Injury updates on Chris Davis and Austin Hays

The Orioles begin a six-game stay in New York tonight with their series opener against the Mets.

They boarded a train yesterday with a taxi squad and at least one injured player.

Chris Davis is on the trip and could be activated before the Orioles return to Baltimore and start their final homestand of the 2020 season. They'll have the option to do so while he's staying with the team.

Davis has been working out at the alternate camp site in Bowie for more than a week, contradicting a recent update that he was resting his injured knee at home. I've heard that he played in a simulated game Saturday at Prince George's Stadium and hit a home run, walked and struck out in three plate appearances.

The opposing pitchers were right-handers Eric Hanhold and Isaac Mattson.

Davis worked out again yesterday at Bowie before rejoining his teammates.

The Orioles placed Davis on the 10-day injured list on Aug. 21 with left knee patellar tendinitis. The move created a roster spot for outfielder Ryan Mountcastle, who made his major league debut later that night.

Davis didn't play again the previous day and was slashing .122/.173/.184 with three doubles, three walks and 16 strikeouts in 52 plate appearances. He had been taking batting practice on the field.

Manager Brandon Hyde put Davis in the lineup only once since Aug. 14. The first baseman had two hits in his last 23 at-bats and left the team for a few days while undergoing testing for COVID-19, with a low fever attributed to a sinus infection.

I've also heard that Davis received a platelet-rich plasma injection in his injured knee, which shut him down for about three days. The therapy uses a concentration of a patient's own platelets to accelerate the healing of injured tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints.

The knee also was an issue for Davis earlier this summer.

Davis has been doing rehabilitation exercises that will continue on the trip, and if he's advanced to simulate games, he certainly can work out on the field.

The Orioles did something similar on their last trip with shortstop José Iglesias and reliever Hunter Harvey, who came off the injured list while they were in Buffalo. They worked out with the club.

Reliever Shawn Armstrong remains on the injured list, though he's been eligible to return. He was diagnosed with left SI joint inflammation in his lower back, but also could make the trip to New York.

Pitcher Carson Fulmer was activated last night after he completed the intake process - he's wearing No. 60 - and reliever Branden Kline was optioned to the alternate camp site.

Meanwhile, the last taxi squad held four players. Catcher Austin Wynns again will be part of this one because a catcher is required. Pitcher David Hess and outfielder Ryan McKenna also are expected to be in New York.

Outfielder Austin Hays is working out at the secondary camp site and nearing a return from the injured list. He's scheduled to play in a simulated game on Wednesday.

"I'm actually feeling really good," he said yesterday. "Today was a big test for me and everything went according to plan, so we're going to try to get back into games next week. We're going to hit on the field and take BP on the field tomorrow and shag balls live in the outfield and on Wednesday I'm going to do my first sim game. So that will be huge to get some live at-bats and make sure my ribs can hold up. But I threw today and hit in the cage.

"I've been doing a lot of running stuff the last four or five days and I haven't had any complications and my ribs feel good, so now it's just a matter of getting my body in shape."

Hays, who's batting .203/.273/.246 with an inside-the-park home run in 19 games with the Orioles, went on the injured list Aug. 15 with a non-displaced rib fracture. He had collected eight hits in his last seven games.

The injury traces back to the Aug. 6 game against the Marlins and a 96 mph fastball from rookie Jorge Guzman that nailed Hays in the ribcage.

"I looked up as many baseball players that had a broken rib as I could to see how long it took for them to come back, and sometime between 30-45 days was the amount of time that most of those guys have missed," he said. "I was hoping that the quickest I could come back would probably be 30 days, so if I could make it back sometime between Monday and Wednesday of next week, that would end up being 30 days and I think that would be a success on our part.

"Really I wasn't able to do anything. I couldn't run, I couldn't do any type of exercise because it would flare up my side. So I didn't do anything for 14-15 days except just come in and get laser treatment, some small stuff at the field and then I'd just go back to the apartment. It seemed like it was taking forever, but realistically I think the rib healed within those two weeks, and last week we started moving around again, riding the bike, starting to do some running and some stuff in the weight room and my body responded well. Nothing has flared up with the ribs. Now if we can get a week of baseball activities, I think that we're right where we want to be."

X-rays didn't reveal the fracture and Hays stayed in the lineup before undergoing a CT scan. A catch at the wall in Philadelphia aggravated his condition and he succumbed to the injury after a 15-3 loss to the Nationals.

"I played nine games with it broken," he said. "The X-ray was negative, but they say a lot of times you don't pick up a broken rib on the X-ray just because they're so small and my fracture was just a small hairline fracture, so it took getting the CT scan just to be able to even find it.

"It seems like the X-ray is always negative. If I had broken my rib all the way through and it had been displaced or something, they would have been able to see it, but as far as a crack, normally they can't pick that up on the X-ray. And I had convinced myself that I didn't have a broken rib, so I thought it was just a tight muscle and I was stretching it, I was rolling it out, I was doing all kinds of stuff to it. I didn't even know I was making it worse. I thought I was trying to make it better."

Hays has been at Bowie since the day after going on the injured list. He's been commuting from his Baltimore apartment.