Orioles place closer Félix Bautista on 15-day IL with elbow injury, recall top pitching prospect DL Hall from Triple-A – The Denver Post

DL Hall was seen as the Orioles’ most likely addition when rosters expand in September.

The club’s top pitching prospect has regained his form — and his velocity — after switching to a relief role in Triple-A earlier this month. Under normal circumstances, Hall joining the Orioles a week earlier than expected would be a cause for jubilation.

Not Saturday.

Baltimore has a spot in its bullpen for Hall after it placed closer Félix Bautista on the 15-day injured list with an injury of “some degree” to the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow that he suffered in the ninth inning of Friday night’s comeback win over the Colorado Rockies, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said Saturday. There is no timetable for Bautista’s return.

Asked if Bautista could return this season, Elias responded, “I think anyone can go on Google and find the spectrum of outcomes or possibilities that [a UCL injury] might entail.” A torn UCL typically requires Tommy John elbow reconstruction, a surgery that has a recovery period of roughly 12 to 18 months, but pitchers with a less severe injury to the ligament can avoid the procedure.

Elias said Bautista’s injury is “something you try not to imagine during the season because of the year he was having,” calling it a “dream season.”

“A Félix Bautista absence, even if it’s a short one, is not something that’s easy to cover,” Elias said. “He’s the best reliever in baseball right now. But we do have many talented arms. I think we’ve got Hall back healthy. We’ve got other high-velocity, high-stuff guys kind of emerging here. And this is a talented group, a very resilient group.”

Manager Brandon Hyde said before Saturday night’s game that it was difficult to watch Bautista learn of his injury.

“I just feel for the guy, love the guy so much,” Hyde said.

“It’s been a tough day up to this point,” he added. “Félix has been such a massive part of our team. Best closer in the game, it’s been amazing to watch him do what he does. Last night sucked, bottom line. We’re hoping for the best for him. I just feel for him, and we’ve got to move forward and have guys step up and go from there.”

One strike away from his 34th save of the season, Bautista fell off to the first base side of the mound after firing a 102.3 mph fastball. After he regained his balance, he squeezed his right hand multiple times and was tended to by head athletic trainer Brian Ebel and other members of the Orioles’ staff before exiting the game. Hyde said after the game, which Danny Coulombe ended by throwing one pitch for a strikeout, that Bautista was dealing with right arm discomfort and was being evaluated.

“I could tell something was not right the way he finished there,” Hyde said Saturday. “I didn’t know if it was his knee or if it was a lower-half injury or what it was. But when he turned back around, you knew something wasn’t right.”

Elias said Bautista was not dealing with any elbow soreness or fatigue leading up to his injury.

“It just looked to me like that one particular pitch may have been some unfortunate movement pattern or something,” Elias said. “I don’t know, but he was not having any issues prior to that pitch.”

Reliever Yennier Cano said watching his friend and teammate leave Friday’s game was “one of the most difficult and sad moments I’ve gone through in my major league career.”

“Not only is he one of my closest friends on this team, but he’s a huge part of our team overall,” Cano said through team interpreter Brandon Quinones. “So to see one of my closest friends go down like that, it was disheartening, and it was frustrating in the moment.”

It’s unclear how long Bautista will be out, but his absence leaves a 6-foot-8, 285-pound hole in the back of Baltimore’s bullpen — and an unfillable one at that.

Bautista’s value to the Orioles has been so apparent this season that he’s earned buzz about being considered for the Cy Young Award — an honor a reliever hasn’t achieved since Eric Gagné in 2003. Orioles lefty Zack Britton finished fourth in America League Cy Young voting after his historic 2016 season.

“It’s just so unique,” Coulombe said. “His fastball is just so unique. From that arm slot, there’s not many guys that can even throw 95 [mph], and he throws 102. Guys that throw 100 generally don’t have that unique kind of ability to throw a splitter and that fastball. Nobody’s like him.”

Hyde has often said this year that Bautista’s dominance late in games is the biggest difference between the rebuild Orioles and the post-rebuild club that has the best record in the AL at 80-48 — on pace to win 101 games. The fifth-year skipper has brought in his dominant closer for several multi-inning saves. Hyde has also relied on Bautista in extra-inning games on the road, having him pitch a scoreless ninth to send the game to extras and then strand the automatic runner in the 10th to slam the door.

“He’s on my ballot,” Hyde said in July. “The box is checked on my ballot. What he’s doing is different than anybody else in the game right now. The multi-inning save situation, how dominating he’s been. The situations I’m putting him in are not easy. The way he’s come through more times than not in dominating fashion, just having a great year.”

Bautista, an All-Star in his second big league season, isn’t just perhaps the best reliever in the sport, but one of the Orioles’ most valuable players. His 3.1 wins above replacement on Baseball-Reference ranks fourth on the team behind Gunnar Henderson, Kyle Bradish and Adley Rutschman. His 2.8 WAR on FanGraphs leads all relievers. The 28-year-old is 8-2 with a 1.48 ERA and a whopping 46.4% strikeout rate. With 110 strikeouts in 61 innings, Bautista is 12 punchouts away from the Orioles reliever record of 122 set by B.J. Ryan in 2004.

