Baltimore Orioles Pitcher Corbin Burnes Makes History In Incredible Opening Day Outing.
Few fan bases in Major League Baseball are as optimistic about their season as Baltimore Orioles fans. With an exciting young core of position players from last year’s 101-win season and a great farm system, the future is bright in Baltimore.
The Orioles, who are under new ownership as of this week, also acquired a top-line starting pitcher in former Milwaukee Brewers ace Corbin Burnes. Orioles manager Brandon Hyde gave him the ball for opening day, and he did not disappoint.
The 2021 Cy Young winner surrendered just one hit, a first-inning home run to Mike Trout, and struck out eleven Angels over six standout innings.
That’s a good outing any time. But, to give up just one hit over six innings and have double-digit strikeouts is incredibly rare. How rare, you ask?
According to OptaStats, Corbin Burnes became the first pitcher in a team’s first game of the season to have ten or more strikeouts while giving up one or less hits since Lon Warneke for the Cubs back in 1934.
That’s how the entire game went for the Orioles. They tallied ten hits en route to eleven runs in an 11-3 blowout win over the Angels. The Orioles are many people’s pick to win the American League, and they showed why on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the meme of the Angels being carried by Mike Trout immediately came true once again on Thursday. It could be a long season for Angels fans.
Corbin Burnes dominates in Orioles debut, significantly raises their ceiling
It would be difficult for an offseason addition to have a better debut with their new team than the one starting pitcher Corbin Burnes had for the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday. Burnes not only dazzled for six innings against the Los Angeles Angels, he showed why his addition was one of the most significant ones in baseball and why the Orioles should be regarded as one of the top World Series contenders in baseball.
In his six-inning debut Burnes allowed just one hit (a first-inning home run to Mike Trout), struck out 11 and walked none.
Outside of that one mistake to Trout, he was perfect.
He is also perfect for what the Orioles needed.
Burnes is one of the best pitchers in baseball, finishing in the top 10 of the National League Cy Young voting in each of the past four seasons. He won it after the 2021 season.
If the Orioles had one weakness during the 2023 season, it was their lack of a true front-line starting pitcher. Now they have one.
What should make that so intimidating for the rest of the American League is that Baltimore still won 101 games – and the American League East – a year ago without having that sort of presence at the top of its starting rotation.
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