A slump isn’t over with one at-bat, but Jordan Westburg did his best to put nearly two weeks’ worth of struggles behind him.

On Saturday, the Orioles infielder broke up an 0-for-30 skid with a solo home run off Cincinnati Reds reliever Carson Spiers in the bottom of the seventh inning. He caught a sweeper on the inner half and launched it 397 feet over the head of former teammate Austin Hays to go back-to-back with Ramón Laureano in the Orioles’ 9-5 win.

“I feel like I put together some pretty good at-bats today,” Westburg said after the game. “But yeah, my swing feels a little bit better. I’ve been grinding away at the cage trying to get this figured out, so it’s going to be a good stepping stool for these next couple of games and next couple days, just to build on.”

Westburg, 26, has gotten off to a slow start to the 2025 campaign after suffering a couple of injuries at the end of spring training. He entered Saturday’s game hitless since April 6 and carried a .175/.246/.317 slash line for the season before going 1-for-5 with three batted balls registering exit velocities of 97 mph or faster, including 102 mph on the homer.

“A guy pressing,” manager Brandon Hyde said of Westburg on Friday. “I gave him a day off a couple days ago. He’s really trying hard and he’s just out in front, getting in bad counts and all those things when someone is going through a tough time. He’s getting in bad counts and he’s expanding and it looks like he’s trying to catch everything way out in front and not trusting his hands.”

The 2024 American League All-Star was dealing with an “upper-body injury,” Hyde said, but the club wasn’t considering placing him on the injured list as of Friday evening. He got off to a strong start to the campaign with three home runs in as many games in the Orioles’ opening series against the Toronto Blue Jays, then got the day off in the series finale because he was “banged up,” and he had since struggled to find a rhythm.

Westburg said the work he put in while in the batting cages wasn’t aimed at figuring anything out but rather making some adjustments that allowed him to start feeling like himself again.

“It can be hard because, for me, I want to help this team win so badly, and if my name is in the lineup, I expect a lot out of myself,” Westburg said. “So, I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform, so when that doesn’t happen, it can be hard to kind of push baseball aside because I’m the kind of guy who wants to get it fixed so that tomorrow I can help a team.”

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