Well he doesn't have a four-hit game yet - that is still to come for Orioles rookie Gunnar Henderson. But he can cross grand slam off the list now.

He connected on his first career slam to center field in the third inning last night as the Orioles rocked Toronto starter Chris Bassitt for eight runs and beat the Blue Jays 11-6. 

The Orioles, now 42-24 and four games behind Tampa Bay which lost at Oakland, are 4-0 this year against Toronto scoring six, six, eight and 11 runs in those games. Since losing their first two AL East series of the year the Orioles have won their past four, now can get a fifth and are 10-3 in their past 13 AL East games.

Toronto (37-31) had won eight of 11 heading into this series. But the Blue Jays are now just 2-14 in their last 16 division games. 

As Henderson has seen his bat heat up in recent weeks, he believes that being more aggressive early in counts has been a plus for him. He is not waiting for the perfect pitch if he gets one he feels he can drive. He also said getting more opposite-field hits is big for him. His huge homer in the recent Milwaukee series was hit down the left-field line.

Ryan O’Hearn fouled off a changeup last night in the third inning, got the barrel on a slider and deposited the ball into the home bullpen.

Home is where O’Hearn is hardest to contain.

He began last night batting .462 with a 1.362 OPS in nine games at Camden Yards and .237 with a .722 OPS in 15 games on the road, though his three-run homer on May 20 at Rogers Centre qualifies as one of the season’s biggest hits.

I wrote yesterday that O’Hearn’s OPS was the highest mark for any Orioles player in his first nine home games with a minimum of 30 plate appearances, per STATS.

There’s more, of course.

Ryan Mountcastle has lost his day-to-day status with the Orioles.

The club announced a few minutes before first pitch that Mountcastle was placed on the 10-day injured list retroactive to Saturday with vertigo.

Catcher Mark Kolozsvary had his contract selected from Triple-A Norfolk, and he reported to the club today.

The Orioles designated pitcher Noah Denoyer for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster.

Mountcastle hasn’t played since Tuesday, with the club explaining his absence as an illness. Manager Brandon Hyde said Mountcastle came to the ballpark yesterday to take some swings and was going to be a full participant this afternoon in batting practice.  

Coming off a three-game series sweep of Kansas City – their first over the Royals since the 2017 season – the Orioles host the only club they have swept three from on the road tonight. The Toronto Blue Jays are in Baltimore to begin a three-game series.

The Orioles beat Kansas City by a larger score margin each day, winning 3-2 Friday, 6-1 Saturday and 11-3 on Sunday to improve to 41-24. They are 17 games over the .500 mark for the first time since July 26, 2016.

The Orioles have won four in a row by a combined 26-9 score. After going through a stretch where they lost three of four series, they are now 7-4 over the past 11 games.

Toronto (37-30) is in fourth place in the American League East, 10 games behind first place Tampa Bay. The Orioles remain in second place and are five games out. Baltimore’s .631 win percentage is tied with Texas for the second-best in both the AL and MLB.

The Blue Jays went 3-1 against Houston and 1-2 versus Minnesota over the weekend, winning the last game of that series. Toronto has won eight of its past 11 games. And, since getting swept by the Orioles May 19-21 at Rogers Centre by a 20-10 score, Toronto is 12-8.

Orioles rookie Gunnar Henderson got alerted to the news the way likely many of his fans did as well. He saw it on his phone Monday afternoon that he had been named the American League Player of the Week. It was his first such honor and first for the Orioles since Ryan Mountcastle was POW in the AL in June of 2021.

Henderson hit .526/.550/1.053 (10-for-19) during the week with one double, three homers, five runs scored, six RBIs, one walk, and two stolen bases in five games, hitting safely in all of them.

For the period, he led the AL in batting and on-base percentage, ranked second in slugging and OPS (1.063), tied for second in home runs, third in total bases (20), tied for third in hits, and tied for fifth in RBIs.

“Feel like it’s a testament to the hard work,” he said of the honor today during batting practice in the Orioles dugout. “Just everything I had gone through at the beginning of the year. Just trusting the process and put in a lot of hard work and feel like that has been the biggest thing.”

His OPS was just .659 at the end of April and had dipped to .643 by early May. But as he started to make some louder contact and more often drive baseballs, he felt he was headed in the right direction.

Two veteran Orioles relievers will begin injury rehab assignments this week.

Mychal Givens will pitch for Double-A Bowie on Wednesday and Triple-A Norfolk on Friday. Dillon Tate is scheduled to pitch for Norfolk Thursday and Saturday.

Givens began the season on the injured list with left knee inflammation, made six appearances with the Orioles and returned to the IL on June 2 with right shoulder inflammation. He allowed five earned runs and six total with six walks in four innings.

