The Orioles opened AL East play with a series win in Boston, but even that was overshadowed by the debut of baseball’s top prospect, Jackson Holliday, who played second base and batted ninth after tearing through 10 games at Triple-A Norfolk.
Here are five things we learned from the Orioles’ and Holliday’s week.
Let’s follow the 20-year-old’s example and not lose our minds over Jackson Holliday.
Weep for all the words we spilled debating and grumbling over Holiday’s demotion to Norfolk after he aced spring training. Did Mike Elias and Brandon Hyde really need to watch Holliday post a .482 on-base percentage against overmatched pitchers to know he was ready? No. But the last two weeks won’t amount to a blip in his ultimate baseball story or in the story of the 2024 Orioles.
Holliday is where he belongs now, and his exceptional batting eye will bolster a lineup short on natural table setters. His polish as a hitter and as a big league-ready personality are tributes to his father, seven-time All-Star Matt Holliday.
Back in 2022, Holliday — whose cherubic facial features screamed middle schooler — spoke confidently of reaching the majors in two years. That he made good on this aggressive ambition, mastering five minor league levels as a teenager, gives us reason to believe he will be a problem for major league pitchers sooner rather than later.
That said, Holliday did look overeager at times during his debut against the Red Sox, swinging over pitches with mighty hacks and failing to make hard contact on the balls he put into play. He drove in a run when he pushed a ball to the right side of the infield with a runner on third, but there was no lightning pulsing above Fenway Park at each crack of his bat. He moved deftly to start a double play from second base, a position he’s still learning, but could not get his glove on a tough pop fly that dropped over his shoulder (a hit not an error) to bring in Boston’s first run.
It was all just fine, and it will be just fine if Holliday is scuffling this time next week. It’s a huge accomplishment, a signal of future stardom, just to hold your own in the major leagues two years out of high school. Barry Bonds hit .223 as a rookie. Willie Mays had one hit in his first 32 plate appearances. Mike Trout hit .163 in his first month.
It’s supposed to be hard.
While fans hungered for Holliday’s call-up, some suggested the Orioles were giving away games by not having him in Baltimore, that their close losses would have gone the other way with the rookie in the lineup. That’s the pressure he’s walking into.
While Holliday seems well-equipped to handle it, we should recognize these expectations are irrational. His performance and pedigree tell us he will excel over the long haul. But the last two words of that sentence are key. Baseball has always been a long haul sport. If Holliday races through another learning curve, wonderful. If he doesn’t, that’s no reason to doubt him.
Perhaps Corbin Burnes is even more precious than we thought.
There was an at-bat in the sixth inning of Burnes’ win over the Red Sox that was just magical if you live for the competitive dance between a top hitter and an ace pitcher. Boston outfielder Tyler O’Neill had put the only blemish on Burnes’ line with a first inning home run, and he came up for another try with the Orioles leading just 3-1.
Burnes started O’Neill with a 93-mph cutter for a called strike and got him to whiff on an 87-mph slider. A lesser hitter might have been gone on the next pitch, but O’Neill did not flinch on an 0-2 curveball or a 1-2 slider. He settled in for the grind, fouling off a pair of 95-mph sinkers and staring at a cutter to take the count full. He would not give in, and neither would Burnes, who whipped one last 95-mph cutter across the very bottom of the zone. O’Neill didn’t bother swinging at a pitch he could not hit. He simply walked away, knowing he’d been honorably bested by a master.
The great baseball (and other things) writer Joe Posnanski pointed out a remarkable fact earlier this week. Of all the active Cy Young winners, only two, Burnes and Blake Snell, are actually pitching right now. The rest are hurt.
Fans spent all last year begging the Orioles to exchange some of their prospect hoard for the no-doubt No. 1 starter they lacked. For much of the offseason, it seemed that hope might go unrequited, so when they traded for Burnes in February, the reaction was euphoric.
Perhaps it was not euphoric enough. In the modern game, starters like Burnes — he somehow feels more dominant on his second and third trips through a lineup and gives the Orioles a great chance to win every outing — are as rare as white tigers. Elias did not just trade for a viable head of the rotation; he might have obtained the very best one. Burnes’ 1.93 ERA and 20 strikeouts against two walks are outstanding, but that strike-three cutter to O’Neill was baseball art.
There’s no guarantee he’s here next year, folks, so soak it up.
The Orioles didn’t lose those two games in Pittsburgh because they’re missing Felix Bautista.
This was a popular conclusion on social media after the Pirates beat the Orioles in the 11th inning Saturday and rallied past them with two runs in the ninth Sunday.
