Elias provides injury updates, talks about trade chatter and Burnes negotiations

Orioles executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias sat on the dugout bench this afternoon, media crowded around him, and held a piece of paper that he referred to as his “crib notes.”

To memorize the injuries and updates would require a special skill that’s rare in baseball circles, though the Orioles keep testing their front office and manager.

Elias covered 11 players, including a pair of minor leaguers. The injured list has no limits. The same must apply to the Orioles’ collective patience.

Zach Eflin
“He continues to feel really good after coming out and hitting the IL with what we hope is a very mild lat strain. He’s going to start playing catch in a few days. We’ll have to see how that goes and kind of take it from there. But so far encouraging with the way he’s felt since being injured and I’m hopeful at this point that his stay on the IL will be measured more in weeks than in months. But again, kind of see how he responds. He’s starting to play catch.”

Grayson Rodriguez
“Recuperating from the sore tricep/elbow injury that he had in spring training. He’s thrown two bullpens now. His most recent one had off-speed pitches, spins as we say, and he’s got another bullpen day after tomorrow. So far he is tolerating everything well physically, so that’s good news, but we still have a lot ahead of us in terms of bullpens, buildup, live BP, ultimately rehab assignment, and I’m not ready to assign a timetable to his recovery yet. I know that he’s doing everything he can to strengthen up and get back to help the team as soon as possible, but we’re not at the point yet of kind of ballparking when that’s going to be. But he continues to feel pretty good.”

Albert Suárez
“Albert Suárez had a strain the first couple days of the season. Subscapularis muscle region in the front part of his shoulder. It’s a large muscle strain. Fortunately it’s not anything that portends sort of negatively long term. This is something that’s gonna take a while to heal. He is still in the healing phase. He’s a few weeks away from testing out playing catch. We’ll just kind of let him rest and heal up. Not at the point yet of assigning a return ballpark date for him yet, but it’s gonna be much later in the season, consistent with what we said originally.”

Andrew Kittredge
 “Andrew Kittredge coming off the knee surgery, continues to fly along with the rehab. He is throwing bullpens. We could get him into a live BP the week after next, and once you’re at that stage you start to talk about rehab assignments a few weeks after that. So all said, there is a possibility that he puts himself in position to be activated before the end of May, but there’s a lot of time left there. But so far it’s moving along at the front end of his recovery (window) from his knee surgery.”

Kyle Bradish
“I don’t have a lot to report there. He threw a bullpen the other day, went great, feels great. Knock on wood this is kind of flying along in terms of what you hope for from a Tommy John surgery. He’s still another guy that with everything we’d want to do to get him back in game shape and build him up and return to skill that we’d be thinking about any sooner than kind of the later half of the summer, but he’s very much on track.”

Tyler Wells
“Tyler Wells is in a similar boat. He has not started his mound progression yet, but that’s going to come within the next two weeks, so he’s a little bit behind Kyle in that regard, but everything moving along well in terms his Tommy John recovery. Also, somebody that we expect back well before the end of the season. In all hope and likelihood, in the latter part of the summer.”

Chayce McDermott and Trevor Rogers
“Chayce McDermott and Trevor Rogers are on similar timetables right now, so I’m kind of lumping them together, but they’re both multiple bullpens deep. Got their velocity built up. They’re getting ready to face live hitters in Florida next week and we’ll take it from there. But these are also guys that are potentials to put themselves in the conversation for activation before the end the month of May.”

Colton Cowser
“I don’t have much of an update. He’s got a broken bone in the tip of his thumb. Got to let that heal up. He’s in here working hard, he’s staying in game shape, he’s conditioning, but there’s not a whole lot you can do when your thumb is broken. I can’t predict exactly how quickly a bone is going to heal, but kind of hopeful for a late May, early June target for him, but we’re going to have to take that as it comes with how quickly he heals.”

Enrique Bradfield Jr.
“Enrique Bradfield last Thursday at Bowie. I was at the game. He hit a triple and was rounding second base and pulled up a little bit. We took an MRI. It is a mild hamstring strain. This is going to be a few weeks. It’s not a huge deal. It’s something that he could get back to active games by the middle part of May. We’ve just got to let his hammy heal up a little bit. He's not had one of these before and it doesn’t look like too severe of an injury, so hopeful that it’s just a run of the mill mild hamstring pull.”

Samuel Basallo
“Sam Basallo as we know right after camp broke had some elbow soreness. That recuperation is going well. However, on April 5, he pulled his hamstring while DHing in a game. Again, it’s looking like a milder hamstring type of strain that’s healing. I think we could see him back DHing in the Norfolk lineup within a couple of weeks and we’re hopeful he’ll be back to catching in the month of May.”

“All these guys are more or less on track,” Elias said. “We’ve just got a lot of guys injured right now. Can’t wait to get any number of them back, hopefully all of them back.”

Kyle Gibson made his second rehab start today with Triple-A Norfolk and allowed three runs and six hits in 3 2/3 innings. He threw 63 pitches and will remain with the Tides for at least one more outing, as the Orioles try to stretch him out further.

