Ryan O’Hearn thought his career was sputtering. Then the Orioles called.

In a flare of frustration, Ryan O’Hearn wondered about getting away from it all.

He hadn’t had an at-bat in two weeks, instead left on the bench to watch the Kansas City Royals each night in 2022 but with no clear role to play himself. He was healthy yet unused, and as the games went by without O’Hearn playing a part, his venting increased. In phone calls to his agent, Allan Donato — whom he considers a close friend — O’Hearn exhaled his built-up woes.

During one of those calls, O’Hearn asked Donato whether they should request that Kansas City designate the first baseman for assignment — cut him loose, set him free, ushering in the possibility of a new landing spot.

O’Hearn wasn’t under any illusion that he would be guaranteed a larger role elsewhere. He was mired in his fourth straight season with an on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the low .600s, but something needed to change, for him and the Royals.

“Everything was an option at that point, to be honest with you,” Donato said. “He expected to not be back in Kansas City. And not that he didn’t want to be back there, that they didn’t want him back.”

O’Hearn seriously thought about going abroad to play. He thought about giving up on his playing career and becoming a coach. But Donato, in a phone call shortly after he talked O’Hearn off the DFA ledge, cut through the understandable disappointment to deliver a necessary message of his own.

No matter how murky the future might be, the present was certain.

O’Hearn, for the time being, was a Major League Baseball player. He had reached a level he long dreamed of, and he could enjoy each night — even if it’s spent in the dugout rather than on the field — if he altered his mentality.

“Ryan, let’s just work in a world where this is the end of your big league career,” Donato told O’Hearn during the final stretch of his 2022 season in Kansas City. “Let’s just assume that you’re never going to play again after this. How upset would you be at yourself down the road if you didn’t appreciate every single day in that dugout? Every single day?”

The words sunk in. They helped O’Hearn through the end of 2022, when he posted a .306 average in his final 51 plate appearances for the Royals. And, when the offseason arrived, O’Hearn approached it with an open mind. He knew he had reached the end of the line in Kansas City, but he waited to see whether his path would lead to another organization, another country or another profession entirely.

Then the Orioles called.

O’Hearn was traded to Baltimore, where he would attend spring training as a nonroster invitee. There were no guarantees, no clear paths to playing time, but O’Hearn was free.

“I just felt like I needed a change of scenery, whether that meant going overseas, or I was hoping something like this would happen,” O’Hearn said. “And it turned out Baltimore was the perfect fit.”

Over the next two years, O’Hearn turned around his career. To pin it all on a change of scenery would be to ignore the swing changes O’Hearn implemented and the alterations to his approach at the plate. It would be to ignore the developments O’Hearn has undergone with his mentality, with the help of Donato and their frequent phone calls.

But a change of scenery helped, too. O’Hearn has cemented himself as a key piece in the Orioles’ lineup, particularly against right-handed pitchers, and he regularly slots in at first base or in one of the outfield corners.

It wasn’t long ago when O’Hearn pondered if he had any MLB future at all. Now, after being named an All-Star finalist this season and continuing to play a key part on a team aiming for the postseason, O’Hearn sees no reason to stop dreaming.

“When you struggle for so long, you kind of get to a point where it’s like, ‘All right, I’m over it,’” O’Hearn said. “I’m not gripping this career so tightly that any little mistake is going to derail me mentally. It’s more so, ‘I know there are ups and downs, and this a tough game, and stuff’s going to happen. I’m going to enjoy this opportunity with my new team and just have zero regrets when I’m done playing about how I went about my time in Baltimore.’”

Attention to detail

O’Hearn had plenty of time during his final few years in Kansas City to watch, and he spent much of it in the dugout with hitting coach John Mabry. As they watched, they discussed the minute movements of other hitters — the subtle actions that can be the difference between hitting a high-90s fastball and whiffing on it.

For all the frustration that inevitably mounted as O’Hearn found himself watching rather than playing, he never lost his attention to detail and dedication to adjusting. See how he gets his foot down? Mabry would point out, and O’Hearn would see it.

“When the student’s ready, teachers rise, [that] kind of thing,” said Mabry, who’s now the hitting coach for the Miami Marlins.

O’Hearn had arrived in the majors with a blast. He played 44 games as a rookie in 2018, hit 12 homers and finished with a .950 OPS — continuing the success he forged at Sam Houston State and through the minors.

But the majors are unforgiving, and pitchers adjusted to O’Hearn by 2019. He labored through the next four seasons, with plate appearances becoming more infrequent by the year. So Mabry and O’Hearn, arms crossed over the dugout railing, watched and talked as others hit.

“He was questioning if there was more in the tank, or what he had to do differently to get to where he wanted to be and get to his best self,” Mabry said. “Just him being hungry, available, teachable was a great way to get started.”

Mabry understood the position in which O’Hearn found himself, because he had been in a similar one during his playing days. Mabry, 53, finished fourth in National League Rookie of the Year voting in 1995, and while he still contributed heavily for the St. Louis Cardinals the next few seasons, his career wavered. He was forced to rediscover himself elsewhere, bouncing between teams before a late-career renaissance.

