PHILADELPHIA - Adley Rutschman has spent enough time around baseball to know when to stop making it the center of every conversation.
Last winter, when he crossed paths with Orioles teammates in Oregon and Texas, the talk stayed light. Golf.
Colton Cowser’s engagement party. Maybe a few Tim Robinson lines tossed around, since Rutschman is a fan.
Baseball, though, was never far away for long.
“I don’t think I needed any extra incentive,” he said. “I had plenty on my own.”
That mindset has carried him to Citizens Bank Park, where Rutschman is an All-Star for the third time in his career. This one feels different. It comes after the roughest season of his baseball life, a 2025 wrecked by injuries and poor production.
Rutschman’s 2025 line told the story: a .220 average, a .673 on-base-plus-slugging percentage and a career-low 90 games. This season has looked much more like the version the Orioles expected from the former No. 1 pick. He is hitting .253 with a .763 OPS in the first half, and the result is a trip to Philadelphia.
His first All-Star nod in 2023 still stands alone. That one came back in the Pacific Northwest, with family and friends able to make the short trip from Oregon. Even so, he said this one carries its own weight.
“But with what has happened over the past couple of years, making it here now definitely means a lot,” he said.
The turnaround started this winter, when Rutschman took a hard look at every part of his routine. He changed his nutrition, scheduled appointments to examine his blood work and paired lifting with conditioning in an effort to stay healthy. The first goal was simple: stay on the field.
He has had two brief injured list stays this year, one for ankle inflammation and another for a concussion. Outside of that, he has been there. And the biggest jump may have come on defense.
Working with Joe Singley, Baltimore’s new catching instructor, Rutschman added a right-knee down stance behind the plate. The numbers have followed. Statcast shows his blocking, framing and caught stealing marks all well above league average.
That kind of defensive growth fits the reputation he carried when the Orioles drafted him first overall out of Oregon State in 2019. Even then, some believed his glove could be ready for the majors right away.
But the big leagues always demand adjustments, and Rutschman has kept refining his setup over time. This year’s version looks like the best one yet.
“We knew the talent,” said Buck Britton, who managed Rutschman at Triple-A Norfolk and now serves as the Orioles’ third base coach. “What I think is the most impressive is everything that happened last year and the down season, how he rebounded and how he found himself again.”
To teammates and coaches, what stood out during Rutschman’s down year was how little his mood seemed to swing with the results. A bad game didn’t follow him around.
“Everybody gets frustrated, but the next day, you couldn’t tell if he went 4-for-4 with three tanks the night before or if he was 0-for-4 with four K’s,” Britton said. “He just has this ability to show up the next day like it’s a brand-new day.
I can’t. I lose sleep.
He’s like, ‘It’ll be better tomorrow.’”
Cowser sees that same looseness.
“He’s one of those guys who’s the first one to make fun of himself,” Cowser said.
That kind of humor matters when the unfamiliar shows up. Before the two oblique strains, Rutschman had never spent time on the major league injured list. Cowser said the frustration of that kind of adversity can be new, but also useful.
“I think he was having fun last year, I just think there were certain things happening in his career that were new, and any time you face adversity, you find yourself more so frustrated a lot of the time,” Cowser said. “Spending time on the IL last year myself, it can be frustrating.
But I think this year he’s learned from it, especially when he had that earlier little stint, he was still bringing a lot of energy and having fun. So he’s having a lot of fun this year.”
That energy shows up everywhere. In the dugout, Rutschman has an elaborate handshake routine with Pete Alonso, the Orioles’ major free agent addition.
With Samuel Basallo, his catching partner, the celebrations include chest bumps after homers and more. Together, they’ve become one of the better catching tandems in the majors.
Rutschman, now 28, also opened up about the mental side of getting here. He said imposter syndrome followed him at every level.
“You build up things so much in your mind when you’re in the minor leagues that Double-A is going to be so much harder than High-A,” he said. “When I got to the big leagues, I built it up so much in my mind that I almost thought I couldn’t compete at that level because of how hard people made it sound.”
If he could speak to his younger self, he said he would tell him to trust his ability, trust that his best is enough and trust that he reached this point on merit.
When asked whether having already made it as a two-time All-Star made last year easier to handle, Rutschman said it was actually the other way around. The proof was there, yes. But that made the slump sting more.
“The fact you aren’t performing up to your own expectations, I think, is the toughest part,” Rutschman said. “It’s tough.
You’ve got to live with it, and things happen, and that’s the goal, to play up to your potential. That’s all you ever want to do.”
Now he is doing it again, and the reward is another All-Star Game.
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