Heroics, blowouts

Offense rises, falls with Henderson, Rutschman

The Orioles jumped to a 4-2 start on their opening homestand, mixing blowouts with late-inning heroics as they began their defense of a surprise American League East title.

Here are some things we learned from the first week of their season.

The Orioles’ offense rises and falls on what Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman do at the top:

When the Orioles scored 24 runs over their first two games, Henderson and Rustchman combined to reach base 10 times in 18 plate appearances. When they laid a pair of one-run eggs, their top two hitters reached twice — a pair of Henderson walks — in 16 plate appearances.

It’s no deep insight to say a functional offense is reliant on its most talented hitters. But the Orioles, seventh in the AL in on-base percentage last season, become particularly thin on table setters when Henderson and Rutschman aren’t reaching. Ryan Mountcastle, Anthony Santander, Austin Hays and Ryan O’Hearn are far from dead spots, but not one of them posted an on-base percentage higher than .328 last season.

Jordan Westburg’s minor league performance suggests he could help, but he’s still growing as a major league hitter.

This isn’t an issue of lineup construction. Manager Brandon Hyde simply does not have a bevy of naturally patient hitters to draw from.

Even the 22-year-old Henderson is a work in progress as a leadoff hitter.

“He’s maturing as a hitter,” Hyde said when asked why he installed the 2023 AL Rookie of the Year at the top of his lineup. “He’s got a chance to go deep. He’s got a chance to do things exciting on the bases. And I just want to see him hit as much as possible.”

Sound logical, but as wonderful a talent as Henderson is, he’s still feeling for the sweet spot between discernment and aggression, which means the Orioles aren’t always going to put pressure on opponents from the top of their lineup.

The elephant in this room is the club’s top prospect, Jackson Holliday, who posted a .442 on-base percentage across four minor league levels last season. He’s precisely the type of hitter the Orioles need to avoid empty innings, and fans have already grumbled about his absence on the days when Hyde’s lineups have not clicked.

The Orioles’ logic in sending Holliday to Triple-A was defensible but will become less so if he’s there for long.

The club’s sparkling record obscured the fact it was not an offensive juggernaut in 2023. That reality became all too stark when the Texas Rangers slugged the Orioles right out of the playoffs in three games.

Henderson and Rutschman are the start of a more potent scoring apparatus, but that machine won’t be whole without new parts from the farm.

Who knew a Triple-A lineup would overshadow the defending AL East champs?: We touched on Holliday, baseball’s top prospect, who’s slugging .800 and getting on base at a .448 clip as he theoretically refines his approach against left-handers in Norfolk. But he’s not remotely the hottest hitter in a Tides lineup that seems to crank out more absurd box scores by the day.

Hyde was asked about this minor league wrecking crew Wednesday, after Holliday, Connor Norby, Heston Kjerstad and Kyle Stowers had all homered in a 10-6 win over Charlotte. “When you send the message to them of not making the team,” he replied, “you want them to take it the right way and prove people wrong, work on the things we asked them to work on and do it with a great attitude.”

The Tides followed up by scoring 26 runs later the same day. Holliday scored five. Kjerstad drove in 10.

Stowers, this spring’s power sensation in Sarasota, homered three times and drove in seven. Coby Mayo, the team’s slugging corner infielder, had a “quiet” day with five hits.

Prove people wrong? These guys are banging on the door to Baltimore with a sack of sledgehammers. Through five games, Kjerstad was slugging 1.208, Stowers 1.080, Norby .913. Fans have noticed, intensifying their demands for call-ups whenever the major league lineup scuffles. This is the good problem general manager Mike Elias and his staff have created: a winning team in Baltimore that could become significantly more potent once Holliday, Mayo, Stowers, etc. push their way into regular roles.

The “regular” part is the sticky wicket for Elias, Hyde and the very good players who helped the Orioles to 101 wins last season. There aren’t enough at-bats to go around at the moment, a reality we’re seeing with one of the club’s other top prospects, outfielder Colton Cowser, batting just eight times in the first six games.

The best version of the 2024 Orioles probably includes Holliday, Mayo, Norby and Stowers, but that will require unhappy decisions on players such as Ryan O’Hearn, Cedric Mullins and Jorge Mateo, all of whom helped the club end its ugly stretch of losing.

Unspoken competition between those veterans and the prospects pressing from Norfolk is not going away, and it’s a sign this organization is, top to bottom, the healthiest it has been in decades.

Thisisn’tthedreamrotation,butit’ll work for now:

No, it was not fun to watch Cole Irvin allow hard contact on more than half the balls the Royals put in play Tuesday night as he lost on a dreary night at Camden Yards. Fans could be forgiven for fantasizing over an accelerated recovery timeline for Kyle Bradish, who pitched so superbly down the stretch last season. The end goal is to have Corbin Burnes, Bradish (nursing a sprained ulnar collateral ligament) and Grayson Rodriguez fronting a rotation that could go pitch for pitch with anyone in the playoffs. A healthy John Means — he was knocked around in his first rehabilitation start for Norfolk — would add another quality starter.

But pitchers get hurt. It’s one of the bedrock rules of baseball. The rotation and bullpen you envision in March are almost never the ones you’re working with for six months. Patching is expected, and that’s what the Orioles did on their opening homestand, with their pitchers keeping them competitive, even on rougher days.

Burnes and Rodriguez pitched gems in their first starts, reinforcing our notions that Burnes is the No. 1 the club lacked and Rodriguez is the young starter with the best chance to join him at that level. Burnes was not as sharp in his second outing, allowing seven hits in the first three innings after waiting out a fivehour rain delay. But he didn’t walk anybody, limited the damage to two runs and was pitching better when he left the game in the sixth inning than he was in the first. That’s what you want from an ace who isn’t finishing off hitters at his usual rate, and the Orioles rallied to win.

They did the same two days earlier, with Dean Kremer working past his homer-prone tendencies (27 allowed in 172 ⅓ innings last year) to keep them close.

This rotation will need to survive scarier offenses; the Angels and Royals finished ninth and 10th, respectively, in the AL in runs scored last season. But we saw the Orioles piece together workable pitching last year, backed by very good defense and a thriving bullpen. They did it without Burnes and without this version of Rodriguez for the first half of the season.

The formula will be different this year — it always is with pitching — but nothing from the first six games should inspire panic.