These will look a lot better once Gunnar Henderson is back, but it’s not a bad one for now.
The Orioles lineup that everybody might have assumed at the start of spring training was blown up with the injury to Gunnar Henderson. If the team’s optimism about his returning soon bears out, there won’t be too many lineups without him, but at least for the first week, they’ve got to figure out what to do.
For Opening Day, that’s Jackson Holliday at shortstop, Jordan Westburg at second base, and Ramón Urías as the third baseman. This may not be the exact solution on a daily basis; the most frequently-used Orioles lineup of the 2024 season was used for all of three games. Things are moving around all of the time due to injuries, performance, and platoon splits.
Here’s how they line up for the first game:
- Colton Cowser – LF
- Adley Rutschman – C
- Jordan Westburg – 2B
- Ryan O’Hearn – DH
- Tyler O’Neill – RF
- Ryan Mountcastle – 1B
- Cedric Mullins – CF
- Ramón Urías – 3B
- Jackson Holliday – SS
Zach Eflin remains the Opening Day starting pitcher. Not every team was so lucky to have their announced #1 pitcher be ready to pitch. Cleveland’s Tanner Bibee was a late scratch due to food poisoning.
The lineup would look better with Henderson in it. There’s no getting around it. The Orioles will have to do the best that they can without him.
As far as platoon-oriented lineups go, the Blue Jays entire rotation is right-handed, so today and the three games afterwards will all have a tendency to have the lineup geared towards that. Hopefully that means a couple of starts for Heston Kjerstad. Mountcastle tending to be a destroyer of Canadian dreams will keep him in the lineup even when it’s righty-righty.