Tyler O’Neill is headed to the injured list for the first time as a Baltimore Oriole, landing on the 10-day IL with neck inflammation. Per manager Brandon Hyde: “O’Neill has been dealing with that probably since last week. … We need to get him right, need to get him fully healthy.”
This marks the 15th time the former Gold Glove winner has landed on the injured list in his career. O’Neill has only played more than 100 games in his career twice, which is not an encouraging fact for the Orioles faithful.
Going back to his days in St. Louis, O’Neill could only play in more than 100 games once, missing large portions of seasons with the Cardinals. Following his promising season in 2021, which saw him receive MVP votes and his second career Gold Glove, he would miss chunks of games in 2022, which surged the already growing concern of his availability.
His first stint came in May with a shoulder impingement. O’Neill would attempt to play through the pain, but it got worse, and he would ultimately be forced to miss games. Only about a month down the road, the outfielder would suffer a strained hamstring that kept him out for about a month.
The hamstring would get reaggravated in September, effectively ending his season before the Cardinals would go on to the postseason in 2022. The injuries would only worsen in O’Neill’s final year in St. Louis.
Orioles’ outfielder Tyler O’Neill has an extensive injury history
In 2023, O’Neill missed most of the year with a back pain that left him unable to hold his daughter. O’Neill spent more time on the IL that year with a sprained foot in September. O’Neill would end his season with the injury and would subsequently finish his Cardinals career on the injured list. He was on the IL for over two months with injury concerns, prompting the Cardinals to trade the outfielder to Boston following the season.
During his only season with the Red Sox, O’Neill landed on the injured list three times, once for a concussion after colliding with teammate Rafael Devers in April of 2024. Concussions are scary, but luckily, the frequency of them in Major League Baseball is not as high as in other sports.
Just around a month after his return, he was headed to the IL once again due to knee inflammation, which contributed to a stretch of games that the outfielder would likely want to forget (0-15 with 10 strikeouts). His stay was once again short, but his inability to stay on the field for a prolonged period of time is disconcerting to the teams that were looking to sign him.
O’Neill would go one last time to the injured list in 2024 with a calf infection. This was once again a freak accident, as O’Neill said: “I just woke up, my leg was blown up and totally unexpected, no idea how it happened.” This infection had hospitalized him for a couple of days in Kansas City before he was allowed to return to Boston. He was then resubmitted due to the infection arriving again.
O’Neill’s injury history is not a good one, but when he is on the field he has shown that he can play at the highest level — the issue being his availability, not his ability.
