The Opening Day home run barrage felt part throwback, part teaser of what this offense could be.
On Thursday afternoon, the Orioles bashed their way to a decisive 12-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, blasting a club Opening Day-record six home runs, including two apiece by Adley Rutschman and Cedric Mullins.
Here’s how the fun went down. With one out in the first, Rutschman crushed a José Berríos changeup 346 feet to right field, his team’s first of the season. New right fielder Tyler O’Neill hit an oppo-field three-run shot in the third inning, his sixth consecutive Opening Day home run. Cedric Mullins led off the fourth with a homer to right field that stretched the lead to 6-0, and he hit another, another three-run bomb, to make it 9-2 in the seventh. Not to be outdone, Rutschman hit another tank with one out in the eighth inning, and Jordan Westburg followed immediately with a wallscraper that had the Rodgers Centre booing as he rounded the bases.
The Orioles… ready to go undefeated this season?! Prove me wrong.
“You have to go back to it’s one of 162,” said Brandon Hyde after Thursday’s heroics. Sigh. Leave it to the skipper to talk some sense. “But I think,” he continued, “that we showed the type of offense that we can be.”
My point exactly. The Orioles are only just—good thing Mark Brown did the math—0.6% of the way through a long season. Good to keep perspective. But their Opening Day performance was also a pleasing rejoinder to two offseason nags: 1) The Orioles didn’t do enough to upgrade a pitching staff that lost an ace and has three starters on the shelf, 2) Ditto an offense that skidded to a 33-33 record in the second half and scored a grand total of one run in the playoffs.
Opening Day starter Zach Eflin’s quietly brilliant six-inning, two-hit effort shouldn’t be overlooked—maybe he doesn’t quite look like an ace, but he looks darn good—but for now, let’s focus on the bats.
Last year, the Orioles hit 235 team home runs, second-best in the Majors after the Yankees, buoyed by the historic 2024 season of Anthony Santander, who led his team in home runs while becoming just the eighth switch-hitter in MLB history to hit 40 or more long balls in a season.
Santander having left in free agency, a question has been whether the Birds would be able to make up for his lost production. After one game, all signs point to yes.
The Orioles had never hit more than four home runs on Opening Day, but on Thursday, that quickly changed. Sure, Toronto starter José Berríos looked out of sorts and was throwing up meatballs, but when every one of your starters gets on base once, that’s depth. Not to mention the swings that these Orioles put on, up-and-down the lineup. Cedric Mullins, the #7 hitter, bashed two. Tyler O’Neill, Santander’s intended replacement in right field, blasted one the other way (have you heard that he lifts?). Adley’s swings were things of beauty—especially his second home run, off a 96-mph inside fastball, which flashed the bat speed that had been missing in the latter half of last season.
Last year’s 235-homer effort and, tiny sample size though it is, the Orioles Opening Day performance have me wondering whether the script on offense is now a throwback one: the “Bash homers, strike out a lot, overcome mediocre pitching” approach of the late ‘90s and mid ‘10s.
The team’s 2024 home run total was third-most in team history, too, after 1996 (257) and 2016 (253). The former was the year Brady Anderson hit 50, and he was setting the table out there for the likes Cal Ripken Jr., Robbie Alomar, Rafael Palmeiro and Chris Hoiles, all of whom could go deep in bunches. The 2016 season was one where the Orioles got over 200 combined four-baggers from Mark Trumbo (with a league-leading 47), Chris Davis, Manny Machado, Adam Jones, Jonathan Schoop, Pedro Alvarez and Matt Weiters.
Put it this way: as a team, the Orioles have crossed the 200-home run mark thirteen times in club history. Twice were in the ‘80s (1985 and ’87), four times in the years between 1996 and 1999, every year in the ‘10s but 2018 (when they stunk), and last year, 2024. If home runs come in bunches, it looks like we can expect to pick some in 2025, too.
According Fangraphs’ predictions, this team will hit between 227 and 241 home runs this year. That lower mark would still rank in the team Top 5. Last season, the Orioles had three players cross the 20-HR threshold — Santander, Henderson (37), and Colton Cowser (24) — followed by six who hit ten or more. O’Neill wouldn’t have to match last year’s breakout (31) as long as hitters like Rutschman, Ryan O’Hearn, Ryan Mountcastle, Heston Kjerstad, Jordan Westburg and perhaps newcomers Coby Mayo and/or Samuel Basallo show up and bring average power.
One question is whether a team built this way will still play small ball. The Orioles’ big bashers of the ‘90s were not fast on the basepaths, and the Birds only started stealing bases when those guys left. For reference, since 2000, the team has only had seven 100-plus stolen base seasons, most of them were between 2000 and 2007, when they weren’t very good hitters. But over the last three seasons, the Orioles have swiped a respectable 95, 114 and 98 bags, their 2023 excellence at the plate a testament in part to high small-ball IQ. It remains to be seen whether they’ll sacrifice speed for power, but what they do have is an athletic, balanced lineup with power up and down the order.
As Hyde put it on Thursday, “I just thought we took great at-bats all the way through the game,” praising his team’s strike zone awareness, swings, and power. Could it be the magic of the Canadian donuts? “Whatever works, I’m good with it,” Hyde said. “Wear the same clothes, do whatever you did today, do it tomorrow.”
We’ll have to keep an eye on this.