Tate is waiting to make his 2023 debut. He completed a rehab assignment and went back on the injured list with a right elbow flexor strain. The Orioles transferred him to the 60-day IL to create a spot for infielder Josh Lester.

The latest injury is unrelated to the strained right forearm that kept him from pitching in spring training.

Ryan Mountcastle remains out of the Orioles’ lineup tonight due to an illness. He hasn’t played since Thursday.

Ryan O’Hearn is the first baseman and cleanup hitter to open the Blue Jays series. Gunnar Henderson is leading off and serving as the designated hitter.

Henderson had eight hits while the Orioles swept the Royals, with two home runs and two stolen bases. Per STATS, he's just the sixth rookie in the modern era (1901) to reach those numbers in a three-game series.

O’Hearn has a 1.362 OPS in nine games at Camden Yards, the highest mark for any Orioles player in his first nine home games with a minimum of 30 plate appearances, also according to STATS.

Aaron Hicks gets another start in center field.

None of the trio pitched for a big-time SEC school or were a high draft pick. One reaches the backend of a top 30 O's prospects list. But in an organization without a lot of touted, high-draft pick pitching, they are trying to make their way to Baltimore.

And with the starts that right-handers Alex Pham, Jean Pinto and Ryan Long have gotten off to for High-A Aberdeen (28-28), they might have that chance.

Pham, 23, selected in round 19 in 2021 out of the University of San Francisco, was recently named the Pitcher of the Month for May in the South Atlantic League. He went 2-0 with a 1.54 ERA over five starts allowing just 10 hits in 23 1/3 innings with 12 walks, 34 strikeouts, a .128 average against and 0.94 WHIP for the month.

“Everything has been working for him,” said Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado of a pitcher with a fastball in the 92, 93 mph range that has touched 95.8 this season. “The velocity is up a little bit. His cutter has been excellent and so has his curveball. He’s really been getting ahead of hitters and letting his stuff play in the zone. Done a tremendous job for us and big props to our pitching coach Austin Meine who has done a great job creating pitching plans for each pitcher and working on goals that each pitcher has here.”

Pham over 11 games and nine starts for the year overall, is 3-2 with a 2.58 ERA that ranks fifth-best in the league. Over 45 1/3 innings he has allowed 28 hits with 23 walks, 67 strikeouts and a 1.13 WHIP. He’s just been solid and in his most recent outing pitched five hitless and scoreless with 11 strikeouts. 

The Orioles could send a catcher to the All-Star Game for the first time since 2016 and have their first healthy starter at the position in 36 years.

Adley Rutschman is the leader in voting in the American League at 460,496 to give him a comfortable margin over the Rangers’ Jonah Heim (320,028), a former Orioles minor leaguer. The Royals’ Salvador Pérez is third at 312,615.

Matt Wieters was an All-Star in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2016. He was leading AL catchers in voting in 2014 when he sustained an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery.

Terry Kennedy was voted into the All-Star Game in 1987, and Mickey Tettleton was a reserve two years later.

Rutschman didn’t make his major league debut last year until May 21 and was slow to heat up, but he emerged as the immediate favorite in 2023 and is batting .274/.390/.410 with eight doubles, eight home runs, 28 RBIs and 46 walks that lead the league.

Every year it seems like some of the biggest winning clubs in baseball have players succeed throughout their roster. Not only the roster of 26 players but many more that contribute in a myriad ways over the long season of 162 games.

The Orioles are getting that right now and it was on display in Sunday’s 11-3 victory that completed a three-game sweep of Kansas City by a 20-6 score. The Orioles earlier had three game sweeps at home April 21-23 versus Detroit and May 19-21 at Toronto. This was their first three-game sweep of Kansas City since the 2017 season.

At 41-24, the Orioles are playing .631 ball which translates to 102 wins for a full year. They are 17 games over the .500 mark for the first time since June 26, 2016.

But on a day Gunnar Henderson grabbed some headlines with his long home run in the eighth, Ryan O’Hearn reached base five times for the first time in his career. And he did it versus a Kansas City team he has played 342 games with. O’Hearn went 3-for-3 with two walks, four runs and he hit a changeup with a 107.9 mph exit velocity in the home eighth for his fourth O’s home run.

In 24 games with Baltimore, O’Hearn is batting .328 with a .989 OPS. Among all Orioles this year, that OPS is second on the team to outfielder Aaron Hicks, who is batting .345 with a 1.058 OPS, going 10-for-29 with eight runs and seven walks in 10 games.

When breaking down the differences between his time with Triple-A Norfolk this year compared to the majors, the stuff that really stood out to him, Cole Irvin’s mind immediately went to the obvious contrast.

The one that might stand alone and made him smile.

He couldn’t resist.

“I think the postgame celebrations are slightly different,” he quipped.

