‘That’s the kind of player to build a team around’: How Gunnar Henderson became an early AL MVP candidate
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Jorge Castillo, ESPN Staff Writer
BALTIMORE — Clarke Schmidt made only one mistake Monday, and it wasn’t a bad pitch. The New York Yankees starter thought Gunnar Henderson looked awkward fouling off two straight knuckle-curves, so he threw the Baltimore Orioles leadoff hitter a third one. It was sharper than the previous two — not exactly where he wanted it, but close.
With Schmidt’s stuff, particularly crisp on this balmy night, close is usually good enough. Not against Henderson.
Henderson crushed the baseball 112.3 mph, 410 feet over the tall right-field wall at Camden Yards for a leadoff home run. The laser gave the Orioles a lead they wouldn’t fumble in their series opener against the rival Yankees, and it made history: The 22-year-old shortstop became the youngest player in Major League Baseball history with 10 home runs before the start of May.
“That’s the kind of player,” Schmidt said, “to build a team around.”
For several years, baseball talk in Baltimore was about the future. The farm system represented hope while the big league club floundered with rosters designed to lose. The Orioles endured three seasons with at least 108 losses. They went six consecutive years without a postseason berth.
Then last season, results finally flipped. They won 101 games and their first division title since 2014.
Henderson was in the thick of the turnaround, starring for the resurgent franchise en route to winning American League Rookie of the Year. The mustached, mulleted dynamo mirrors the Orioles’ trajectory over the past half-decade — from promising rebuild to ready for prime time to finally, perhaps, a perennial force.
“I want to ultimately be one of the best players to play the game,” Henderson said. “I feel like that’s how I’ve carried myself.”
Now the everyday shortstop — he split time primarily between shortstop and third base as a rookie — Henderson is garnering MVP buzz as the Orioles settle into their unfamiliar status as AL East favorites. They passed their first stiff test of the season this week, taking three of four games from the Yankees, their main competition in the AL East so far, in a series that featured an electricity at Camden Yards rarely generated this early in a season.
Henderson began the series with some thump, but pitching dominated the four-game set. The Orioles, whose bullpen limped into the series after blowing two games to the Oakland Athletics, held the Yankees to just six runs over the four days. Luis Gil carried the Yankees to their lone win, tossing a career-high 6⅓ innings in a 2-0 victory Wednesday. Other than that, the Orioles rolled.
“It’s still early,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde cautioned after the Orioles’ series-closing 7-2 win Thursday.
It was the O’s 16th straight series win against an AL East foe, a date that stretches back more than a year. It’s why this year, even coming off a disappointing Division Series sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers last fall, expectations are different in Baltimore.
The Orioles were among the preseason favorites to win the World Series. They’re first in their division, with the best record in the American League. The O’s lead the majors in home runs — by seven — and rank second in runs. The pitching staff this week received reinforcements when starters Kyle Bradish and John Means were activated from the injured list. Bradish, fourth in AL Cy Young voting in 2023, made his season debut Thursday, holding the Yankees to one run over 4⅔ innings.
There are still players to develop and prospects to incorporate at the major league level. But after years building to this point, to annual contention, they have a chance to bring the franchise’s first championship to Baltimore since 1983.
“The future is now,” Orioles reliever Danny Coulombe said. “We’re in our window already.”
Adley Rutschman, who joined the big league club in 2022, is now one of the sport’s premier catchers. Jordan Westburg and Colton Cowser — both under 26 — have excelled. The lineup is so deep that Heston Kjerstad, a top-100 prospect, has mostly been stuck on the bench since mashing his way to a promotion on April 23. Then there’s Jackson Holliday, the consensus No. 1 prospect in the sport, back in Triple-A — for now — after a rough big league introduction.
Coulombe, at 34 the third-oldest member of the Orioles, recalled looking around during spring training and marveling at the nameplates above the lockers.
“I remember being like, ‘There is so much talent in this organization,'” Coulombe said. “It’s a lot. Gunnar, obviously, is probably the best one. It’s hard to deny that.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers drafted Coulombe, a left-hander, in the 25th round in 2012. The Dodgers’ first-round pick that year was a high school shortstop named Corey Seager. Henderson, Coulombe said, reminds him of Seager — but with speed. A big, left-handed hitter. The drive, the preparation. The way the game looks so easy to him.
Henderson’s other teammates see it too.
“He always wants to improve and that’s what separates one ballplayer from another — a star from a regular player,” Orioles veteran infielder Jorge Mateo said in Spanish. “To me, he’s a star already. And I know he’s going to keep improving.”
Henderson’s rise wasn’t linear. A year ago, he was scuffling in his first extended stint as a major leaguer. He slashed .201/.332/.370 over the season’s first two months, then the 2019 second-round draft pick turned it around in June. Henderson finished the season batting .255 with 28 home runs and an .814 OPS.
“It’s like, got to go up there and you got to trick yourself into having that self-confidence because you just go through it every single day and it really beats you down mentally,” Henderson said. “It’s definitely tough.”
There’s been no slow start to overcome this year. On Friday, Henderson — who slashed .291/.356/.624 in March/April — was named American League Player of the Month.
“I don’t know what tool he doesn’t have,” Hyde said. “He’s doing a little bit of everything, and he’s got the physical ability and the mental ability to be as good as there can be.”
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Ryan S. Clark
Many of Mikko Rantanen’s greatest moments have come in a Colorado Avalanche sweater. It’s just that the most defining moment of his career came at their expense.
