These Opening Day records are tough to top

Hope springs anew for players, coaches and fans alike on Opening Day, with stats getting reset and each team starting from square one.

Everyone wants to start the season on the right foot, and the players below did that and then some, putting up Opening Day performances that will be tough to top.

• Best Opening Day performances in MLB history

Here is a selection of notable single-game Opening Day records (dating back to 1901, with a hat tip to Stathead).

Most homers: 3 (4 times)

Four players have gone deep three times on Opening Day, and three of these performances were against the Royals.

Blue Jays slugger George Bell was the first to accomplish the feat, doing so in Toronto’s 1988 season opener against Kansas City -- Bell’s first game after winning the ‘87 American League MVP Award with a 47-homer season. Bell followed it up by going 5-for-5 in the Blue Jays’ second game, but he faded thereafter and finished the year with a .751 OPS, down from .957 the previous season.

Tuffy Rhodes matched Bell with three homers against the Mets -- all off Dwight Gooden -- on Opening Day with the 1994 Cubs. The three dingers represented nearly a quarter of the homers (13) he hit in his entire Major League career. After playing his final MLB season in 1995, Rhodes went on to become a star in Japan, setting the Nippon Professional Baseball all-time home run record for a foreign-born player with 464.

More than a decade later, Dmitri Young blasted three homers for the Tigers in their 2005 season opener against the Royals. Young ended up leading Detroit with 21 home runs that year.

Matt Davidson was the most recent to send three balls into the seats on Opening Day, crushing a trio of round-trippers for the White Sox against Kansas City on Opening Day in 2018.

Most hits: 5 (14 times)

A five-hit game has been accomplished 14 times on Opening Day -- five by players in the Hall of Fame -- but only five have happened in the Expansion Era (since 1961).

The most recent players to tally five hits on Opening Day were the Orioles' Adley Rutschman and the Blue Jays' George Springer in 2023. Rutschman went 5-for-5 with a homer, four RBIs and a walk in a 10-9 win over the Red Sox at Fenway Park, becoming the first backstop with a five-hit game on Opening Day since at least 1901.

Springer, for his part, went 5-for-6 -- all singles -- with an RBI and four runs scored in the Blue Jays' 10-9 win over the Cardinals at Busch Stadium.

Most extra-base hits: 4 (4 times)

Four players have notched four extra-base hits on Opening Day. Surprisingly, none of the three-homer guys made the list.

Pop Dillon, who played just 312 games over five seasons in the Majors, had four doubles in the Tigers' first game of the 1901 season. In 1936, the Cubs' Billy Herman matched Dillon's extra-base hit total when he registered three two-baggers and a home run as part of a 5-for-5 performance on Opening Day against the Cardinals.

Jim Greengrass chipped in with four doubles against the Milwaukee Braves in the Reds' 1954 opener, and Don Baylor went 4-for-4 with a homer, a triple and two doubles for the Orioles against the Brewers on Opening Day in '73.

Most RBIs: 7 (2 times)

With six RBIs in the Padres’ first game in 2020, Eric Hosmer came within one RBI of tying the all-time Opening Day record. Hosmer is one of 16 players to record at least six RBIs on Opening Day, but only two players have driven in seven runs in a season opener.

The first was Brant Alyea, who went 4-for-4 with two homers and seven RBIs for the Twins on Opening Day against the White Sox in 1970. Alyea also had a two-homer, seven-RBI performance that September. Those two games made up 23% of his RBI total (61) for the entire season.

The Cubs’ Corey Patterson also had seven RBIs on Opening Day in 2003, going yard twice against the Mets. Since Patterson did it, three players have had six-RBI games on Opening Day -- Adam Lind in 2009, Placido Polanco in ‘10 and Hosmer in ’20.

Most stolen bases: 3 (9 times)

There have been more than 100 multi-steal games on Opening Day, but just nine players have gone for the trifecta. The list includes MLB’s all-time stolen base king, Rickey Henderson, as well as noted speedsters Davey Lopes, Paul Molitor and Tony Womack.

Since Womack accomplished the feat in 2004, there have been only two three-steal games on Opening Day. Emilio Bonifacio did it for the Marlins in 2009, and Trea Turner swiped three bags in the Nationals’ 2019 season opener. To break the record, a player would need to tally four steals on Opening Day. Miami's Jon Berti had MLB’s last four-steal game, in September 2019.

Most pitcher strikeouts: 15 (1 time)

For all of the marquee names that have taken the ball on Opening Day over the years, nobody has bested Camilo Pascual’s total of 15 strikeouts against the Red Sox in the Washington Senators’ 1960 season opener. Pascual finished that season with a career-high 8.5 K/9 rate over 151 2/3 innings, then led the AL in strikeouts in each of the next three years.

Pascual's gem came on the heels of Don Drysdale’s 14-strikeout performance in the Dodgers’ opener six days earlier. Drysdale broke the record previously held by Lon Warneke, who racked up 13 K’s in the Cubs’ first game of the 1934 season. Pascual himself never had more than 15 strikeouts in a game during his 18-year career, although he did tally 15 again in 1961.

Two other pitchers have since tallied 14 K’s in an Opening Day game, with Hall of Famer Randy Johnson doing it for the Mariners in 1993 and ‘96, and Cleveland righty Shane Bieber fanning 14 batters in 2020.

Highest WPA: 1.056 for a hitter, 1.552 for a pitcher

The record for the highest Win Probability Added by a hitter in a single Opening Day game belongs to Raul Mondesi, who posted a 1.056 WPA against the D-backs in the Dodgers’ 1999 opener.

After opening the scoring with an RBI single off Randy Johnson in the bottom of the first inning, Mondesi tied the game with a two-out, three-run homer off Gregg Olson in the bottom of the ninth -- a play that had a WPA of 0.49. Two innings later, Mondesi slugged a two-out, walk-off homer off John Frascatore, adding another 0.43 points to his WPA total.

Walter Johnson was responsible for the highest WPA in a season opener on the pitching side: His 15-inning shutout for the Senators in a 1-0 win over the Philadelphia A’s to open the 1926 campaign gave him a WPA of 1.552.

The highest WPA total for a pitcher in an Opening Day performance of no more than nine innings was recorded by the Phillies’ Les Sweetland (0.903) in a 1-0 win over the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1930.