerstad is still relatively unproven. On the whole, this is a sensible, medium-sized move for Baltimore to address an obvious hole in the lineup, but the pitching staff remains the most glaring concern on the roster and must be addressed externally in some form. Moves for help on the mound will go a lot further in determining how successful this offseason is for GM Mike Elias and Co. — Shusterman