It wasn’t enough that the Dallas Stars were trailing by two goals. It was also the fact that Rantanen scored a hat trick in a string of four unanswered goals that saw his current team, the host Stars, eliminate his old team, the Avalanche, in a 4-2 win Saturday in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals at the American Airlines Center.
“Obviously, the feeling was incredible to win a series,” Rantanen said in his postgame media availability. “This series was not exactly what I expected. I expected a seven-game series, even before Game 1. The ups and downs in the series. … Belief was there with the group the whole time. Obviously, I was able to make a pay to get the first one and the crowd started to roll.”
The Stars, attempting to reach the conference finals a third straight time, will advance to the semifinal round in which they will await the winner of series featuring the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets. That encounter will be decided Sunday in Game 7 in Winnipeg.
Soon, the Stars’ collective focus will shift to another Central Division foe. But for now? The attention before, during, and after the game, was on Rantanen.
Part of what made the Avalanche-Stars series arguably the most intriguing first-round series in either conference was the fact it placed two 100-point teams that are in championship window against each other. But, it also came with several subplots with the notable being the team that traded quite a bit to land Rantanen — with the hope he could win them a Stanley Cup now — needed him to defeat the team that he won a championship with back in 2022.
With one assist through the first four games, there was a discussion about if the Stars could manage to win with a sputtering Rantanen on top of the fact they were already without two of their best players in defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Jason Robertson.
Rantanen responded with a three-point performance in Game 5, and a four-point performance in Game 6 only to then have a hand in each goal on Saturday. His first goal came on the power-play with 12:12 remaining in the third period when he found enough space to fire a wrist shot that beat MacKenzie Blackwood.
Then came the game-tying goal and the significance it carried. The Stars went on the power play went Avalanche forward Jack Drury was called for holding. Drury part of the trade package the Carolina Hurricanes used to get Rantanen in late January before they would trade him to the Stars.
Drury’s penalty opened the door for Rantanen to score a game-tying goal that might be one of, if not, his signature salvo. Rantanen skated into the Avalanche zone in a 1-on-3 before he split two players before going around the net for a wrap-around goal that went off the skate of Samuel Girard with 6:14 left.
Three minutes later, the Stars received another power-play opportunity that saw Rantanen along with another former Avalanche forward in Matt Duchene work together to find Wyatt Johnston for the game-winning goal.
In the final minute, the Avalanche pulled Blackwood in the attempt to grab a late goal and force over time. Instead? Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger withstood a barrage that officially ended when Stars forward Tyler Seguin got the puck out of the zone only for Rantanen to skate in on an open net for the hat trick with three seconds left.
“I couldn’t care less who scored for them, I really couldn’t,” Avalanche captain and left winger Gabriel Landeskog said when asked about what it was like to watch Rantanen score a hat trick. “Mikko is one of my best friends and I love him, but I couldn’t care if he scored or if somebody else scored.”
For eight full seasons, Rantanen was part of a homegrown movement that saw the Avalanche go from finishing with what was then the worst record in the salary cap era back in 2016-17 to become a perennial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, which did they did in 2023, while also becoming a model for the need to build through the draft.
Building through stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen allowed the Avalanche to become a success. As did the moves they made to get other key figures like Valeri Nichushkin and Devon Toews.
Like all teams in a championship window, the Avs were facing the prospect of possibly making a difficult decision. They had yet to agree to a new contract with Rantanen, who was a pending unrestricted free agent. Then, came the blockbuster trade that few throughout the league saw coming.
The Avalanche traded Rantanen in a three-team trade that saw them get Martin Necas and Drury along with two draft picks. Rantanen’s time with the Carolina Hurricanes was limited to just two goals and six points in 13 games.
Despite the fact the Hurricanes are also among that cadre of championship contenders, Rantanen struggled to find cohesion in Raleigh. Rather than run the risk of watching leave for nothing in free agency, the Hurricanes put out feelers to a few teams with the Stars being one of them.
A long-time admirer of Rantanen, the Stars packaged two first-round picks, three second-round picks and former prized prospect Logan Stankoven to get Rantanen. They then signed him to an eight-year contract worth $12 million annually.
“It’s two things: It’s where our team’s at, and it’s Mikko Rantanen,” Stars general manager Jim Nill told ESPN back in March.
Rantanen finished the regular season with five goals and 18 points in 20 games prior to the showdown with his former team.
Not only did Rantanen’s hat trick condemn his former team to their second first-round exit since winning the Stanley Cup, but it continued a theme of former Avalanche eliminating their previous employers.
The Avalanche and Stars faced each other in last season’s Western Conference semifinal that saw Duchene, a former Colorado first-round pick, score the game-winning goal.
A year later, it was another former Avalanche first-round pick who delivered the devastating blow.
“It seems pretty fitting,” Johnston said about Rantanen. “Obviously, we want to win for each other and I think that goes a little extra when it’s a guy like that who is such a big part of our team and was there for a long time and everyone knows the trade that went on. It’s so awesome. We’re so happy as a group for him.”
As if Rantanen scoring a hat trick in a four-goal comeback wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that this is now the ninth consecutive Game 7 that Stars coach Peter DeBoer has won his career.
DeBoer’s nine wins in Game 7s broke a tie with Darryl Sutter for the most in NHL history. It was also DeBoer’s third game 7 wins with the Stars.
“I felt something was going to happen,” DeBoer said. “But I could not have predicted that.”
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