Jackson Holliday homers as Norfolk takes season opener, 12-8

The #1 Orioles prospect had three hits and drove in four runs as the Tides won a slugfest

Triple-A: Norfolk Tides 12, Durham (Rays) 8

The Tides will be the only affiliate active for the next week.

For Orioles fans who are excited for the team’s prospects at the top affiliate, this game could not have started off better. One of the justifications offered by Mike Elias for why Jackson Holliday has begun the season in the minors is that he needs to get more experience against left-handed pitching. As fortune would have it, the starter for Durham on Opening Day is lefty Mason Montgomery, who is rated as the #9 prospect in the Rays system. Maybe not a big league-caliber lefty, but that’s a solid prospect.

Holliday was more than up to the task. He led off the game for Norfolk and blasted a home run in his very first at-bat of the minor league season:

Tough to beat that. Norfolk took this early lead and never trailed.

Top prospect or not, Montgomery was not any good on Friday night. Optimists might say that’s just how much better a lineup containing Holliday, Connor Norby, Heston Kjerstad, Coby Mayo, and Kyle Stowers is against even a relatively decent prospect.

Norfolk’s offense exploded against Montgomery in the second inning, chasing him from the game with just 1.2 innings pitched and seven runs allowed. Holliday picked up a sacrifice fly to drive in another run, and Kjerstad and Stowers also drove in runs as the Tides put up a seven-spot.

Staked to a seven-run lead, one might have hoped that Norfolk’s own Opening Day starter, Chayce McDermott, could throw strikes and have a smooth first outing. It was in the vicinity of smooth: He only allowed one run and one hit. The Bulls batters, for the most part, could not touch him.

The problem for McDermott is he had problems touching the strike zone. This is not a new thing for him. High strikeouts but also high walks were a common issue for him a year ago. With six strikeouts but five walks allowed in a 4.1 inning start, he is beginning 2024 the same way he was playing in 2023. McDermott threw 85 pitches while failing to get through the fifth inning.

“Five and dive” outings with lots of walks, lots of strikeouts, and few runs allowed can win you a Cy Young these days – just ask Blake Snell – but you’ve got to at least be able to get the five. Snell averaged roughly 5.2 IP per start a year ago.

McDermott’s early exit set up a need for Norfolk’s bullpen to cover several innings. Reliever Tucker Davidson, who was on the Orioles 40-man roster over the offseason before being removed, got blasted about as bad as Durham’s Montgomery. Under Davidson’s watch, the Bulls put up a seven-run inning of their own in the sixth, turning what should have been a “cruise to victory” 10-0 lead into a mere 10-8 advantage.

Unlike Montgomery, Davidson can lay some of the blame on his defense, as four of the seven runs were unearned. Tides fielders committed three errors over the course of that inning – throwing errors by Holliday and Mayo, as well as a missed catch by Kjerstad, who was playing first base. Mayo had a second throwing error at another point in the game. The bats were exciting, but there may be some work to be done on defense.

The Tides responded to all of this by coming out and getting two runs back in the bottom of the sixth. Norby drove in two runs with a double to set up the final score. From there, Tides relievers took it home, with Luis González tossing 1.1 scoreless innings to get the game into the eighth, where Wandisson Charles pitched a clean inning and Bryan Baker finished things off in the ninth. Baker walked two batters to make things interesting, but his inning was scoreless too.

Hitting-wise, the game could hardly have gone better. Holliday had three hits with four runs driven in. Norby had four hits. Each of Kjerstad and Mayo had a pair of hits. That’s the good stuff. Hopefully soon the defense will also be the good stuff.

Box score.

Saturday’s Scheduled Game

Norfolk vs. Durham, 6:35pm. Starting pitchers: Bruce Zimmermann (Norfolk), Nathan Wiles (Durham)

Wiles is a righty, so if there are any more left-left narratives to be made about Holliday, it will have to come against relievers, at least for this game.