It’s a sign of where things were for Ryan Mountcastle that a sacrifice fly in a 12-run loss Tuesday night could be seen as a step in the right direction, but that was the case. He put the ball in play, at least. For the Orioles first baseman, a productive out is something to appreciate.

“With the way things have been going,” Mountcastle said Wednesday afternoon, “to put that one in play and score the run, it definitely feels good and hopefully something to build off.”

Building blocks have to come from somewhere, considering Mountcastle has struggled at an extreme rate to begin the season. The immediate answer followed Wednesday night in the series finale against the New York Yankees, when Mountcastle broke an 0-for-18 stretch with a two-run home run to left field.

Before that swing, manager Brandon Hyde said Mountcastle looks like a player who’s “really going through it,” and the underlying metrics support that. And one home run hardly resurrects Mountcastle’s season statistics.

“He’s too good of a hitter for this to go on for much longer.”

Manager Brandon Hyde on Ryan Mountcastle

Mountcastle has a .194 batting average and .541 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. The pitch-by-pitch metrics are telling. Entering Wednesday, according to Statcast, Mountcastle was hitting .091 against four-seam fastballs. He had whiffed on 70.6% of his swings against sweepers, 37.5% of his offerings against sliders and 54.5% of his swings against changeups.

In short, Mountcastle is missing most off-speed and breaking pitches. And, although he’s making contact with four-seam fastballs, the contact isn’t great, even if there’s a semblance of poor luck involved (his expected batting average against four-seamers is .202, roughly 100 percentage points higher than reality).

Mountcastle didn’t whiff on the slider left on the inside edge of the plate in his first at-bat Wednesday. It went for his second homer of the season.

Mountcastle is, historically, a strong fastball hitter. The issues against right-on-right sweepers and sliders are not a new phenomenon, however extreme the whiff rate has been over the first month of the season. When asked why his whiff rate is so high against breaking balls yet his production against four-seam fastballs is so low, Mountcastle said it is a timing issue.

“Not really being on time for it,” Mountcastle said. “The sweepers, maybe being out front or whatnot. Just sort of being in between both, and trying to get a good approach right now and figure it out, and when I do, I know what I’m capable of. I can hit those pitches pretty well. Just trying to figure it out.”

He’s not wrong about his fastball success. In 2024, Mountcastle hit .316 against four-seamers. His whiff rate against sliders and sweepers was 29.5% or below. The start to 2025 has been particularly slow, and he’s not alone.

Up and down the Orioles lineup, slumps have been pervasive. Mountcastle said he has discussed potential fixes with teammates, as well as Baltimore’s hitting coaches, and he has tinkered with small mechanical adjustments. In the batting cage, Mountcastle has widened his stance one day; the next, he has altered the height at which his hands start.

“Small things just to see if something will click and feel good,” Mountcastle said.

There has yet to be a prolonged breakthrough. But maybe he’s getting to one.

“It just looks like a guy who is trying way too hard, and we’re trying to relax him and slow the game down a little bit,” Hyde said this week. “It’s just not really happening right now, and it’s going to, because he’s too good of a hitter. He’s too good of a hitter for this to go on for much longer.”

Hyde noted that one positive is that Mountcastle isn’t chasing pitches outside of the strike zone as much as past seasons, and he’s marginally correct. Last year, Mountcastle’s chase rate was 38%. Entering Wednesday, it was 35.4%. When looking for positives, Hyde had to look closely.

Mountcastle’s average bat speed of 75.8 mph is in the top 6% of major league hitters. As a result, his exit velocity — when he does make contact — is high: 91.2 mph, entering Wednesday. Those are two more positives, although the production doesn’t reflect it.

Mountcastle has long been a streaky hitter. A few days ago, he went back to watch video from early in the 2021 season, when he struggled in a similar fashion. On April 30, 2021, Mountcastle held a .198 average with a .515 OPS. The numbers are almost identical.

“Somehow, I maybe am doing even a little better than what I was doing in ’21,” Mountcastle said. There’s some confidence that comes from that: He finished the season with a .255 average and .796 OPS. “So it’s knowing I’ve gotten out of it before and just staying positive,” he said.

Still, that can be difficult to achieve early in the year, when slumps are all the more obvious. When he walks to the plate, Mountcastle needs to avoid a glance at the scoreboard.

“You look up there and you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, those numbers aren’t nearly what I’m capable of,’” Mountcastle said.

Mountcastle is far from alone in that feeling. But he stands out for the wrong reasons, and he knows it.

That’s why the sacrifice fly Tuesday against the Yankees led to some relief — a brief respite from a productive out during his search for an answer. And the homer that came Wednesday night was only more encouraging.

“At the end of the day,” Mountcastle said, “I’ve got to keep a level head and just move on to the next day.”