“The way that his contract is structured, we’ll be counting on him as soon as May 1,” Elias said, “but it’s always a possibility earlier.”

It won’t be Saturday when the Orioles need a fifth starter. Brandon Young was transferred from Norfolk to High-A Aberdeen to keep him close, and he’s expected to debut.

“There’s only so much in my position I can say about reading into things,” Elias said. “He has pitched very well so far in Triple-A and I think you look at the landscape of guys that we have, and especially being on the 40-man roster, he’s certainly at the forefront of the conversation if and when we need a starter. And it looks like we might need one pretty soon.”

The Orioles lost their top two starters to injuries and Elias said there’s “still chatter” on the trade front. However, there isn’t usually much activity in the first full month of the season.

“I mean, as recently as today, talking to other GMs, trying to line up on trades,” he said. “It's just rare in April, the motivation and sort of the clarity is not usually there. Doesn't mean you don't try. Doesn't mean you don't have the conversations and certainly gathering the information helps. But we're working. We're always looking outside and inside to bolster the team. Inside, meaning bringing guys along to the minor leagues as best we can. Outside, whether it's a major trade, which, again, it's not typically something that happens in April, or it's waiver moves, small trades, depth moves.

“We're working on them and we've done that throughout the years, throughout the season. But yeah, I think that it's early for a flurry of major trade activity, but we are in touch with the other 29 teams.”

The rotation needs better results from Charlie Morton and Dean Kremer, with ERAs of 8.78 and 8.16, respectively. Morton starts tonight in the series opener against the Guardians.

“They both look fine in terms of their stuff and velocity, and their track records that they've laid down at the major league level certainly suggest that there's good reason to believe that this is an aberration,” Elias said. “But yeah, especially while we have pitcher injuries, you also don't want slow starts from some of your proven major league starters at the same time. But unfortunately, that's what we've gotten. So they both have a chance to get the turnaround going this turn through the rotation, and I hope that happens.”

The Orioles put special emphasis on deepening the rosters and increasing their options, but the rash of injuries has created a strain.

“On the pitching staff side, I feel like we’ve already tapped into, basically, the depth. To say that on April 15 was not the plan,” Elias said.

“Obviously, we knew Bradish was going to be out, but to have Grayson and Eflin on the shelf simultaneously this quickly into the season, at no point were we forecasting that or expecting that. And that’s just the truth. We’ve also had a number of the depth starters go down during spring training or very late into the winter time, so there’s a combination of things that I think just speak to the unpredictable nature of pitching.

“We are doing the best that we can to keep enough quality starting upright to navigate a baseball season. This is not something we’re alone in. I think there’s a lot of teams right now, contending teams, that don’t have five of the guys they envisioned being part of their starting pitcher depth charts up and running right now, for whatever reason. I guess we count among those teams right now. We’re doing the best we can. The good news is we’re getting healthier and we expect to see some of these guys back. But certainly, this wasn’t what we were hoping for this quickly. But this kind of stuff happens, and you’ve got to be aware of that.”

The Orioles tried to lure back ace Corbin Burnes with a four-year, $180 million offer, but he stayed close to home with his six-year, $210 deal with the Diamondbacks. He passed up a larger average annual value, and the Orioles brought in Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano at a combined $28 million.

“I think we attempted all manner of things throughout the offseason,” Elias said. “It is not feasible to land and execute every single thing that you want to do, try to do, in the offseason. And my entire job is balancing the needs of the team, the needs of the roster, versus the acquisition cost and what that might do to affect future seasons. That's the job of being a general manager. That’s the job of being a front office. To the degree with which that works out, we’re certainly responsible for that and we’re aware of it. To try to avoid the balance of that, you’re not gonna do the job well, you’re not gonna do the job responsibly. So we made moves that we wanted to and I think we had some unfortunate breaks here early on.

“The outlook for the rest of the season and for the organization continues to be really strong. And we’re working on things behind the scenes to just keep getting better and keep the team on track or get people on track that need to be back on track. We’re doing our jobs.”

Elias isn’t comfortable with sharing details on his negotiations, especially if the player rejects the offer, but some information leaked to the press and Burnes dropped a few hints. All that matters is that Burnes wanted more years and to be near his Scottsdale home, and the Orioles didn't find another starter with No. 1 credentials. Rodriguez is supposed to develop into that guy but he's hurt again.

“I feel, in my position, that I should be quiet about business activities that don’t come to fruition,” Elias said. “Players talk about stuff and get out there. We made a good offer and a good run, good effort to retain Corbin Burnes. We knew it was gonna be competitive. We knew it wasn’t gonna be easy. It ultimately didn’t end up with him staying with the team.

“I can’t criticize his going to the Diamondbacks. It makes sense to me. We had a great experience with him and I wish him very well but we move on and we’ll be adding more quality pitching as the years go on. We’ve got a great group here and a great team. It was something that we worked on and it didn’t cross the finish line.”