Ryan O’Hearn 2024

[Yossarian]

Maybe it's just recency bias,  but it seems O'Hearn has been on the wrong end of a lot of questionable strike calls in the last month, or so.   These have either been strike 3 calls, or calls that put him in pitcher's counts.  He has been a pro all year and was a great addition to this team.

[Tony-OH]

With all the young players coming up and the fact that O'Hearn was basically a waiver claim (purchased from the Royals), he gets overlooked by fans a bit, but what he's become is remarkably consistent. At basically the same amount of PAs (381 vs 368 last year), the lefty swinger has the exact same .801 OPS but with offense down this year, that gives him a 131 OP+ vs a 122 in last year.

Now his power is down a little from last year, but his walks are up and his strike outs are down, so it appears he's trying to work getting on base more than power.

And while he hasn't played a lot in RF, he's actually been pretty good out there with a 2 OAA, both on balls coming in and has a 3-star catch going back to his left. The worse balls that he did catch were two 4-star catches at 45% and 50% catch probability. Basically he catches everything that he should. Now his -3.5 ft/sec jump and 29.7 ft/sec is nothing to write home about which tells us if he did play out there more regularly I'd imagine that OAA would go down. His arm is a weak out there and he hasn't thrown anyone out, but runners are taking bases on him liberally.

Now he's not a very good defensive 1st baseman though he won't kill the team out there. 

Overall though, when you look at his statcast leaderboard, he's having another solid season.

[Frobby]

Yep, I had concerns O’Hearn would turn into a pumpkin this year, and that definitely didn’t happen. I’m always happy to see him at the plate in a key situation.  

[sportsfan8703]

.647 OPS in August. 

We’ve been getting nothing from 1B/DH, and Adley, this month.