Hardy and Guthrie speak (with game update)

J.J. Hardy says he probably could have played tonight if the weather conditions weren't so bad. Hardy is day-to-day with tightness in his left ribcage area that surfaced during yesterday's batting practice session. "We'll give it another day and kind of reevaluate tomorrow," Hardy said. "I've never had anything like it, but being able to throw, being able to run around and not feel pain, I feel like it can't be that big a deal, so I'm hoping - I don't know what their time schedule is - but I'm hoping to be in this series at some point. "There's always, [with] a day off coming up, they might want you to wait a little longer, just to give you that extra day. But I feel like I should be able to play by the end of this series." The real test comes when Hardy tries to swing a bat again. "I think so," he said. "That's where I felt it yesterday, swinging the bat, I didn't really feel it doing anything else. I think with not playing today, just taking a full day off of not swinging, let it rest a little bit more and then go see where it's at tomorrow." Hardy started to notice the tightness toward the end of batting practice yesterday. "It wasn't one particular swing, but I noticed that it was starting to get sore," he said. Meanwhile, Jeremy Guthrie continues to target Sunday for his next start after playing catch and throwing off an indoor mound. "It felt good. It was good bullpen," he said. So what's next? "Just kind of wake up and see how I feel tomorrow," he said. "Hopefully, I'll improve physically day to day. That's been my goal each time. Today, I felt better than I did yesterday. And you wake up tomorrow and just feel better. That means feeling easy with the breaths and everything and building up the stamina. I think that's the biggest issue at this point. I don't have any of the headaches or the body aches that I suffered from earlier. "I anticipated it. I didn't get that much encouragement. I'm just happy that I didn't blow out and I threw strikes and had a feel for the pitches." As far as Guthrie knows, the Orioles won't let their roster crunch influence when he pitches. "It hasn't been discussed with me," he said. "They've expressed that we'll just go off how you feel and they're not basing their decision, to my knowledge, with me on when I'm going to pitch off anything other than how I feel." Guthrie is focused only on building his stamina. His arm is fine. "It doesn't feel any different," he said. "We're not trying to build arm strength. We're just trying to make sure the breathing's the way it should be as the doc checks me out, and just make sure I feel prepared to go out there and pitch well, and not just go out there and throw to throw." Guthrie prides himself on his conditioning - he routinely rides his bike to and from the ballpark - so being winded from the pneumonia was a strange sensation. "I didn't suffer from it before I got admitted to the hospital, but once they diagnosed me with the pneumonia, I began to have the symptoms that they described and began coughing and began not having the same stamina and breathing as I normally do," he said. "So yeah, it's a different feel for sure, having never had it." Update: Tonight's game won't start at 7:05 p.m. The tarp's still on the field. We're waiting to find out the new start time.