Orioles ace Corbin Burnes recorded another excellent start and the O’s added four more June homers, nearing record territory.
The Orioles needed this. After two series with more disappointment than not against the Astros and Guardians, the Orioles came out on Thursday night and began a four-game set against the defending champion Rangers with a dominating victory. Their ace, Corbin Burnes, kept the Texas hitters tied down for seven innings, and O’s hitters pounded four home runs on the way to an 11-2 victory.
Oh yeah, and while all of this was going on, the Yankees were getting elbow-dropped by the Blue Jays. The two results in tandem means that the Orioles and Yankees are currently tied in the “games behind” column for the AL East – which actually means that the Orioles lead by percentage points, .630 to .627, as they’ve reached the mathematical halfway point of their season. First place, baby! They can all take some pride in that.
The outcome was hardly preordained ahead of time. The Orioles had to square off against a pretty good Rangers pitcher themselves in going up against Jon Gray. The 32-year-old righty brought a 3.03 ERA into the game. As has been the case for a number of pitchers the O’s have faced this year, some of whom are even better than Gray, they came in and blew that ERA up. Eight runs over five innings later and Gray sat on a 3.77 ERA.
The scoring started from the bottom of the first inning. Gunnar Henderson extended his personal on-base streak to 34 games immediately by leading off with a single. Ryan O’Hearn joined Henderson on base by drawing a walk with one out. Henderson was on third by the time there were two outs and he scored as Heston Kjerstad delivered a single. This 1-0 lead was quickly padded when Jordan Westburg doubled off the fence in right-center field, scoring both runners.
Westburg himself was thrown out as he trotted towards third base; with the sun bright on the warning track, it seems he may have believed he’d hit a homer. This out on the basepaths did not cost the Orioles at all by game’s end.
The 7-8-9 hitters went down in order in the second inning to lull Gray into thinking maybe he had shaken off that first inning bruising. Henderson led off by singling again, racing to third base with one out as O’Hearn also singled. This let Ryan Mountcastle drive in the fourth Orioles run with a sacrifice fly. Nor was this the end of the inning’s damage: Kjerstad struck again, socking a fly ball that just kept carrying and eventually cleared the fence in center field. That made it 6-0 Orioles on Kjerstad’s first homer of the 2024 season.
This was the first of four home runs hit by the Orioles in the game. Cedric Mullins added to Gray’s troubles with a two-run shot in the fourth inning, and once Rangers relievers started getting involved, Adley Rutschman and Colton Cowser cashed in on balls that went over the fence as well.
The stat masters were quick to note that this gives the Orioles 57 home runs in the month of June, tying the second-most that’s ever been hit in a single calendar month in franchise history. The Orioles of May 1987 had 58 homers. The Orioles of August 2017 also had 57. There are three June games remaining.
For Mullins, that home run, his ninth of the season, was one of three hits he collected in the game, leaving him the old favorite, a triple shy of the cycle. Since June 9, he’s raised his OPS by 111 points, with eight multi-hit games. When Mike Elias said he was less worried about his struggling outfielders than other people probably were, the implied confidence in Mullins is looking good just now.
Mullins was one of five Orioles with a multi-hit game on Thursday night. The team notched 14 hits overall and everyone except for Mountcastle had at least one. It was a thorough and convincing performance by the hitters.
While all of this was going on, Burnes was in control. The only damage the Rangers ended up doing to his ERA came in the fourth inning, when Adolis García hit a fly ball that looked like it might curve foul but landed in the left field seats in fair territory anyway. By this point, the solo shot made it a 6-1 game. That’s as close as Texas got the whole rest of the way. It got worse.
This wasn’t the kind of dominating game where Burnes struck out a double digit number of batters and kept traffic off the bases almost entirely. The Rangers had their share of guys on base, picking up nine hits – though Burnes didn’t give them any freebies with walks. He struck out five, which is fine. Despite the nine hits, and despite Statcast recording a lot of batted balls as “hard hit,” it never felt that dangerous. They swung and missed at 19 of Burnes’s 88 pitches, the most whiffs he’s recorded in a start this season.
Maybe that’s what it’s like to have a former Cy Young winner who’s doing the darn thing again this season. Burnes entered the game with a 2.35 ERA, fifth best in the American League. It’s hard to get lower than that, and he pulled it off. Seven innings with just one run allowed will do it. Only Boston’s Tanner Houck is below Burnes now, with a 2.18 ERA to Burnes’s 2.28. Along with his low ERA, Burnes is one of just 11 pitchers to cross 100 innings pitched at this point in the season.
The Orioles will try to make it a three-game winning streak as the series continues against Texas on Friday night, with guest splasher Joan Jett in attendance. Albert Suárez is lined up for the 7;05 game for the O’s, with Max Scherzer listed as the starting pitcher for the Rangers. This will be just the second start of the year for Scherzer.