Prior to today’s game, the Orioles placed right-hander Yaramil Hiraldo on the 15-day injured list (retroactive to April 2) due to inflammation in his throwing shoulder. Left-hander Cade Povich was called up from Triple-A in the corresponding move, and Povich was immediately needed for 5 2/3 innings of long relief work after starter Chris Bassitt was hit hard early in an 8-2 O’s loss to the Pirates.
The 30-year-old Hiraldo made his MLB debut last season, posting a 4.58 ERA over 19 2/3 innings and 18 appearances for the Orioles. Between his decent Spring Training performance and some injuries up and down Baltimore’s pitching staff, Hiraldo won a spot on the Opening Day roster, though he has a 21.60 ERA over 1 2/3 innings of work early in this season. Three of Hiraldo’s four earned runs allowed came in his last outing on Tuesday, and his shoulder issue may have impacted that rough performance.
Hiraldo will now get some time to heal up, while Povich joins the roster in perhaps more than just a bullpen capacity. MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko wrote yesterday that Povich was brought up as a member of the Orioles’ medical taxi squad, so perhaps the team already had a feeling that Hiraldo would require an IL stint. However, the feeling was that Povich was in line to start Monday’s game as the replacement for the injured Zach Eflin, but that plan is obviously out the window given Povich’s usage today.
Dean Kremer was optioned to Triple-A before the season began, as the longtime starter was the odd man out given Baltimore’s full rotation of Trevor Rogers, Kyle Bradish, Shane Baz, Bassitt, and Eflin. Since injuries are inevitable, Kremer was expected to be called up sooner rather than later, though Kremer just made a Triple-A start on Friday. Rogers’ last start was last Wednesday, so he might end up going on Monday on normal rest, rather than benefiting from an extra rest day provided by the Orioles’ off-day last Thursday.
O’s are brutal. Bassitt is garbage.
Nah, age 33-37 he was consistently 10% above avg pitcher. Aube at 38 he loses it, maybe still good. Today he might have been hurt by the liner that hit him.
I didnt have a problem w elias signing him, i was just really really surprised.
After last year signing 3 starters on the down side of their thirties and having them all go from rather poorly to disastrously, its shocking that he would try signing another one.
And age 36 kimbrel blew up the year prior. You would think he was done grabbing the year that aging pitchers finally blew up, but apparently not.
@brian
Unfortunately, I agree with the former.
But disagree about the latter.
Bassitt’s been remarkably stable for quite some time, but has had a couple tough starts. I’d rather judge who he is by the last several years of data than 2 games. Regardless, getting swept by the Pirates should be a wake up call for the bats and defense in particular. Every starter in the series had an raveling inning. That’s not the kiss of death usually, but if your offense and defense aren’t there, the arms feel like they need to do it all.. I think if the team’s projected top quartile offense can get some early runs on the board, their pitchers can stop trying the win the game with negative ERA.
It’s early yet, but the putrid start of 2025 is still fresh on fans’ minds.
Yeah, spring was ok and he was bashed with a line drive before he fell apart so maybe something hurt. But he’s gonna fall off at some age. 37 might be it so its a big surprise that elias would roll the die on that after his big 0 for 4 in the Geritol category.
Yeah, but a lot of people in the comments here were wanting their own teams to sign him. Luckily for them their POBOs/GMs were smart enough not to.
When a team has to give significant innings to a bad pitcher, its a bad sign and a strong indicator that there will not be playoffs in the future.
Povich has 200 innings of 25% below avg performance. How many others does that criteria describe in the last 3 years? Two. Out of 175 other pitchers, two have been as bad as Povich.
He has clearly demonstrated that he is not a major league pitcher. And he will likely get a significant role now. If the Poviches of the world are upin AAA, the team stands a chance. If this bad a pitcher is relied upon, its another wasted year.
The jays had injuries and brought up mantiply and voth. That is pitching depth; povich is a lack of pitching depth. Neither is going to be great and Mantiply was hurt last year, but both are legitimate mlb arms that have never performed anywhere near as ineffectively as povich.
Povich is still a starter, so he’s obviously better than those two borderline MLB relievers right now. He still has some potential for future success.
