Strowd on HBP last night: “I was just hoping it wasn’t anything with his face and super minor”

Kade Strowd was hesitant to talk about it. The 96 mph sinker last night that crashed into the side of George Springer’s batting helmet in the ninth inning. The collective gasp from fans and the silence as Springer stayed face-down in the dirt.

Strowd eventually told the media this morning that he would speak about the incident, but it still shook him.

Springer is OK. Strowd has to move on but remains impacted by it.

“The one pitch, lost control,” he said. “It was my first sinker of the day. Just lost that one up and in. Part of the game but you hate to see somebody, especially like George, go down like that, so hope he’s all right.”

Strowd walked toward Springer and later crouched at the mound.

“It’s a long wait, that’s for sure,” he said. “But yeah, never a good time on a baseball field. Usually, there’s a lot of good ones, but definitely not that one.”

The sound was so loud that it punctured the air at Camden Yards. Anyone looking away from the play immediately knew what happened.

Strowd said his first thought was “just hoping it got all helmet.”

“I was just hoping it wasn’t anything with his face and super minor.”

Pitching coach Drew French came out of the dugout to check on Strowd, who was making his fifth major league appearance. French motioned for catcher Adley Rutschman to join him.

“He was just making sure my mind was still OK and that I was still ready to finish the game,” Strowd said. “That was a big game and we still needed to get the win.

“We kind of just stayed away at that point. We stayed away to Vladdy (Guerrero) and we stayed away from (Bo) Bichette. Just trying to get a ground ball and get out of there.”

Interim manager Tony Mansolino talked to Strowd this morning. Keegan Akin began to move around in the bullpen last night in case Strowd couldn’t get through the inning.

“He didn’t mean to do that, that’s an accident,” Mansolino said. “That’s something that pitchers, a lot of times that does affect them. I just checked in with him this morning. He seemed OK, seemed fine. Told him he was probably going to pitch today, it’s a doubleheader, so be ready to roll.”

Reliever Colin Selby is the 27^th different Orioles player to land on the injured list this season. He has a strained hamstring and is getting an MRI after tossing a scoreless inning last night.

“It’s the last pitch he threw,” Mansolino said. “If you go back and look at the video, you can kind of see his reaction. … We don’t know the severity of it. We’ll know more after the MRI.”

Grayson Rodriguez is getting multiple opinions on his right elbow, which is preventing the Orioles from updating his condition. They need more information.

“We’ve just got to figure out what’s what, what’s causing things,” Mansolino said. “Be as thorough as you can be. Check with well renown doctors, use our doctors that are great. Just try to figure it out.

“I don’t think, like, we know how modern medicine is. It’s not always like this one pill fixes everybody, so I think there’s different diagnosis and treatment for different people for different things. So they’ve just got to try to figure out. It’s never a sure thing. It’s based on science, which is as sure as we’re gonna get, but you’ve got to do your due diligence and try to figure it out, which is what we’re doing.”

First baseman Ryan Mountcastle is on his injury rehab assignment with Triple-A Norfolk and could rejoin the Orioles next week in Philadelphia.