Baltimore is the current MLB leader in home runs, and it turns out the team has the hard-hit peripherals to match.
Wednesday afternoon’s win versus Minnesota was a game of firsts: Cedric Mullins hit the first walk-off home run of his career. The Orioles hit the top spot in MLB with 30 home runs and 104 runs scored. And for the first time since 1996, the Orioles have hit three-plus home runs in five straight games, the second-longest streak in MLB since 1900 after, well, themselves (the 1987 Orioles did it in six straight games).
“The home run total is going up,” said walk-off hero Mullins after the game, “and I think that’s just a matter of how our offseasons were and how we prepared for the season this spring.”
This is interesting for two reasons.
One, the 2023 Orioles did many things very well (hit for average, hit with runners in scoring position, steal bases), but they didn’t hit many home runs. Their 183 total was surpassed by sixteen other teams, including Atlanta, who blew it away with 307 home runs on the season. The Orioles’ biggest bashers were Gunnar Henderson and Anthony Santander, who each finished with 28, good but not top-of-the-league numbers.
Two, a few weeks ago, with spring training drawing to a close, a tendency was becoming clear: the 2024 Orioles were hitting a lot of home runs. They’d finish first in the AL in spring training home runs and second in RBIs. We know, we know: spring training results don’t matter. Except when they do, and here, you wonder if, as Mullins said, the Orioles’ spring power surge is really carrying over into the regular season.
Randomness? Back in spring, it felt fair to ask whether this was all just randomness: the other two teams in the Top 3 in home runs were Oakland and Kansas City. Yeah, a little random. Today, the other power-hitting teams are the Dodgers, the Red Sox and the Astros. That sounds right. Streaks happen, but these are all well-regarded offenses.
Individual standout performances? A few young Birds having breakout seasons to pace the offense. This week’s AL Player of the Week Colton Cowser is leading the way with a massive 1.229 OPS, Ryan O’Hearn is OPS’ing 1.045 (OK, young-ish), and Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg aren’t far behind, at .949 and .979, respectively.
Meanwhile, the 22-year-old Henderson has homered in three straight games for the second time in his young career. Westburg is on a six-game hitting streak, during which he’s 11-for-23, and Mullins is 11-for-30 (.367) over his last nine games.
Good hitting in general? At one point back in the spring, the Orioles were first or second in MLB in runs, hits, RBIs, slugging and OPS. Right now, they are, admittedly, a little more one-dimensional, ranking ninth in hits and average, last in walks, and second in slugging and third in OPS. That’s to say, these days the Orioles are very good at hitting for average, terrible at taking free passes, and stellar in the power department.
That’s not all good news, but the offense is also quite balanced, too: they have seven hitters with an OPS above .750: Mullins, Ryan Mountcastle and Jorge Mateo round out the list. That’s pretty good. Now if the team could get Jackson Holliday, Austin Hays and Ramón Urías to start performing at a “just okay” level, they’d be in stellar shape.
Tragic opponent pitching? No, the good news is: none of the teams they’ve faced have been utter slouches. For example, the Orioles’ latest five-game roll has come against the Milwaukee Brewers and the Minnesota Twins. Neither is bad. The Brewers are ninth in MLB in WHIP, and Minnesota, despite struggling with a bunch of injuries, is thirteenth.
Before that, the Orioles faced four good to very-good staffs, depending on how nice you want to be to the better-than-expected Angels: Boston (third-best in WHIP), Pittsburgh (fifth), Kansas City (seventh) and the Angels (eleventh).
Peripherals? Now here we have some fun news to report. The Orioles are leading MLB in average exit velocity, as well as expected average, expected slugging, expected wOBA, and expected xWOBACON. They’re also second in hard-hit percentage. Above all, it’s not so much that they’re making more contact than other teams so much as harder contact. Nothing to complain about here.
So far, it’s been a special season. MLB reports that Baltimore has never before had five-plus players with four or more home runs through the first 20 games of a season. So far, we’re eighteen games in and they already have six (Henderson (6), Mullins (5), Cowser, O’Hearn, Santander and Westburg (4 each)).
On to Kansas City. The Royals have been annoyingly competent this year, and tomorrow’s starter Alec Marsh (2-0, 4.32 ERA, 1.08 WHIP) won’t be a pushover, either. Are the Orioles getting lucky at the plate lately? This series will be a test of their mettle.