A Great Summer Ends With a Bummer, as the Orioles Lose Félix Bautista to a UCL Injury

Félix Bautista has been as emblematic of and as crucial to the Orioles’ sudden breakthrough as any player. In his second major league season, the imposing 28-year-old closer — nicknamed “The Mountain” for his 6-foot-8, 285-pound physique — has emerged as one of the game’s most dominant and valuable relievers, the biggest cog in a bullpen that’s helped to prop up a wobbly rotation. Unfortunately, Bautista’s season is at the very least on hold after he left Friday night’s game with what the Orioles have called “some degree of injury” to his ulnar collateral ligament.

Facing the Rockies at Camden Yards, Bautista entered a 5-4 game in the ninth inning in search of his 34th save and his second in as many nights. He battled Jurickson Profar for six pitches before striking him out on a 101.7-mph fastball, then induced Harold Castro to ground out on a 1-0 pitch. He was one strike away from finishing off Michael Toglia when he stumbled off the mound while uncorking a 102.3-mph fastball that missed up and outside. After he called for time to recover, the sight of him flexing and squeezing his right hand prompted manager Brandon Hyde, head athletic trainer Brian Ebel, and coach José Hernández to check on him and ultimately pull him from the game.

While Danny Coulombe struck out Toglia on his first and only pitch of the night to finish the game, the sequence understandably put a damper on the Orioles’ comeback win. On Saturday, general manager Mike Elias announced that Bautista had injured his UCL and would be placed on the 15-day injured list. It’s unclear yet whether the injury — likely a sprain of the ligament, meaning some kind of tear — is severe enough to require Tommy John surgery.

“It’s less than 24 hours now and that’s all I’ve got,” said the GM. “He’s going on the IL. We don’t have a plan beyond that. We have not firmed up any kind of timetable or anything of that nature.”

Based on the reporting, it does not appear that Bautista had undergone an MRI at the time Elias spoke, unlike, say, Shohei Ohtani, who underwent a scan between games of a doubleheader. Such imaging would be necessary to determine the severity of Bautista’s injury, and Hyde’s comment that the team was “letting it calm down a little bit” suggested that they’re waiting for inflammation to subside at least somewhat in order to get a clearer picture.

All of which is to say that this is taking longer to play out than some UCL injuries, but even if Bautista’s elbow doesn’t require surgery, his season is probably over, because injections of platelet-rich plasma and stem cells — which have successfully forestalled TJ in some cases — tend to be followed by a shutdown of at least six weeks before a pitcher can be cleared to throw again. If Bautista needs Tommy John surgery, in all likelihood he won’t pitch in 2024.

Said Elias of a possible return this year, “I think anyone can go on Google and find the spectrum of outcomes or possibilities that [a UCL injury] might entail.” The GM noted that Bautista had not reported any pain or soreness prior to the injury, saying, “It just looked to me like that one particular pitch may have been some unfortunate movement pattern or something… I don’t know, but he was not having any issues prior to that pitch.”

The Orioles have kept Bautista busy thanks to their success — their 68 save opportunities leads the majors — but his workload doesn’t read as extreme. His 61 innings is tied for 15th among all relievers and ranks third among Orioles relievers behind Yennier Cano (63) and Mike Baumann (61.1 — amazing how he fits it all in with his FanGraphs work). Bautista’s 56 appearances is tied for 26th overall and second on the team (with Baumann) behind Cano’s 59. Hyde has called upon Bautista on back-to-back days 11 times this season, a total exceeded by 47 pitchers including Cano (15) and Baumann (12); Friday was Bautista’s first back-to-back appearance since July 23. Hyde hasn’t used him more than two days in a row in either of his two seasons. He’s averaged just under 14 pitches on the front end of this year’s back-back assignments, and had thrown just 10 pitches in a 1-2-3 inning on Thursday night to close out the Blue Jays. Additionally, Bautista has made nine appearances of four outs or more this season; his five such appearances in save opportunities is tied for second in the majors behind the Yankees’ Michael King (seven).

More likely to have contributed to Bautista’s injury is the combination of his fastball’s velocity and the frequency with which he throws it. The 99.5-mph average of his four-seamer is the game’s third-fastest behind the Twins’ Jhoan Duran and the Blue Jays’ Jordan Hicks — and Bautista throws it over 70% of the time. Biomechanical research has implicated both higher velocity and higher rates of throwing fastballs as factors that can lead to UCL injuries. Extreme torque exerted too often is a recipe for shredding ligaments.

