It seemed likely as soon as the Orioles traded for Burnes and now it’s official
As soon as the Orioles acquired Corbin Burnes from the Brewers, you could take a pretty good guess that he would be making the start on Opening Day. This became even more of a near-certainty when the only other remotely plausible candidate, Kyle Bradish, was revealed to be injured. With 18 days left to go before the season begins, manager Brandon Hyde made this official on Sunday morning: Burnes is getting the ball in the first game.
Even if there’s nothing surprising about it, Burnes is a caliber of pitcher that Orioles fans haven’t seen on our favorite team in a long time. The team hasn’t had a former Cy Young winner make the Opening Day start since the 2001 season, when Pat Hentgen made the start after arriving as a free agent the previous offseason.
Hentgen was five years removed from his Cy-winning season, with three consecutive underwhelming campaigns in a row before joining the Orioles and starting that first game. The debut game actually went pretty well for Hentgen, as he gave up just one run, a solo homer, over 8.2 innings as the O’s triumphed over the Red Sox. He had a number of great starts before getting hurt and having his season end in mid-May. Cal Ripken Jr.’s final season needed more than just a healthy Hentgen to go better, as the 2001 Orioles ended up with a 63-98 record.
Burnes, by contrast, is just three years out from when he won the NL Cy, and while he hasn’t come close to duplicating that 2021 brilliance, he’s continued as a durable pitcher with above-average performance. I am excited to see what he does this season. He will be making his latest spring tune-up appearance in Sarasota this afternoon to get ready for that Opening Day start.
For Burnes, it’ll be a third consecutive season making his team’s Opening Day start. The previous two were for Milwaukee. For the Orioles, this marks the team’s seventh different Opening Day starter in the last eight seasons. John Means making the first start in 2021 and 2022 is the only repeat in that stretch. Burnes making the start is just a bit more fun than last year when it was Kyle Gibson. As we know, the 2023 Orioles turned out fine with Gibson as the #1 starter.
With Burnes formally lined up for the first game, the Orioles can turn to figuring out who will fill out the rest of the rotation. The next two spring games on Monday and Tuesday have Julio Teheran and Tyler Wells as the starting pitchers, so it seems safe to say that the O’s aren’t yet just running through the pitchers in their regular season order.
Grayson Rodriguez and Dean Kremer will presumably line up at #2 and #3, with the Orioles having some choices to make on who will fill out the back end. Wells and Teheran are two of those candidates, along with Cole Irvin and maybe even early spring training surprise Albert Suárez, who will be pitching the other half of the Orioles split squad this afternoon.
Once the season is under way, the Orioles will then have to figure out who gets squeezed out assuming Means and Bradish are ready to return on our currently-imagined time tables for them. Means has been reported to be a month behind the other starting pitchers, with Bradish seemingly six weeks behind. That’s a problem for later.