That’s a fair point. The Orioles are in a league of their own when it comes to saluting wins and milestones. They are the masters of merriment. The lights, the smoke, the loud music, the shower cart treatments that threaten to deplete the condiments supply in the food room.

From April 21-23, the Orioles swept three straight at home from Detroit, beating the Tigers by a combined 9-3 score. From May 19-21 they swept three at Toronto, outscoring the Blue Jays 20-10. Today they can complete a three-game sweep of Kansas City if they win this afternoon at Oriole Park. 

The Orioles (40-24) have beaten the Royals by 3-2 and 6-1 scores in this series, allowing just thee runs in two games after allowing 23 runs in three games at Kansas City in early May. The Orioles did take two of three then and are 4-1 this year against Kansas City and are 18-6 in their last 24 games at home against the Royals since 2015.

The Orioles are now 14-6-1 in 21 series this season. They did not secure their 14th series win last year until the 31st series, from July 25-28 vs. Tampa Bay. Baltimore didn't win more than 12 series of more than one game in any of the three full seasons from 2018-21 (12-32-8 in 2021, 10-34-8 in 2019, and 9-39-5 in 2018). With the win Saturday, the Orioles became the fourth major league team to reach 40 wins this season. They did not earn their 40th victory last season until their 84th game.

Right-hander Brady Singer needed 39 pitches to get through the bottom of the first inning Saturday, as the Orioles had two hits and three walks and got an RBI double by Anthony Santander and an RBI single by Ryan O’Hearn.

Gunnar Henderson blasted a 408-foot homer to center in the second inning. It was his third in six games and his eighth of the year. Henderson pounced on a first-pitch slider, had two hits on the day and is 5-for-8 in this series.

If you think O’s closer Felix Bautista is having a better season than even last year, when he closed games well for the club late in 2022, you would be right.

His ERA is lower and his strikeout rate is much higher, and he is a pitcher on a tremendous roll right now.

For the year, over 30 games and 31 innings, he is 3-1 with a 1.16 ERA and 17 saves, to rank tied for second in the major leagues. His 18.6 strikeouts per nine innings, up from 12.1 last year, ranks first in the majors among all pitchers throwing at least 20 innings.

Bautista, who has saved each of his last six chances, has fanned 64 of 126 batters he has faced this year. That K percentage of 50.8 ranks in the 100^th percentile, meaning it’s the absolute best in the majors right now. He also ranks in the 100^th percentile in whiff percentage. Hitters that swing at his splitter miss the pitch 59.3 percent of the time. He only throws his slider four percent of the time, but when hitters offer at that pitch they miss 80.0 percent.

He is averaging 99.2 mph on his fastball, up a bit from last year, and he touched 101.1 mph when he got the save Friday in an overpowering performance against Kansas City.

In an attempt to take the first two games of this series, the Orioles sent left-hander Cole Irvin to the mound today. He would have a chance to pitch his team to a win and perhaps to pitch himself back into the starting five in the rotation.

Today he was a big part of doing the first part and probably got the second done as well.

Irvin allowed one run over 5 1/3 innings after entering with an ERA of 10.38, as the Orioles beat Kansas City 6-1 in front of 34,136 at Oriole Park. Baltimore improves to 40-24 on the year, to 4-1 against Kansas City and to 14-6-1 in 21 series.

Irvin got some solid defense behind him in both the infield and outfield and needed 72 pitches, 55 for strikes to get those 16 outs. He allowed six hits and just that one run after giving up six, three and six runs in his early-season starts for the Orioles. That was before he was sent out to the minors where he went 6-1 with a 3.21 ERA in seven Triple-A starts.

Before the game, manager Brandon Hyde said Irvin had “every opportunity” to lock down a rotation spot, adding, “Be nice to have a left-handed starter in our rotation.”

The Orioles won another series opener and the Royals lost another one. And, because of that the Orioles need one win over the next two days to record yet another series win. 

Austin Hays homered and doubled and the O’s got RBIs also from Jorge Mateo and Anthony Santander in Friday’s 3-2 win over Kansas City. The Orioles are now 39-24 and remain 6.5 games back of Tampa Bay, which beat Texas.

The Orioles are 15-6 in series-opening games and 6-4 in such games at home. K.C. falls to 4-17 in the first game of a series.

The Orioles had allowed 23 runs and 36 hits when they played in Kansas City in early May, yet they took two of three in that series. So they are now 3-1 on the year versus the Royals and 12-5 against AL Central teams.

Kansas City (18-45) has lost four in a row, seven of eight scoring 19 runs in that time and is 4-14 in its last 18 games. The Royals are 7-7 in one-run games while the Orioles are 12-7.

Orioles center fielder Cedric Mullins, on the injured list since May 30 with a right groin strain, is in Sarasota, Fla. at the Orioles facility and has just resumed doing some baseball activities, Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said today.

