Hi Movin, thank you for the resources. I was able to get my featured image within my blog posts to be their original size (ie. uncropped)!
I used the plug-in from this article: https://colorlibsupport.com/t/define-sizeformat-of-featured-image-on-home-page/
And then as suggested in this article I refreshed the thumbnails and things appear to be working fine now: https://colorlibsupport.com/t/featured-image-and-slider-cropping/
Thank you for your help and direction!