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Chris Davis Out For Season

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Orioles first baseman and designated hitter Chris Davis will miss the rest of the season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left hip, per Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (via Twitter). Recovery time is projected to be four to five months.

Shortstop Richie Martin is also out for the time being with a non-displaced fracture in the radius bone of his left wrist, per Kubatko. The Orioles expect him to return after somewhere between eight and twelve weeks.

The Orioles had already gone the first month and a half of the season without Davis because of a lower back strain. Now, in light of this news, it will go down as another lost season for the former star. Baltimore re-signed Davis to a seven-year, $161MM contract prior to the 2016 season, but the move has blown up in the club’s face. Now 35 years old, Davis hit an atrocious .196/.291/.379 with 92 home runs over 2,118 plate appearances from 2016-20. The Orioles owe him annual salaries of $23MM through 2022.

This will also count as a year to forget for Martin, whom the Orioles took from the Athletics in the 2018 Rule 5 Draft. Martin totaled 309 PA as an Oriole in 2019 and hit .208/.260/.322 with six home runs and 10 stolen bases. He hasn’t played in the bigs since then.

Orioles Designate Rio Ruiz For Assignment

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The Orioles have designated infielder Rio Ruiz for assignment and selected the contract of infielder/outfielder Stevie Wilkerson, per a club announcement.

The 26-year-old Ruiz was a 2012 fourth-rounder of the Astros and a prospect of some note in both the Astros and Braves organizations. Baltimore claimed him off waivers from Atlanta in the 2018-19 offseason and has given him a fairly lengthy look in the infield, but to this point, Ruiz simply hasn’t capitalized on that opportunity.

Dating back to 2019, Ruiz is hitting just .220/.292/.380 through 718 plate appearances. The O’s have given him some run at each infield position other than shortstop, but he hasn’t been able to string together a particularly productive stretch. The 2021 season, in particular, has been a tough one for Ruiz, who is batting just .167/.250/.300 through 101 trips to the plate. The Orioles will have a week to trade Ruiz or pass him through outright waivers.

The 29-year-old Wilkerson is a familiar face for O’s fans, having spent parts of two seasons in a utility role for Baltimore. He’s a a .219/.279/.365 hitter in 410 plate appearances and has played every spot on the diamond other than catcher and first base — including 5 1/3 innings of mop-up duty on the mound in 2019.

East Notes: Means, Mets, Yankees, Strasburg

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The Mets made an attempt to acquire left-hander John Means from the Orioles during the offseason, but Baltimore rebuffed New York, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network. The Mets surely weren’t alone in trying to acquire Means, who’s making a minimal salary this year and still has three years of arbitration control remaining. Means proved himself as a capable mid- to back-of-the-rotation starter from 2019-20, but he has taken his game to an entirely different level this season. The 28-year-old has pitched to a microscopic 1.21 ERA with impressive strikeout and walk percentages of 28.0 and 5.3, respectively, over 52 innings. This has been a May to remember for Means, who no-hit the Mariners on the 5th and then tossed six scoreless innings against the team that wanted him, the Mets, this past Tuesday.

Here’s more on the Mets and a couple other East Coast clubs:

