Baltimore Orioles slating Mike Wright for the minors?

Could Mike Wright be the Baltimore Orioles’ odd man out with a roster move looming?

Mike Wright‘s start got washed (or frozen) away last night, so by default the Baltimore Orioles are still the league’s only undefeated team. The O’s and Tampa sat through a 40+ minute rain delay beginning right at gametime, and then it appeared we were actually going to play. But just as things were about to get going the call came for the tarp again. The game was officially postphoned about twenty minutes later.

No makeup date has been announced as of yet for the game, however the Orioles are saying that it will be made up as part of a doubleheader at the end of June when Tampa next returns to the yard. My money would be on a day-night (split admission) doubleheader on Friday June 24th – just a prediction. Either that or I suppose they could always just play a split doubleheader at Tropicana Field when the O’s head down there with the Orioles being the home team in the first game.

But I digress. I found it interesting that Mike Wright is effectively being skipped

in the rotation as a result of last night’s game being canceled. Vance Worley (“the Vanimal” – an awesome nickname, which reminds me of Dan Hampton of the 1980’s Chicago Bears who was called “the Danimal”) remains the scheduled starter in this afternoon’s game. Showalter has already named his starters for the upcoming series in Boston, and Wright doesn’t appear to be one of them. 

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First off, things could certainly change. Teams shuffle their rotation after rainouts all the time. However the Orioles will need to make a roster move in the next 1-2 days, as Brian Matusz is going to be coming off the DL. At first it appeared that might happen as soon as after this afternoon’s game – and it certainly still might. However they might look to give Matusz a couple of additional days just to rest him up a bit before coming back to the big league club.

So someone is ticketed for either Norfolk or Bowie, and my thought was that it was someone in the bullpen. However the fact that Wright at this point doesn’t appear to be in the team’s plans for the next few games, it’s entirely possible that he could be the odd man out. And it’s nothing against Wright (or anyone else), although it would be sad to see him sent down without having even pitched in a game.

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It would also in effect be a waste of an option, but that’s another story. Often times these decisions have little to do with performance or production; certainly in Wright’s situation that would be the case given the fact that he would have never appeared in a game. If this scenario ends up coming to fruition, I suspect that Tyler Wilson would slide from the ‘pen into the rotation, and Matusz of course right back into the bullpen.

Again folks, one way or the other these decisions aren’t easy. And Showalter’s the type of manager that does in fact take demotions very hard in terms of having to tell someone he’s being sent back down. But that’s part of the job. At one point in his life he had to tell his own son that he probably wasn’t going to be able to hack it in professional baseball as a player. Talk about rough moments.

Next: Baltimore Orioles: Chris Davis and company arrive in 2016

The Orioles will complete this now truncated series with Tampa at home this afternoon, and then will head out on their first road trip of 2016. They’ll take on Boston at Fenway Park tomorrow at 2 PM – Boston’s home opener, and then head to Texas for a four-game set starting Thursday night. Needless to say, once they arrive down there the cold won’t be an issue any longer!