“Sounds like he is progressing very well,” said Hyde, who added there is still no firm timetable for his return to the roster.

The Orioles are 5-4 in nine games without Mullins, who has hit .263/.356/.479/.835 with eight homers, 39 RBIs and 13 steals over 53 games.

Orioles lefty Cole Irvin (0-2, 10.38 ERA) will make his fourth start of the year for the Orioles today facing Kansas City and his first since he gave up six runs over four innings April 13 versus Oakland. The Orioles are hopeful today to see the pitcher they felt they traded for in January. A pitcher who made some progress at Triple-A Norfolk, where he went 6-1 with with a 3.21 ERA, with just four walks to 22 strikeouts over 42 innings.

He has a chance today, said Hyde, to lock down an O’s rotation spot, joining Kyle Gibson, Kyle Bradish, Dean Kremer and Tyler Wells in the starting five.

The Orioles optioned left-hander Nick Vespi to Triple-A Norfolk this morning as the corresponding move to Cole Irvin’s return.

Vespi lasted one day in his second stint. He hasn’t pitched for the Orioles this season.

Irvin was recalled to make his fourth start with the Orioles, and his first since April 13. He owns a 2.19 ERA in four career starts against the Royals.

Ryan Mountcastle is out of the lineup again today due to an illness that forced him to the bench last night.

Gunnar Henderson has moved up to the leadoff spot after his career-high three hits last night. Ryan O’Hearn is the first baseman, Adam Frazier is at second base, and Josh Lester is the designated hitter.

He had an OPS of .659 at the end of April, but going into the weekend series with Kansas City, rookie Gunnar Henderson’s OPS was up to .732, which put him five percent above the league average OPS for the year. He has certainly made positive strides on offense in recent weeks with an OPS of .790 since May 1 as this weekend began.

Henderson recently made a choice to, in a sense, expand his zone a bit and be more aggressive at times early in the count. Even against a non-strike. It worked for him Thursday at Milwaukee when he got a pitch up in the zone in the eighth-inning off Brewers reliever Peter Strzelecki. It was a fastball that was just out of the strike zone on the first pitch and soon after that ball was just out of the ballpark. A huge go-ahead two-run homer to left he hit 98 mph off the bat.

The blast in Milwaukee was his second go-ahead homer in the seventh inning or later on the road trip.

“Yeah, there are times when I’ve been too passive,” Henderson told me during the road trip. “Just, I’ve had times recently where I’ve been starting to swing earlier in counts if it’s in the area that I want to go and do damage with. That has helped me and if you get contact earlier in the counts, you also limit strikeouts. A big thing has been learning how to be aggressive, but not too aggressive.”

“Definitely boosting it (my confidence) and glad to help the team in that situation. Looking forward to getting everything rolling again.

Tyler Wells needed four pitches to dispose of Royals leadoff hitter Nick Pratto last night, getting a swing and miss on his fastball for the game’s first out.

Félix Bautista began his quest for a 17^th save by striking out MJ Melendez and Maikel García with 101 mph heat, the latter frozen by it.

The final team tally was seven strikeouts, a decent total that fell short of the staff’s recent production.

Before last night, Orioles pitchers had struck out nine or more batters in seven consecutive games since May 31, and at least 11 batters in six of seven. The 84 total strikeouts were the most in any seven-game stretch in club history.

This sudden transformation to whiff wizards occurred after the Orioles struck out 40 over six games from May 25-30.

Riding some momentum with their latest comeback win on Thursday at Milwaukee, the Orioles open their next homestand tonight at Camden Yards, hosting Kansas City and Toronto for three games each.

The Orioles are 0-2-1 their past three home series, splitting four games with the Los Angeles Angels and losing two of three each to Texas and Cleveland. So, while they are 17-12 at home for the season, they are 4-6 in the three most recent series at Oriole Park.

But the team produced its 21^st comeback win yesterday. They were down 3-0 going into the seventh and scored once that inning, three times in the eighth and twice in the ninth to beat the Brewers, 6-3. Ramón Urías hit a solo homer to right to get the Orioles on the board in the seventh. Anthony Santander’s RBI double in the eighth ended an 0-for-25 slump and was his first hit of the road trip. Then Gunnar Henderson hit a two-run homer to left to give Baltimore a 4-3 lead. It was his second go-ahead homer in the late innings on the road trip, and his seventh on the year. Eleven of Henderson's last 20 hits are extra-base hits. Adam Frazier’s two-run double in the ninth completed the scoring and provided insurance runs.

The O’s offense broke out after scoring three runs or fewer in nine of the previous 12 games. They had scored just five runs the first two games in Milwaukee, and just 16 in the five games at San Francisco and Milwaukee.

The Orioles are now 1-3 their past four series, going 5-7 in 12 games since their 5-1 road trip to Toronto and New York.