Tragic news: Bautista is departing the Orioles today after learning of his”;
READ MORE,,,He laterly Announced”
The great closer for the Baltimore Orioles won’t be returning in time for the postseason after all.
A Tommy John procedure is scheduled for Félix Bautista, general manager Mike Elias said on Saturday. It is anticipated that he will miss the whole 2024 regular season in addition to the postseason in 2023.
This is the final weekend of Labor Day Weekend, when baseball still has a strong hold on the sports-watching public. And while the final thirty or so Major League Baseball games of the season unfold, there are still compelling plots to keep an eye on, even though football will start to make an appearance.
Postseason berths, the MVP competition, and an enormous weekend series in Los Angeles.
There are injuries involved with several of these. So let’s begin with the report for this week.
Due to a UCL injury, Bautista has been out of the game since August 25 and has been placed on the 15-day injured list since August 26. However, just two weeks ago, Elias offered Orioles fans optimism when he informed the media that Bautista was throwing and might make a comeback this autumn.
That scenario will not come to pass, and Bautista will instead spend the next year-plus sidelined.
“We just ran out of time,” Elias said, per The Baltimore Sun’s Nathan Ruiz. “It became evident to us that this wasn’t going to get where it needed to go.”
Bautista was enjoying a breakout campaign before he went down, going 8-2 with a 1.48 ERA, 0.918 WHIP and 33 saves in 56 appearances. The 6-foot-8, 285-pound right-hander from the Dominican Republic made his first All-Star Game in July, and his career WAR has already reached 5.7 despite less than two seasons as a reliever in the big leagues.
The Orioles now head into the playoffs without their closer, having clinched the AL East title on Thursday. It will be Baltimore’s first trip to the postseason since 2016.
Despite the severity of Bautista’s injury and his extended recovery timeline, Elias told reporters that the Orioles had agreed to a two-year contract extension with the closer.
Bautista was going to be in his first year of arbitration eligibility heading into 2025, but his new deal will cover both 2024 and 2025. Bautista has now pushed arbitration off until the 2026 offseason, and he will not hit free agency until 2028, when he will be 32 years old.
