Hyde on Kremer's demotion, Mountcastle's hand and more

Left-hander Keegan Akin is replacing Dean Kremer in the Orioles rotation, which gives him Sunday afternoon's start against the White Sox in Chicago.

Akin allowed two runs last night in three relief innings. He has a 6.10 ERA and 1.258 WHIP in four appearances over 10 1/3 innings, with only one walk and 10 strikeouts.

Akin hasn't started for the Orioles since Sept. 27, 2020 in Toronto, when he surrendered four runs in three innings.

Manager Brandon Hyde explained today's decision to option Kremer to Triple-A Norfolk for a second time. Kremer is 0-5 with a 6.87 ERA and 1.658 WHIP in nine starts and mentioned last night how his confidence can go up and down.

"We felt it was important for Dean's development to go down, continue to work on the quality of his pitches," Hyde said in his Zoom call. "Dean's a major league starter, he's got four major league pitches. Now it's about being comfortable in executing them.

"He's just pitched in so much traffic his last couple starts especially, where it's a high pitch count and early on in the game he's pitching with runners on base constantly. You're just seeing a lot of over-exertion, over-cooking a lot of pitches. We want him to go down and really work on those four pitches, the command of the four. So we're sending him down from a development standpoint of him pitching in a lower-pressure environment and working on executing the four major league pitches he has."

Reliever Dillon Tate will replace Kremer on the active roster after retiring all three batters last night at Norfolk. The hamstring has healed and he's going to join the Orioles in Chicago.

Ryan Mountcastle is day-to-day with a bruised left hand after being hit last night by a 93 mph sinker.

"The hand is sore," Hyde said. "Probably unavailable for the game this afternoon."

The bench is down to two healthy players with outfielder Ryan McKenna, recalled this morning, and catcher Pedro Severino.

"Makes us have a short bench," Hyde said, "but we got Ryan McKenna here on an early-morning flight to Minneapolis and he will be available, so we're just playing short today."

Taxi squads are optional now with the minor league season underway, and the Orioles didn't bring anyone on their three-city trip.

"A lot of the guys we normally would have brought we want to play right now," Hyde said.

"Guys on the taxi squad, especially on a long trip, it's a lot of hitting in the cage, maybe some ground balls if there's no game action, so they're just kind of sitting and waiting, trying to stay ready, and with our guys we wanted them to play in Norfolk."

For the Twins
Max Kepler RF
Jorge Polanco 2B
Nelson Cruz DH
Alex Kirilloff 1B
Miguel Sanó 3B
Trevor Larnach LF
Willians Astudillo C
Rob Refsnyder CF
Andrelton Simmons SS

Michael Pineda RHP