This is not a good update, although it could be worse.
Several days after Gunnar Henderson left a spring training game early, the Orioles revealed a diagnosis for his injury. Manager Brandon Hyde told reporters after Wednesday’s game that Henderson has a mild intercostal strain. Hyde said that he is “very, very hopeful” as far as Henderson being on the Opening Day roster.
Absent any other context, that’s a positive development for Henderson. The manager is very hopeful he’ll be on the Opening Day roster. It’s less positive because, up until right now, that wasn’t even a question. Nothing had been indicated about the injury to make Opening Day up in the air. Just two days ago, the story was that Henderson had “turned a corner” or some such. Apparently it was not turned enough.
The good news, such as it is, is that Opening Day is still 22 days away. Even with the Orioles slow-playing his injury recovery, as Hyde described it on Wednesday, they can give him a week more off and there’s still a couple of weeks for him to get back into game shape for the season. Henderson suffered the injury after leaping to make a catch in a spring training game last week.
Being a particular sick freak remembering random Orioles injury diagnoses of the past, I remember a time where Kevin Gausman was said to have an intercostal strain and then it turned out to be that he had pneumonia. The Orioles of that era being what they were, they then rushed him back from that pneumonia recovery on short rest to start a game against the then-powerhouse Tigers.
I hope it’s actually an accurate diagnosis this time and that Henderson can heal smoothly from here on. Things are fine for now. If there is another update indicating a further delay, that will be more of a problem and Hyde will probably be less hopeful about Opening Day.
In other Orioles injury news, Hyde spoke about reliever Andrew Kittredge, the team’s only bullpen signing over the offseason. The 34-year-old Kittredge pitched in one game this spring before coming down with soreness in his left knee. Hyde told reporters that Kittredge has gotten imaging done and the team will seek multiple opinions about what to do about it.
My rule of thumb is that if the first opinion was good news, there wouldn’t be a need for multiple opinions. Even more zoomed out than that, if the injury is mild enough, you don’t need any opinions, it just gets better in a short timeframe. It would not shock me if Kittredge is not in the Opening Day plans now. That’s one way the Orioles might have something of a solution for the “What are we supposed to do with all of these pitchers?” issue.