It’s not good to hear about soreness in muscles that are near the elbow.
The Orioles are having another day of spring training where the “nobody get hurt” hope is being dashed. Ahead of Wednesday’s game against the Pirates, manager Brandon Hyde reported a new injury, with Grayson Rodriguez telling the team about soreness in his triceps following his start yesterday afternoon.
This is not pleasing news by any means but it is also not exactly surprising given how Rodriguez was pitching in that outing. Writers and others who were able to watch the game reported diminished velocity and command issues, things that often turn out to have “something in his arm was secretly hurting” as the explanation.
Triceps soreness is also one of those initial diagnoses that sometimes eventually turns out to be, actually, his elbow ligament is torn and he needs a good one. Though it’s not always that, so immediate panic is premature. Still, it’s not good. 48 hours ago there was no reason to be any more worried about Rodriguez than anyone else. That’s not the case now.
Rodriguez himself tried to downplay the issues when talking to the media yesterday, specifically saying that he had intended to not throw hard and soon would be going out to “let it eat.” That’s baseball slang for going out and throwing as hard as you can. This does not seem to be the explanation that he offered privately to the Orioles.
Hyde said that the team would know more about Rodriguez tomorrow. That sounds like they’re waiting on some kind of test result. Asked whether he was concerned, Hyde replied, “There’s always concern. I’m concerned every day right now with everybody.” Extremely relatable. He’s probably thinking about different things than I am.
One way that a person could try to read the Orioles offseason activity, specifically that they did not acquire a front-end starting pitcher by signing or trade, is that they were confident in their internal option, Rodriguez, stepping forward into that role. If he turns out to have a serious injury, the team’s bet for 2025 about him will not be paying off.
Unless tomorrow’s update is, “No problem, everything is perfectly fine and he’ll be making his next start as expected,” which it almost certainly won’t be, this situation is likely to impact the Orioles Opening Day rotation picture and maybe far beyond that.