Red Sox
O’Neill has showcased all-around talent on the diamond during his career and off of it.
The Red Sox made their first notable player acquisition of the offseason Friday, landing Tyler O’Neill from the Cardinals for two minor-league pitchers.
O’Neill, 28, has spent the entirety of his Major League career with the Cardinals, making his big league debut in 2018. But he started his professional career with the Mariners, who selected him in the third round of the 2013 MLB Draft out of high school and later traded him to the Cardinals.
Here are five things to know about O’Neill.
He’s dealt with injuries the last couple of seasons.
O’Neill’s body hasn’t been kind to him the two seasons. The outfielder has only played 168 games since the start of the 2022 season, making just 72 outings in 2023.
It wasn’t just one particular ailment that slowed down O’Neill, either. In 2022, he had a couple of injured list stints. First, he missed a couple of weeks in the early part of the season due to a shoulder injury. A few weeks later, he missed nearly a month of action due to a hamstring injury. Even though he came back from the hamstring injury and played two straight months, O’Neill wound back up on the injured list for the last few weeks of 2022 due to the injured hamstring.
The 2022 season wasn’t the only time that O’Neill dealt with hamstring issues. When he competed for a spot on the Cardinals’ Opening Day roster during spring training in 2018, O’Neill suffered a hamstring injury that sidelined him for nearly the first month of the year. Later in his rookie season, O’Neill missed a couple more weeks of action due to another hamstring ailment.
Last season, O’Neill missed over two months of action due to a lower back strain. While he came back from his injury in late July, he missed the final few weeks of the year due to a foot injury.
O’Neill admitted the back injury he had was a pretty painful one, as he struggled to even do things off the field.
“Pretty much everyday life was tough to get through, but I’m a grinder and I wanted to push through it,” O’Neill told reporters upon his return from injury. “It got to the point where I couldn’t even hold my baby girl — not even 11 or 12 pounds at the time — and I’m waking up in the middle of the night with shooting pain down my leg on a consistent basis.”
He’s a multi-time Gold Glove winner.
If the Red Sox were looking to improve their defense in the outfield, they picked up a pretty good option to do that.
O’Neill’s won two Gold Gloves in his career, picking up the honor in back-to-back seasons in 2020 and 2021. He was tied for first among all left fielders in outs above average in both 2020 and 2021, recording four outs above average each year. He also finished tied for third in outs above average (two) among all left fielders in 2022 despite nearly missing half the season.
O’Neill has played a little bit at each spot in the outfield over his career. He took on center field duties for the Cardinals over the last two years, manning the largest part of the outfield as St. Louis liked his sprint speed, among other traits.
It’s unknown where the Red Sox will play O’Neill as of now. But it would be understandable if they primarily played him in left field to give Masataka Yoshida more games as their designated hitter or if he helped replace Adam Duvall in center field.
He’s put up solid numbers against lefties in his career.
Other than fielding, another reason why trading for O’Neill made sense for the Red Sox was due to the simple fact that it gave them a right-handed hitter.
Before Friday, platoon player Rob Refsnyder and rookie Ceddanne Rafaela were the only right-handed-hitting outfielders on Boston’s 40-man roster. The Red Sox only have four other right-handed hitters on their 40-man roster as well, with Duvall and Justin Turner sitting in free-agency.
O’Neill certainly gives the Red Sox’ lineup more flexibility against lefties. In his six-year career, O’Neill has slashed .252/.353/.463 with 16 homers, 43 RBIs, and a 112 OPS+ over 360 plate appearances against southpaws. He was noticeably better at hitting lefties than righties in 2023, slashing .227/.354/.439 with three homers and a 122 OPS+ in 79 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers.
He was one of the best players in the National League in 2021.
While O’Neill has struggled with injuries for a good chunk of his career, everything seemed to fall into place for him in 2021, proving what he can do when he’s healthy for a full year.
O’Neill was a plus-player in nearly every facet of the game that year. He hit for average and got on-base, hitting .286 with a .352 on-base percentage. He hit for power, recording 34 home runs (seventh-most in the National League) and a .560 slugging percentage (fifth-best in NL). He showcased speed on the basepaths, stealing 15 bases with an impressive 78.95 stolen base percentage. He also played well enough defensively to win a Gold Glove.
So, it wasn’t a surprise that O’Neill was fifth in WAR among all National League position players (6.1) and finished eighth in NL MVP voting that year. But can he replicate that kind of season or replicate it?
O’Neill’s 93 mph exit velocity and 52.2 hard-hit percentage that year were career-highs. His exit velocity that year was 2.3 mph faster and his hard-hit percentage was 6.8 percent higher than his career averages, so it’s probably unlikely that O’Neill will have another season like he did in 2021. But his expected batting average (.250), expected weighted on-base average (.337), and expected slugging percentage (.449) were all higher than his actual slash line last season (.231/.312/.403), so maybe he stands to get some luck in 2024.
He’s a weightlifter and piano player.
O’Neill has a pair of non-baseball talents, but one of his off-field hobbies certainly helps him on the diamond.
He takes his appreciation for weightlifting from his father, Terry, who was named Mr. Canada in 1975 for being the country’s top bodybuilder. A video from O’Neill’s minor league days showed him squatting 585 pounds.
O’Neill seems to have slimmed down just a trim on his bodybuilding. In 2022, he said in a viral TikTok post that he isn’t quite lifting at his personal records.
“Probably a good five years ago, I put up 425 pounds [on the benchpress]. Four plates and a 15 on each side. That was my PR. I’m not up there right now, but that was a while ago. And then squatting, I’ve done five plates, I think I got three or four reps out of there.”
O’Neill’s other favorite off-field hobby is playing the piano. When he was in the Marines’ organization in 2017, the Canadian native told The Seattle Times that his favorite song to play on the piano was “O Canada,” the nation’s national anthem.
In spring training that year, O’Neill impressed his Mariners teammates by playing the “Lord of the Rings” theme song on the piano during a session where players on the team showcased some of their off-field talents.
“I don’t think anything will top yesterday morning’s meeting,” then-Mariners manager Scott Servais told The Seattle Times of O’Neill’s performance on the piano. “We are going to give it a couple days. It was as good as I’ve seen in a while. Tyler O’Neill was outstanding. He played on the keyboard, the theme from ‘Lord of the Rings.’ [Thyago] Vieira was right there doing the beat box with him. There was dancing.”
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