BALTIMORE — With Felix Bautista spending nearly three weeks on the injured list, the Orioles have finally announced their former All-Star closer won’t pitch again in 2025.
But concerns about when exactly he’ll take the mound again for Baltimore are far greater than that.
Interim manager Tony Mansolino said Bautista is dealing with a “significant” shoulder injury and will see another specialist later this week with the club expecting to provide further information in the next week or so. The 30-year-old right-hander was placed on the IL with “right shoulder discomfort” on July 24 and hasn’t pitched since laboring through a season-high 34 pitches to register a save at Tampa Bay on July 20, an outing in which his fastball velocity was down noticeably from his season average. In late July, Mansolino said “a lot of swelling” in Bautista’s shoulder had made it difficult to make a definitive diagnosis, which some medical experts interpreted as a concerning update.
It’s unclear what this means for 2026, but thoughts of Bautista not being available would be devastating to an Orioles bullpen that already needs to be rebuilt this offseason by general manager Mike Elias after four relievers were traded in July. Of course, it hasn’t quite been two years since Bautista suffered a major elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery, which sidelined him for the end of 2023 as well as the entire 2024 season.
“I don’t want to speculate,” said Mansolino about Bautista’s long-term prognosis and status for 2026. “Let’s just get to the appointment later this week, and then next week, we will tell you exactly what the doctor said and what the timelines are.”
In his return to the mound this season, Bautista converted 19 of 20 save opportunities and posted a 2.60 ERA in 34 2/3 innings. Though his velocity didn’t quite return to pre-injury levels, the 2023 All-Star reliever still registered 13.0 strikeouts per nine innings while averaging 6.0 walks per nine frames.
The bad news didn’t stop there Tuesday with Mansolino announcing starter Zach Eflin would undergo season-ending lower back surgery in the coming days. It’s been a disappointing 2025 for the club’s Opening Day starter, who made just 14 starts and posted a 5.93 ERA while having three different stints on the IL, two of them for lower back discomfort. The exact procedure is a lumbar microdiscectomy, which is done to treat a herniated disc.
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Projected to be a playoff-hopeful club’s top two starting pitchers entering spring training, Eflin and right-hander Grayson Rodriguez combined to make 14 starts in 2025, which is one of many reasons why the Orioles are mired in last place and sold off assets at the trade deadline. The 25-year-old Rodriguez underwent elbow surgery to have a bone spur removed Monday and didn’t throw a single pitch this season, but Mansolino said he’ll “likely” be ready for the start of spring training.
“We felt [their absence] all year,” Mansolino said. “I think as you go through the trade deadline and you know kind of what happened here earlier in the year with the staff changes and the things that kind of went on, I don’t think today’s the day of finality by any means. It’s just something that we’ve kind of had to take on throughout the year and put our best foot forward, and I feel like we have in a lot of ways.”
Eflin, 31, is set to become a free agent at the end of the season, and many were already speculating about whether the Orioles would give him the qualifying offer to either keep him under contract for 2026 or be in line for possible draft pick compensation if he were to decline and sign with another club.
Mansolino had more encouraging updates on right-handers Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells in their respective rehab assignments and pending returns from 2024 elbow surgeries. Bradish is expected to make two more rehab starts before being activated later this month while Wells is going to make two or three more starts before being reinstated from the 60-day IL.
Both pitchers are being built up as starters in their rehab stints, but Wells could slide into more of a bulk relief role with Bradish — who finished fourth in 2023 AL Cy Young Award voting as the club’s ace — expected to slot into the starting rotation. Wells hasn’t pitched in the majors since April of 2024, and Bradish last pitched for the Orioles on June 14, 2024.
“Honestly, we have no idea what we’re going to do yet. We’ve almost got to get there first,” Mansolino said. “You [can’t] start thinking too far ahead, especially off kind of a record-setting number of players we’ve used this year, which is probably a result of injuries. It’d be kind of naive to look too far ahead.”
Right-hander Albert Suarez began his rehab assignment at Double-A Chesapeake on Tuesday. The 35-year-old reliever hasn’t pitched since the opening series of the season in Toronto because of a shoulder injury.