But it was an overreaction to the circumstances of these defeats and a disservice to a bullpen that has contributed as much to the Orioles’ early success as any facet of the team.
Of course they would love to have the 2023 version of Bautista. Even in this era of 100-mph pitchers in every bullpen, 16 strikeouts per nine innings is something special.
If that Bautista was available Saturday in Pittsburgh, he likely would have pitched the ninth inning of a tied game, just as the team’s current closer, Craig Kimbrel, did. Kimbrel pitched a perfect inning, holding the Pirates in place, just as his bullpen mates Dillon Tate, Keegan Akin and Jacob Webb had over the previous three innings. It was not until Hyde had to extend past Kimbrel to use Mike Baumann and Jonathan Heasley that the game got away.
The Orioles did squander an excellent start from Dean Kremer the next afternoon, but they did it with Yennier Cano — nearly as good as Bautista last year, albeit by less overpowering means — on the mound for the ninth. Cano pitched poorly, but it’s not as if his appearance in a high-leverage situation signaled a structural failure in the bullpen.
The team entered Thursday night’s game with a 1.78 ERA and a 46-11 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 35 1/3 relief innings. The veteran Kimbrel, signed to stand in for Bautista, doesn’t throw nearly as hard as he once did but has leaned on his curve to strike out seven and allow just one base runner through four appearances. On Wednesday, Kimbrel, Aiken and Baumann held the Red Sox scoreless and struck out nine over four innings as the Orioles rallied from a 5-0 deficit.
That’s staggeringly good stuff all the way around.
Will there be times this year when Bautista’s absence looms large, when Kimbrel can’t finish off hitters in crucial scenarios and others are forced into roles they cannot handle? Maybe, but let’s not jump the gun on that narrative.
Colton Cowser, tip your cap.
Cowser was next in the Orioles’ prospect parade behind Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson but, man, was he not ready to help the club in 2023, batting .115 with all of two extra-base hits in 77 plate appearances.
The fifth overall pick in the 2021 draft acknowledged there was “no confidence there at all” after a three-strikeout night against Toronto. He did his best to stop overthinking every at-bat, but no effort to loosen up produced the desired results.
Cowser’s struggles reinforced his status as a divisive prospect. Several evaluators listed him top 40 in the sport. Others, such as Keith Law of The Athletic, saw a guy who could not hit lefties and was destined to become a fourth outfielder. His ability to play all three outfield spots would make him useful, but did he have star potential?
He blasted his was onto the team’s Opening Day roster with a stellar spring, prompting Elias to say: “This looks like the guy that we’ve seen in the minors more than the one that came up and had some struggles last summer.” But that did not guarantee Hyde would find daily at-bats for Cowser, who made just three plate appearances in the Orioles’ first four games.
The 24-year-old is making it difficult for Hyde to sit him, however, after he drove in six runs and made a pair of terrific catches against the Green Monster in the Orioles’ Tuesday and Wednesday victories in Boston. He topped that sundae with his first two homers in the series finale — an opposite field solo shot over the Monster, and a three-run blast in the 10th.
Everything that makes Cowser a potential standout was on display against the Red Sox, from his superb defensive instinct to his excellent plate coverage to his slashing power against right-handers. His joy at contributing is palpable.
It’s a small sample, and Cowser will eventually have to hold his own against southpaws. But he badly needed a jolt of confidence coming off his difficult first season, and here it is.
Control is the essence of the Orioles’ pitching success.
When they allowed a disastrous 5.9 runs per game in 2021, the Orioles walked 3.6 per nine innings. It’s almost impossible to pitch well if you’re putting that many runners on base.
The staff of today bears no resemblance to that one. The Orioles’ 2.88 ERA, fifth in the majors going into Thursday’s action, is the simplest expression of their success, but the components tell a more interesting story.
Led by Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez at the top of the rotation and the aforementioned thriving bullpen, they’re finishing hitters off, ranking fifth in the league at 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings. They’re even better, however, at not beating themselves, allowing just 2.2 walks per nine innings, easily the best in baseball. Even when they’ve been hit hard, they have not compounded their difficulties by stuffing the bases.
We saw the beginnings of this last year, when the Orioles allowed the seventh fewest walks per nine innings and, not coincidentally, ranked seventh in ERA. Almost to a man, their returning pitchers seem more aggressive working in the strike zone in 2024.
First-year pitching coach Drew French talks about his work as a case-by-case effort to build confidence. He also talks about the undeniable value of getting ahead in the count.
Are we witnessing the development of a house style that calls back to the great Baltimore pitching staffs of the 1970s? Too early to say, but the product on the field matches the rhetoric.