More on Orioles' injuries in a painful stretch

PHILADELPHIA – The latest count shows the Orioles with 13 players on the injured list. They can get back down to a dozen with Ryan Mountcastle’s anticipated return on Friday.

Tyler O’Neill will try to avoid it after leaving last night’s game with right wrist soreness. X-rays were negative.

O’Neill has already made two stops with neck inflammation and a left shoulder impingement, raising his career total to 16. He’s never been shelved by an injury to his right wrist, but he’s gone on the IL with a left wrist strain.

Meanwhile, Triple-A Norfolk's Vimael Machín was removed last night after one at-bat. Could be totally unrelated or he's a possibility for the 24-hour taxi squad. 

Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells are making their rehab starts and should reappear with the Orioles later this month. Good for them. That’s a long road to travel after elbow reconstructive surgery.

We have closure with Grayson Rodriguez and a cloudy forecast with Félix Bautista. Let’s linger on them this morning.

Rodriguez won’t pitch in 2025, which didn’t seem like a real possibility as recently as June. In his first beat writer scrum since March 5 in Fort Myers, Rodriguez expressed confidence in returning after the All-Star break. He was throwing and didn’t feel any discomfort in his lat, shoulder, triceps or elbow.

Pick a body part. They’ve barked like the neighbor’s dog for most of the year. But he was on the verge of starting up his bullpen sessions again, looking forward to his return to the mound the following week. His daily flat ground sessions were encouraging.

“I’m definitely gonna pitch this year,” he said, and he meant it. He said he was “past” the elbow stuff and just needed to figure out why the lat was a recurring issue. But the elbow flared up again due to an impingement and the Orioles shut him down, which led to the expectation that he’ll undergo a debridement procedure on Monday.

You could argue that Rodriguez should have just had it done in March, but it’s understandable how the club and the 2018 first-round draft pick wanted to try other avenues. They sought other options and it made sense to wait and try rest and rehab.

It’s also got to be complicated when the elbow is fine but the shoulder begins to ache and it turns out to be the lat but then it heals and the elbow discomfort returns. Not being a doctor, I can’t say that the two injuries tie together. However, there seems to be a connection here.

Anyway, a failed attempt to get Rodriguez on the 2024 Wild Card roster – the Orioles ran out of time in the buildup while he remained on the injured list with another lat strain – didn’t seem like a huge deal in his career. But he’s going to go 20-21 months without pitching in a major league game if he’s ready for Opening Day, depending on the schedule and where he’s slotted. He turns 26 in November, still in his prime and with plenty of time to meet his vast potential. But so much of it has been wasted.

Everyone has seen what he’s capable of doing. He showed it last year while posting a 3.86 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 116 2/3 innings. But he was scratched from an Aug. 6 start in Toronto because the shoulder began aching again as he warmed, and he became a health puzzle in spring training after the precipitous drop in velocity in March – the reasoning ranging from triceps soreness to elbow discomfort to inflammation and an impingement in the back of the elbow to triceps tendinitis. His lat would crash the party later.

The Orioles can’t and won’t give up on Rodriguez. There’s always 2026. They can keep trying to get him through 30-plus starts in a season and envision him as their future ace, much cheaper than the floor models in free agency. But they obviously can’t build their offseason plans around him. They’ll check the markets and negotiate and try to add at least one more starter to pair with Kyle Bradish on the upper level of the rotation. And they could eventually consider, if they haven’t gotten there yet, the idea of using him in late relief to lighten the workload and maybe the chances that he gets hurt again.

But really, try the starter thing again. He won’t even be arbitration eligible until 2027. Fix the elbow and hope it also fixes the lat.

Making his latest appearances on Foul Territory, which is how the beat crew receives most of its updates, Rodriguez specified that he’s having bone chips removed from the elbow.

"Rehabbing through the first half of the season, you kind of get to a point where it’s like, ‘OK, I’ve dealt with this for three-four years now, and now it’s just to the point where it just sucks, it just won’t go away,’” he said. "I have to get it taken care of in order to be who I want to be next season."

An active member of the roster would be a good starting point.

Bautista has inflammation in his right shoulder and requires a second MRI. The first one was too difficult to read due to the swelling.

So, just how injured is he?

Bautista informed the club in the seventh inning of a July 24 game in Cleveland that he wasn’t available to pitch. The news was relayed to interim manager Tony Mansolino, traveling from bullpen phone to dugout phone.

“When I heard that ring, I turned to the person next to me and said, ‘That’s not good,” Mansolino recounted that night. “It turned out to be horrendous.”

But just how horrendous? Like, unable to close for a little while horrendous or not gonna see him again in 2025 horrendous?

A follow-up appointment is coming “in the next week,” Mansolino said yesterday.

Bautista is the ninth-inning guy on a team that is going to have trouble carrying leads that far with the bullpen almost stripped clean of experienced high-leverage relievers. His absence won’t cost the Orioles a playoff berth. But he missed the entire 2024 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery, and to have the shoulder flare up is so unfair to both sides – the team and the pitcher. Plus, Mansolino is managing to win games. He doesn’t take the losing lightly.