Orioles place Armstrong on injured list (and other notes)

The Orioles have placed reliever Shawn Armstrong on the 10-day injured list with soreness in his lower back. Evan Phillips has been recalled from the alternate camp site in Bowie.

Armstrong has a 2.19 ERA and 0.892 WHIP in 11 appearances, with three walks and 12 strikeouts in 12 1/3 innings. He hasn't pitched since last Saturday and the IL move is retroactive to Wednesday.

The team is calling the injury "left SI joint inflammation."

"It's just a flare up," manager Brandon Hyde said during his Zoom conference call with the media. "It's been a few days ago now where he had some lower back soreness and we're treating it and feel like he could possibly be ready. It's still a little bit sore, so we decided to put him on the IL and backdate it and hopefully he'll be ready ... It's going to be short term. I think everybody feels confident it's a minor issue."

Phillips has registered a 5.87 ERA and 2.087 WHIP in eight appearances. He's walked seven batters, struck out nine and hit two in 7 2/3 innings.

The Orioles optioned Phillips on Aug. 17.

Hunter Harvey will be activated in the next day or two, according to Hyde. He wasn't a consideration for today's roster move.

"You'll see Hunter Harvey out there very shortly," Hyde said in his daily update.

Jorge López is starting Sunday afternoon and Tommy Milone is closing out the series Monday afternoon. Milone is pushed back a day.

"We would just like to see Jorge in the rotation and see what he looks like," Hyde said. "He's been a starter in Kansas City the last couple of years and like the way he's throwing the ball out of the 'pen, even though his numbers really don't show how he's been pitching since he's been with us. And we're going to give him the opportunity to start tomorrow."

Shortstop José Iglesias had two hits last night after coming off the injured list and didn't experience any discomfort in his left quadriceps muscle. He's the shortstop tonight.

"Iggy felt good after the game last night, even with stretching it a couple times, which I was hoping he wasn't going to do, but he did," Hyde said.

Hyde indicated that he hasn't been told by executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias to withhold players from games who might be traded as the deadline approaches. He was asked specifically about reliever Mychal Givens.

"We have conversations about our club daily," Hyde replied. "Givens is a go tonight. He was a no-go last night and that was mainly from a workload standpoint. I have a few guys I wasn't going to use. I wasn't going to use Army obviously, I wasn't going to use Paul Fry either, and I wasn't going to use Givens. That was strictly me in my conversations with those players giving them a rest.

"We had an off-day the last day in Tampa and then yesterday to really kind of regroup and refresh all three of those guys. Army still had the lower back soreness. But for Fry and Givens, they've been handed a pretty heavy workload and I wanted to take care of them."

Cole Sulser was tagged with the loss last night after retiring the first five batters he faced and surrendering Randal Grichuk's walk-off home run in the 10th inning. Bullpen coach Darren Holmes expressed confidence in today's Zoom conference call that the rookie would bounce back from it.

"The great thing about Cole is that he's very even-keeled, he's a very intelligent guy, he's very prepared for every time he goes out there," Holmes said.

"The first one that he blew, the walk-off, he struggled, so me and (Doug) Brocail brought him in and we talked to him. He closed some in the minor leagues. And we just talked about, 'You've got to have a short memory, it's going to happen. This is the big leagues and you've got to keep grinding every single day.' And he's done that.

"He's already come into our office today and it looked like his persona was a short memory. He was fine. He just came in and asked some questions about certain stuff that he wanted to know and that was it. So I think he's learning along the way. We all were there. I've been there before, been right in his position, blowing some saves early in my career, and you just learned to handle that. And I think he's done a good job."

Hyde said he'd rather not have Sulser work a second inning, as the right-hander did last night, but he ran out of available left-handed relievers. And Sulser was cruising until he hung a slider to Grichuk.

"It's a little bit personnel driven," he said.

The Orioles are wearing their No. 42 jerseys through the weekend to honor Jackie Robinson. They met earlier in the day to discuss it.

For the Blue Jays
Cavan Biggio 2B
Randal Grichuk CF
Rowdy Tellez 1B
Teoscar Hernández RF
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. DH
Travis Shaw 3B
Derek Fisher LF
Danny Jansen C
Joe Panik SS

Taijuan Walker RHP