  • The Yankees announced Friday that designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton is dealing with tightness in his left quad. The issue sidelined Stanton on Friday, and he’s now “day to day, hopefully nothing more than that,” manager Aaron Boone told Bryan Hoch of MLB.com and other reporters. Stanton endured a pair of injury-ruined seasons from 2019-20, in which he played in 41 of a possible 222 games, but has mostly stayed healthy this year. The 31-year-old slugger has been in excellent form with a .282/.347/.534 line and nine home runs in 144 plate appearances.
  • Sticking with the Yankees, right-hander Luis Severino is at the “start of spring training mode” as he works his way back from February 2020 Tommy John surgery, Boone said Friday (via Marly Rivera of ESPN). Severino threw 23 pitches of live batting practice Friday and averaged between 96 and 97 mph. The 27-year-old was one of the game’s elite starters from 2017-18, leading the Yankees to sign him to a four-year, $40MM extension, though he totaled only 12 innings in 2019 as a result of shoulder problems and hasn’t pitched since. To its credit, New York’s rotation has done well this year without Severino; nevertheless, the team will surely be glad to welcome him back if he’s healthy.
  • Nationals righty Stephen Strasburg will make a Triple-A rehab start on Sunday, Mark Zuckerman of MASNSports.com tweets. Manager Dave Martinez said the hope is that Strasburg will go five innings and throw 75 to 80 pitches. Washington has barely gotten anything in 2021 from Strasburg, who’s in the second season of a seven-year, $245MM contract, as a result of shoulder inflammation. This is the second straight injury-limited year for the former World Series MVP, who has totaled just 15 innings since 2020.
  • Mets third baseman J.D. Davis and reliever Seth Lugo will soon begin rehab assignments at the Triple-A level, Bill Ladson of MLB.com writes. While the Mets hoped Davis would exit the 10-day injured list Saturday, he’s still not ready to come back since suffering a left hand sprain on May 1. The club has gone all season without Lugo, who underwent surgery to remove a bone spur in his right elbow in February. Lugo started in seven of 16 appearances last season, but he’ll return to a relief role when he rejoins the Mets, per manager Luis Rojas.

Braves Claim Jay Flaa

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The Braves announced Tuesday that they’ve claimed right-handed reliever Jay Flaa off waivers from the Orioles, who’d designated him for assignment over the weekend. The move fills Atlanta’s 40-man roster.

Flaa, who’ll turn 29 in a month, was selected to the big league roster for the first time in his career last month. The Orioles’ sixth-round pick in 2016, he made his MLB debut on April 27, tossing 1 1/3 innings of scoreless relief with a pair of walks and a strikeout.

That was Flaa’s lone appearance before the Orioles designated him for assignment in order to open a roster spot for waiver claim Brandon Waddell. While Flaa has struggled in a total of 56 2/3 frames at the Triple-A level, he was excellent at both Double-A and Class-A Advanced while rising through the Orioles’ system. He’s tallied 260 1/3 professional innings since being drafted out of North Dakota State University, working to a 3.49 ERA with an above-average 26.7 percent strikeout rate but a somewhat bloated 11.2 percent walk rate.

Flaa’s fastball sat 93.2 mph in his lone MLB appearance, and he also showed a slider and splitter that day. Because he was selected to the MLB roster for the first time this year, he still has all three minor league option years remaining.

Latest Roster Moves From Twins, Orioles

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The Twins announced a trio of roster moves today. Right-hander Cody Stashak has been optioned to Triple-A, while Derek Law takes his place in the bullpen. Law had to be added to the 40-man roster, so infielder Travis Blankenhorn was designated for assignment.

After proving himself a solid option out of the bullpen for the Twins with 40 innings of 3.15 ERA baseball from 2019-20, Stashak has stumbled badly to start the season. Stashak is still missing bats at a good clip, striking out a robust 36.5 percent of hitters, but his walk rate has skyrocketed to 13.5 percent as well. Fielding Independent Pitching suggest decent work with a 4.20 FIP, but in terms of real world production, Stashak has allowed 10 earned runs in 10 2/3 innings.

If this is the end of Blankenhorn’s Twins’ tenure, it will be a somewhat ignominious one. The 24-year-old appeared in one game this season, pinch-running in extra-innings and scoring a run. He’d go on to make an error in the bottom of the inning on a play that would have ended the game. The A’s beat the Twins a batter later when Luis Arraez followed up Blankenhorn’s blunder with a throwing error of his own. Blankenhorn was a third round draft pick of the Twins in the 2015 draft, and he obviously has more to offer a Major League club than he’s had the opportunity to show this season.