But oh, what heat. Bautista’s four-seamer is damn near impossible to hit, with batters whiffing on 37.8% of their swings, the seventh-highest mark of anybody who’s thrown at least 100 four-seamers this year. When they’ve connected, batters have managed just a .156 average and .246 slugging percentage against the pitch. For what it’s worth, hitters have been even worse against his slower offerings, namely his splitter, which averages 88.5 mph (.122 AVG, .162 SLG, 60.2% whiff), and his rarely-thrown slider, which averages 86.7 mph.

If this is it for Bautista’s season, it ends an impressive breakout campaign. His 2.8 WAR leads all relievers, 0.8 WAR ahead of second-ranked Aroldis Chapman, and ties him for the team lead with starters Kyle Bradish and Kyle Gibson. His 1.48 ERA is the fifth lowest among relievers with at least 40 innings, while his 1.89 FIP is second only to Chapman’s 1.85, and both his 46.4% strikeout rate and 35.4% strikeout-to-walk differential are tops. His 33 saves trails only Alexis Díaz and Emmanuel Clase, who both have 34.

With Bautista, the Orioles bullpen leads the majors in FIP (3.50) and WAR (7.0) while ranking third in strikeout rate (26.4%) and sixth in ERA (3.54) — losing him leaves a major void. Cano has enjoyed a stellar rookie season, pitching to a 1.60 ERA and 2.69 FIP, though his sinker-heavy approach doesn’t miss many bats. He notched his fifth save in Saturday’s win, but allowed an unearned ninth-inning run and took the loss on Sunday; it would appear he’s already Hyde’s default choice for the ninth inning. Coulombe, a lefty, and Shintaro Fujinami, a righty, will take on even greater responsibility in setup roles while possibly spotting in the ninth. The 33-year-old Coulombe has pitched to a 2.70 ERA and 2.60 FIP while striking out 31.3% of hitters, while the 29-year-old Fujinami has posted a 4.76 ERA and 5.03 FIP with a 30.4% strikeout rate since being acquired from the A’s (for whom he struggled mightily) ahead of the August 1 trade deadline. DL Hall, a 24-year-old lefty, was recalled from Triple-A Norfolk to take Bautista’s roster spot. Hall is a 50-FV prospect who ranked fifth on the team’s list in February and who sports a fastball that tops out at 97 mph. He posted a 4.22 ERA and 4.75 FIP at Norfolk while striking out 32.3% of hitters.

With an AL-best 81-49 record, the Orioles have obviously played excellent ball this season, but the loss of Bautista only amplifies the concerns about the team’s pitching depth. The rotation — which has expanded to six starters for the last three cycles — has posted a 3.90 ERA and 3.78 FIP in August, a big improvement on the unit’s pre-deadline marks (4.73 ERA, 4.55 FIP). That said, deadline reinforcement Jack Flaherty has managed just a 6.41 ERA and 4.69 FIP in four starts totaling 19.2 innings, and has struggled to recover between starts; he was scratched ahead of Wednesday’s scheduled start due to “general soreness,” but pitched on Sunday. His signs of fatigue aren’t surprising given his lengthy injury history and current innings total (123.2 frames), 9.1 more than he threw in 2021 and ’22 combined.

Birds of a feather flock together, and that’s true as far as well-worked Oriole starters go. As projected in my breakdown of Flaherty’s acquisition, three other members of the team’s rotation have already surpassed their career highs in innings before the calendar has turned to September, and a fourth will do so soon:

The Orioles put the slowdown on Wells, who has pitched to a 3.80 ERA but a 5.25 FIP at the major league level. Following increased struggles after the All-Star break, on July 30 they optioned him to Double-A Bowie. After three short starts spaced one week apart, he moved up to Norfolk, where he’s been pitching out of the bullpen in preparation for a similar role with the Orioles. Not that he’s a stranger to relief work; after being plucked from the Twins as a Rule 5 pick in December 2020, he spent the ’21 season as a reliever, making 44 appearances and finishing 18 games, four of them with saves.

One other potential reinforcement of note is John Means, a former stalwart of their rotation who’s working his way back from Tommy John surgery. Means provided some bright light for the Orioles during the dark days of 2019-21, earning All-Star honors, finishing as runner-up in the AL Rookie of the Year voting in ’19, throwing a no-hitter in ’21, and posting a 3.73 ERA and 4.65 FIP in 345.1 innings over those three seasons. He tore his UCL three starts into the 2022 season and began his rehab assignment on August 11. He’ll need at least another couple of turns but could provide some innings once his rehab assignment ends on September 8.

Bautista and the Orioles have been one of baseball’s best stories this season, fresh-faced contenders in an ultra-competitive AL East. We’ll certainly see more of the Orioles this fall, but unfortunately, we’ve probably seen the last of Bautista for awhile.