Despite Hall’s odyssey, his up-and-down 2023 campaign has led him to a spot in Baltimore’s pitching staff. After a slow start to spring training because of a back injury he dealt with during the offseason, Hall began the year as a starter in Triple-A. His results were good, but because he wasn’t able to have a normal offseason in the weight room, his velocity was depressed. The club sent him to its complex in Sarasota, Florida, to focus on strength training and throw less in hopes of gaining that lost velocity back.

That strategy worked, as Hall has been throwing between 96-98 mph since he rejoined Triple-A Norfolk as a reliever earlier this month. In his past six appearances, the left-hander has struck out 18 batters in 7 2/3 innings for a 60% strikeout rate. Hall pitched out of the Orioles’ bullpen last September

“We’re excited about DL being here,” Hyde said. “He’s pitched well as of late in Norfolk, and hopefully he can be a big part of our pen or really just fit in, honestly. He has a special arm, we saw that at the end of last year in September. We want him to fit in, compete, throw a bunch of strikes and let his stuff work.”

Elias, who is hoping Hall is a “shot in the arm” down the stretch, said making the prospect a reliever isn’t a “career move,” noting the organization isn’t ruling out making him a starter again in the offseason. Hall entered the season as a top 100 prospect, according to Baseball America, and is currently ranked as Baltimore’s seventh-best prospect.

“This was kind of a no-brainer to put him in the bullpen once he got healthy, but we’ll revisit that at spring training next year,” Elias said.

Hall can’t replace Bautista, but his addition to the bullpen could be a boost in the middle innings and against left-handed batters. Hyde isn’t sure yet how he will handle the ninth, instead saying he will “match up the best I can.”

Cano, Bautista’s setup man and also an All-Star, is the most likely option to replace Bautista. The sinkerballer has also been one of the best relievers in the majors, owning a 1.62 ERA and 0.984 WHIP in 61 innings since he was called up from Triple-A in mid-April.

“If it comes down to that, I think I just I got to keep doing what I’m doing right now,” Cano said. “But honestly, it’ll feel a little weird. I’ll be expecting the music and the lights to start coming on, and it’ll definitely feel weird. He puts on an entire show out there, so it’ll feel weird and you just kind of know that that’s his role.”

The Orioles could also have pitching reinforcements on the way when rosters expand to 28 players — allowing a maximum of 14 pitchers — on Sept. 1. Tyler Wells and John Means are both with Norfolk, the former in a new relief role and the latter on his minor league rehabilitation assignment.

Wells was Baltimore’s top starting pitcher in the season’s first half, but he struggled in his first three starts after the All-Star break and was optioned to Double-A Bowie for what Hyde called a “reset.” After three starts with the Baysox, the Orioles shifted Wells to a short-relief role. He earned a save with the Tides on Friday.

Wells spent part of the 2021 season as the Orioles’ closer after joining the organization as a Rule 5 draft pick. The 6-foot-8 righty had a 4.11 ERA and 65 strikeouts in 57 innings.

Elias said Wells is still “adjusting into being a short reliever” but added that the 29-year-old’s experience in the bullpen is partly why the Orioles decided to turn him back into a reliever for the end of the season.

“I think that does give us a little better level of confidence that we sort of know what it looks like. He knows what it looks like,” Elias said. “He’s proven that he’s able to do it and handle the situational elements of it.”

Means is still starting games on his rehab assignment, most recently pitching 4 1/3 innings of one-run ball on 72 pitches Friday. Elias said the organization hasn’t determined what role Means, the Orioles’ ace during their rebuild and an All-Star in 2019, will fill when he rejoins the team. His rehab assignment cannot extend past Sept. 8.

“I do think that there are signs that he still could shake off some more rust, but he’s looking very good and is still primed to join this team,” Elias said.

Even with Bautista gone, the ninth might be less of a concern than the preceding relief innings. Cano and Coulombe have proved reliable, but the rest of Baltimore’s relief corps has been mostly inconsistent. Before Bautista’s injury, the Orioles needed one of their other relievers to step up in high-leverage situations; now they need two. In addition to Cano, Coulombe and Hall, the other members of the bullpen are: trade acquisition Shintaro Fujinami, recent waiver claim Jacob Webb, veteran Austin Voth and left-hander Cionel Pérez.

Hyde is confident his bullpen will step up and his team will rebound in Bautista’s absence.

“One thing that I’m really proud of with our club — even in years we weren’t as talented as other teams these last four or five years to now where we are — is that we have guys who have unbelievable character in our room,” Hyde said. “We bounce back from tough losses and adversity and this team’s been through a lot and this is just another one of those things.

“I’m positive our team is going to bounce back from this.”

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