If someone puts in a claim for Blankenhorn, it’ll be the second player lost on waivers by the Twins this week. The Orioles claimed left-hander Brandon Waddell off waivers from the Twins today, per Steve Melewski of MASNsports.com (via Twitter). He has been assigned to Triple-A. Waddell was designated for assignment by the Twins yesterday to make room on the 40-man roster for Trevor Larnach.

In order to make the claim, the Orioles designated Jay Flaa for assignment, notes Roch Kubatko of MASNsports. Flaa logged 1 1/3 scoreless on April 27th for the Orioles in his only big league action of his career.

Orioles To Select Zac Lowther, Option Isaac Mattson

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The Orioles optioned Isaac Mattson to Triple-A after Friday night’s game, creating a roster spot for Zac Lowther, per Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (via Twitter). Lowther will start Saturday’s ballgame.

Mattson was drafted and raised in the Angels’ farm system, but he made his Major League debut last night for the Orioles. He surrendered one earned run on a walk and a hit in 2/3 of an inning. Mattson wrapped the 2019 season with five innings in Triple-A with the Salt Lake City Bees. He came to Baltimore as one of four pitchers in the Dylan Bundy trade.

Lowther will make his second appearance of the season on Saturday, having previously tossed a scoreless inning against the A’s on April 25th. Fangraphs has him as Baltimore’s 18th-ranked prospect coming into the season. Elite extension helps buoy a fairly standard three-pitch mix for the former second round pick. Lowther posted a 2.55 ERA across 148 innings in Double-A back in 2019.

Wade LeBlanc Elects Free Agency

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Veteran left-hander Wade LeBlanc went unclaimed on outright waivers after being designated for assignment by the Orioles and has elected to become a free agent, MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reports (via Twitter). He’s free to sign with any club for the prorated league minimum.

LeBlanc, 36, was with the Orioles in 2020 and to begin the 2021 season, but his results with Baltimore weren’t pretty. Through 29 innings of work, the veteran was tagged for 27 runs on the strength of 38 hits (seven homers) and nine walks with just 19 strikeouts.

It’s been a few years now since LeBlanc’s quietly solid 2014-18 run, during which he racked up 321 2/3 innings of 3.92 ERA ball between the Angels, Yankees, Pirates and Mariners. Much of that production came during a 2018 season in Seattle where LeBlanc threw a career-high 162 innings over 32 appearances (27 starts) and notched a tidy 3.72 ERA.

The lack of recent success if of course glaring, but LeBlanc carries a lifetime 4.11 ERA in parts of nine Triple-A seasons and a 4.59 ERA in 889 innings at the MLB level. Given the number of pitching injuries around the league early in the 2021 season, he could latch on somewhere as an experienced and cost-efficient depth signing.

East Notes: Marte, Soroka, Yankees, Galvis

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Marlins center fielder Starling Marte went on the injured list with a fractured left rib a week ago, and he’s continuing to deal with “discomfort,” Craig Mish of SportsGrid tweets. The Marlins still don’t have a timetable for when Marte will restart baseball activities, according to Mish. Miami has given center field starts to Lewis Brinson, Magneuris Sierra and Adam Duvall in the absence of Marte, who got off to a great start this year with a .310/.414/.483 line and two home runs in 70 plate appearances before he went to the IL. Brinson, Sierra and Duvall haven’t been nearly as successful, as all three have logged production ranging from below average to terrible.

