Additionally, reliever Andrew Kittredge is getting knee surgery and will be out for months.
Ahead of Friday evening’s spring training game, manager Brandon Hyde delivered a small update on Grayson Rodriguez. The starter, reported to have triceps soreness yesterday, is dealing with “discomfort in the back of his right elbow,” Hyde said. Although Hyde added that it’s not currently thought to be a ligament issue, Rodriguez is officially off the table for Opening Day.
I will just say that, given the way that elbow injuries often manifest in pitchers, I am not going to be stunned if it does, in fact, turn out to be a ligament issue. Vaguely nodding to it being the triceps or back of elbow area is not reassuring that ulnar collateral ligament damage is not going on or will not eventually be discovered.
All fans can do is wait for someone with the team to say, or a reporter to reveal, whether an MRI was done and what it said or didn’t say. The longer it goes on without getting any kind of definitive update, the more likely that the update that will be coming is a bad one.
A person did not have to stretch to guess that Rodriguez wasn’t going to be in the Opening Day roster picture as soon as he came down with the triceps soreness. That’s confirmed now.
The only bit of good news is that the Orioles have 20 days to figure out how they want to handle that. Is Albert Suárez the next man up? Has Cade Povich done enough in spring training to show that he’ll do well enough to plug him in? Or could this development be the kind of thing that kicks Mike Elias back out into the trade market? We’ll have to wait and see what happens between now and the start of the season.
Hyde had some other bad injury news to give out on Friday. Reliever Andrew Kittredge needs arthroscopic knee surgery and is going to miss multiple months. Things have been pointing in that direction for Kittredge for a few days now. When a guy has knee soreness, isn’t throwing at all, and any mention of him just involves getting other opinions, that’s because the first opinion wasn’t good.
Orioles fans were less invested in Kittredge since he was only signed a couple of months ago, but that’s still a tough blow to Elias’s plan for the season. He made only one move to fortify the bullpen and it’s going to be a bust until, at the most generous timeline, June. Unlike the rotation, there’s not as much depth to be had in the bullpen picture.
This also opens up space for guys who might not have otherwise made the team, with the out-of-options Bryan Baker possibly being the top beneficiary as a bullpen spot opens up. Those of us who will primarily associate Baker with his 2023 playoff failure are not heartened by this thought. He could be better than that.