Allowed over 5 per 9 in hi minors, including close to 5 last yr in aaa to go with his 5.5+ mlb. Yes, there is a nonzero chance he could improve enough to become a below avg mlb starter or more likely journeyman middle reliever. Stash him in norfolk until his performance ( and underlying metrics) starts with a 3.
DO NOT CALL HIM DEPTH. And do not use him as if he is, bc he is not.
“emergency inning eater” is best fit now.
Cade’s stuff is just run of the mill. He’ll stay on the 40 man and make spot starts until he burns his options up and then we’ll lose him on waivers. I don’t have any faith he’s going to be a positive big league starter.
Go ahead with the told you so, the jays just dfad voth. Still prefer him over povich.
McDermott catching the DFA before Povich for another arm
For all the depth and supposed improvement in the Orioles’ rotation, they are less than 10 games into the season and Povich has already been recalled to provide innings.
I can’t lay out the low level Povich is on any better than saj, see above.
Bassitt looks very much like Charlie Morton II, I’m sorry. That’s twice now where the crawl may have run across the screen “warning – Bassitt has lost it”.
9 games into the season and things are going about as poorly as they could against the Twins, Rangers, and Pirates – not exactly the Yankees, Jays and Sox.
Shut down and looking meek against a middling lefty in Game #2. Fell behind 3 other games very early with too big a hill to climb, such as today. There is no more patience at the plate than last year, too many strikeouts, too many errors, along with the disappearance of the vaunted rotation depth already.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a top of the rotation guy who can come in and shut the other guys down for 7 innings? Could have had one for the $28.5M they paid Bassitt and Eflin.
Could’ve had 2 without Alonso.
I mean its 9 games into the season lets not pretend that the mlb isn’t a marathon. Overreactions are always going to happen in the early going. And don’t get me wrong its a slow start for a lot of guys on the O’s. But there is plenty of time to pick things up.
Last year it started this way too. It was a little worse of a start (I think they were hitting .115 with RISP and under .100 for the first 25-30% of the season against lefties). However, a lot of the same things are already being seen.
Improved rotation depth? They’ve recalled Povich and Young before even game 10. That’s not much improved. Bassitt has pitched like Morton so far.
Offense? Still too many strikeouts and impatient at-bats. The Orioles half of the inning takes half as long as the opponents’. Still dependent on HRs to score runs more than they should be.
Defense? They may be worse than last year and one of the bottom teams in the league. Besides 1 error per game, throwing to the wrong base or holding the ball weirdly to allow at least 1 baserunner per game take an extra base.
Bullpen? Thinner than last year. Povich needed to eat 5.2 IP the other day and they really needed that Rogers/Suarez 6 and 3. But now 2 weeks of no off days. Depth will be tested.
They absolutely cannot stumble out to 16-34 last year. In fact, 22-18 after 40 games I was calling a decent start to not drop behind but that already looks too optimistic. Yes, 19-12 is possible in the next 31 to get there, but that’s a lot harder now.
Plus 3-6 versus Twins, Rangers, Pirates is not a good 3-6. It wasn’t like it was the Yankees, Tigers, and Jays.
It is not overreaction when your team wants to compete and is starting a bottom 1% mlb pitcher every 5 days, which is looking increasingly likely to be the case now.
Here comes another one. I don’t see it here yet, but Brandon Young called up to start Monday night (Dietrich Enns – 15 day DL). He is supposed to start. I can see them sending Young down for Kremer before this slot is up again to start.
Geez, already digging down to the depths. Young was awful last year for all but the one start when he was inexplicably incredible, and one immaculate inning.
The pitching depth did look better. They just didn’t stretch Wells out and Kremer is for some reason not built up yet.
If we signed Valdez and lost a starter this early we’d still be looking at a Brandon Young start tonight. Hoping the WS are just so bad that it doesn’t matter tonight.
I think Kremer’s path was interrupted by the WBC, but he’s a slow starter in April so I was fine with them taking time.
Yeah, I was alright with it when we were at full strength. Luckily, Young pitched well against the ChiSox but I don’t wanna bet on that continuing.
Yeah, but cut him the slack that we should give to every starter in his first 50 innings. He was pretty good in the hi minors, way better than povich.