Here’s more from the East Coast…

  • Braves right-hander Mike Soroka’s injured pitching shoulder is “structurally sound,” per David O’Brien of The Athletic. However, Soroka still has not returned to throwing almost three weeks since the Braves shut him down with inflammation on April 7, so it remains unclear when he could make his season debut. The last year-plus has been unfortunate on the health front for Soroka, who missed most of 2020 with a torn right Achilles before his current issue cropped up. As a result of his injuries, Soroka hasn’t really gotten a chance to follow up on an All-Star 2019 in which he recorded a 2.68 ERA in 174 2/3 innings.
  • The Yankees suffered their 13th loss in 22 games Monday, falling 4-2 in Baltimore, but manager Aaron Boone did issue some positive injury updates beforehand (Twitter links via Marly Rivera of ESPN). First baseman and 2020 major league home run king Luke Voit is ramping up his activities as he works back from knee surgery. Left-handed reliever Zack Britton, who’s recovering from the arthroscopic elbow surgery he underwent in March, is slated to begin throwing from the mound at the end of the week. Based on the three- to four-month timeline the Yankees provided when Britton went under the knife, he won’t rejoin their bullpen until June or July. Meanwhile, righty Clarke Schmidt – who’s also on the mend from elbow trouble – has begun a throwing program, which is “going well,” per Boone.
  • Orioles shortstop Freddy Galvis exited their win over New York with left adductor soreness, the O’s announced. Manager Brandon Hyde told reporters (including Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com) that Galvis is day-to-day with groin tightness. Galvis, whom the Orioles signed to a one-year, $1.5MM guarantee in free agency, has been quite durable during his career – including this season. He has started all 22 of Baltimore’s games thus far and batted a solid .264/.321/.458 with a pair of home runs in 79 trips to the plate. When Galvis went down Monday, the Orioles moved Ramon Urias from second to short and brought in Rio Ruiz to handle the keystone.

Orioles Select Jay Flaa’s Contract

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The Orioles have selected the contract of right-hander Jay Flaa, the team announced.  The Orioles already had an opening on their 40-man roster, and room was created on the 26-man active roster when left-hander Zac Lowther was optioned to the alternate training site.

A sixth-round pick out of North Dakota State in the 2015 draft, Flaa has a 3.41 ERA and 26.75% strikeout rate over 258 2/3 minor league innings.  Working as a reliever in all but three of his 165 professional games, Flaa has been able to miss some bats but he has also had some control issues, posting a below-average 11.25% walk rate.  As the Orioles continue to explore and audition multiple pitchers during their rebuild, Flaa will get a chance in the team’s bullpen, and is on track to make his Major League debut at age 28.

Lowther made his own debut just yesterday, tossing an inning of scoreless relief in Baltimore’s 8-1 victory over the Athletics.  Lowther will now head back to the alternate site after his cup of coffee in the bigs, as the southpaw was only called up prior to Sunday’s game.

Orioles Designate Wade LeBlanc For Assignment

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TODAY: The Orioles officially announced the move.

APRIL 24: The Orioles are set to designate left-hander Wade LeBlanc for assignment, reports Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (Twitter link). Fellow lefty Zac Lowther will be recalled from the alternate training site in a corresponding move, per Kubatko.

LeBlanc started six games for the Orioles in 2020, managing only an 8.06 ERA/5.77 SIERA over 22.1 innings. Despite that poor showing, Baltimore brought the 36-year-old back on a split contract in March. The soft-tossing LeBlanc made six appearances (including a start this afternoon against the Athletics) and allowed seven runs on eleven hits, although he did strike out six while only issuing a single walk. LeBlanc has never been one to miss many bats, but his consistent strike-throwing has gotten him to the majors in thirteen of the past fourteen years.

To replace LeBlanc, the Orioles will turn to one of their more promising pitching prospects for the first time. Lowther, selected by Baltimore with the 74th overall pick in the 2017 draft, is in position to make his MLB debut. The 24-year-old doesn’t have overpowering stuff but has generally drawn praise from scouts for his deceptive delivery and decent control.

Lowther dominated during his most recent minor-league action in 2019, tossing 148 innings of 2.55 ERA ball at Double-A with a solid 25.9% strikeout rate and a slightly elevated 10.6% walk rate. Considered to be the #19 prospect in the organization by Baseball America, Lowther will be available out of the bullpen to start his MLB career, Kubtako reports.

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