On Thursday, the Baltimore Orioles take on the Los Angeles Angels on opening day at Camden Yards, the Orioles secure an 11-3 victory in their 2024 opener.
Corbin Burnes today in his first start as an Oriole:
6 IP, 11 K, 1 H, 1 ER 🔥 pic.twitter.com/etHUYpi6Pc
— B/R Walk-Off (@BRWalkoff) March 28, 2024
The reigning AL East champions displayed dominating their offense as 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner, Corbin Burnes debuted in Baltimore.
The Orioles’ new ace was excellent, as Burnes was the Orioles’ opening-day starter against the Angels, the 29-year-old righty struck out 11 and allowed just one hit to the Angels.
Burnes lifted the Orioles to a season-opening 11-3 win in historic fashion, as he gave up a solo home run to Mike Trout in the top of the first inning.
In 6.0 innings of work, he allowed one hit and one earned run, both coming on the Trout homer, while striking out 11 and not walking anyone.
Per the OptaSTATS data, Burnes is the first pitcher to allow one or fewer hits and strike out 10 or more batters in his team’s first game of the season. The last time recorded was when Chicago Cubs right-hander Lon Warneke accomplished the feat on April 17, 1934.
Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said,
“Couldn’t have asked for anything more than that. Maybe one bad pitch through six innings. Just an awesome, awesome performance. That’s not easy to do – a new team, Opening Day, a lot of jitters, probably pretty anxious. To go out and do what he did, that’s really impressive.”
The Orioles’ new ace had struck out at least 200 batters in the past three seasons, including an NL-best 243 in 2022. Burnes said in post-game,
“It’s kind of one of those days where everything lines up, that you kind of got everything working. It becomes a really fun day. You can kind of do some things that you don’t normally do when you don’t have everything working.”