For all the credit that goes toward Dan Hennigan — a hitting coach in Philadelphia with whom O’Hearn works in the offseason — and Orioles hitting coaches Ryan Fuller, Matt Borgschulte and Cody Asche, O’Hearn is quick to point to Mabry as a major influence in his turnaround.

It took until O’Hearn arrived in Baltimore for his resurgence to occur. The 31-year-old broke through early in 2023 and finished with a .289 average and .801 OPS. He’s continuing that with a .269 average and .783 OPS this season.

But, to get here, Mabry and the Royals were as critical to the turnaround as anyone, even if the turnaround finally occurred elsewhere.

“It’s easy to keep going when things are going well, but when things suck, can you keep going?” Mabry said. “And he kept going. And he knew he had more in his tank and he was in the process of getting it out. The changes in his lower half that he made are showing now at a pretty frequent basis.”

Last year, Hennigan said the main focus heading into O’Hearn’s first spring training with the Orioles was to simplify the lower-half movement in his swing. Hennigan — the founder of Brain and Barrel — now works for the Houston Astros as a hitting coordinator and strategist.

O’Hearn and Hennigan connected through Donato, and their FaceTime calls toward the end of O’Hearn’s time in Kansas City would last hours as they studied the particulars of O’Hearn’s swing. One aspect Hennigan identified was the drop in barrel percentage from 2021 to 2022 (from 8.3% to 7%).

By shortening his stride, O’Hearn could more easily react to certain pitches. As a result, his barrel rate rose to 10.1% in 2023. And, while it has dropped to 8.2% this year, O’Hearn is striking out less than ever before (12.8%, 96th percentile in MLB) and walking more (10%).

Behind that success, O’Hearn is playing regularly for the Orioles. He’s already played more games this year than he did in 2023, and he will rack up nearly as many at-bats this season as he received from 2020 to 2022 combined.

“I think at that point it’s kind of like you’re playing with house money,” O’Hearn said of his mentality early last year. “It’s like, I’m not supposed to be doing this. I’m not supposed to be having success here. But I never stop trying to get better. That’s a fact. I never stop trying to evolve my swing and really everything, trying to become a better baseball player every day, whether I was in the game or not.”

‘Couldn’t be more grateful’

The night O’Hearn found out he was a finalist for the All-Star Game, he and his wife, Hannah, reflected on how far they’ve come. He was an afterthought by the time his tenure in Kansas City ended. And then there he was, in July, learning that a swell of public support edged him closer to a place in the Midsummer Classic.

“It’s better than I could’ve imagined, probably,” O’Hearn said.

O’Hearn missed out on making the American League roster by a narrow margin, earning 48% of the vote against the 52% for the Astros’ Yordan Álvarez. To even be considered, though, was something of a feat — an honor he won’t take for granted.

“To hit in the three hole in probably the best offensive team in the nation, which is insane, is just a testament to not giving up, trying to get better every day, leaning on my faith in times when I thought it wasn’t going to work and maybe I should go to a different country or coaching or something else,” O’Hearn said. “Those thoughts all crossed my mind a couple years ago. I thought about it a lot, ’cause you’re always planning on what’s going to happen next, or what you’re going to do next. Coming to Baltimore seems to have changed everything. Couldn’t be more grateful.”

Those thoughts were warranted, but the advice from Donato about two years ago helped bring about a change. O’Hearn is playing more loosely, because he isn’t as afraid of an ending to his career.

Earlier in the year, when O’Hearn was especially hot, Donato joked with another of his clients, a pitcher for an opposing team. The agent asked the hurler to “make sure O’Hearn gets a cookie today.”

“And he goes, ‘You’ll be lucky if O’Hearn gets a strike. We’re not letting him beat us,’” Donato recalled.

There are times when O’Hearn, playing in the field at first base, converses with the first base coach on the other team. He’s heard multiple times this season a variation of: “Man, where did you come from? We game plan for you now.”

The increased attention in scouting meetings, of course, makes replicating the gaudy numbers of 2023 more difficult. But O’Hearn is still producing, still a valuable member of the Orioles only two years after he was running out of opportunities with the Royals.

Between then and now, O’Hearn has adjusted his posture and lower half at the plate. He has increased his hard-hit percentage and improved his plate discipline. But, more than anything, O’Hearn is having more fun coming to the ballpark every day.

There’s no advanced analytic to assess that. It’s not a complicated acronym — Factor of Unmitigated Nicety — and it doesn’t mean every day is sunny in Baltimore for O’Hearn.

But, on the whole, O’Hearn is here because of it. A new team, a new chance, a new O’Hearn.

“He went through the fire, so to speak,” Donato said. “Having so many years where he wasn’t great, to now be one of the better hitters in baseball on one of the better teams in baseball, it just makes that appreciation so much more, right? It’s hard to quantify how much a guy goes, ‘I have to appreciate every moment now.’”