Orioles get potentially devastating Grayson Rodriguez injury update

At some point, the injury bug has to stop biting the Orioles, right? I mean, we're running out of different ways to say it at this point, but the Orioles are once again into the fire with their starting rotation.

Last year was a total nightmare, as three-fifths of the Opening Day rotation was lost to Tommy John surgery at some point. Grayson Rodriguez went down with a serious lat injury after the All Star break and wasn't available during the O's brief postseason stretch.

We'd assumed that Rodriguez was going to be fine for Opening Day 2025 but that proved untrue. The righty suffered a triceps injury during spring training and was forced to start the year on the IL. We're now three weeks into the year and there's more bad news to share.

Rodriguez was recently scheduled to throw a side-session as part of his rehab program. He's been starting to ramp back up in anticipation of re-joining the big league club at some point in the coming weeks. However, Brandon Hyde told reporters on Thursday that Rodriguez was scratched from the session due to lingering shoulder tightness.

Orioles' top pitching asset Grayson Rodriguez suffering from potentially serious shoulder injury

Hyde said that Rodriguez had undergone imaging to determine the extent of the injury. At the moment, we're still awaiting word about the results of those tests. However, we've covered this previously because Albert Suarez is currently dealing with a shoulder injury as well - shoulder injuries can be catastrophic for pitchers.

While we're not entirely sure how bad the news about Rodriguez really is, we can make an educated guess and say that it's bad. There's almost no scenario where Rodriguez gets out of this scot-free. Best case scenario is that he'll be able to return to his throwing program within the next week or so but he's still several weeks away from being major league ready. At this rate, we might not see him until mid-summer, if at all.

It's horrible news for Rodriguez himself, who's starting to become more of an idea of a pitcher, rather than an actual Orioles starter. He's thrown just 238.2 innings since breaking into the big leagues back in 2023. and he'll be hard-pressed to surpass his career high of 122 thanks to this current IL stint.

Last year, Rodriguez missed time with a similar ailment, spending about three weeks on the IL in the season's first couple months with shoulder inflammation. He missed two months with the lat injury after the All Star break, and he's going to add a substantial absence to that list with this current triceps/shoulder pairing.

Rodriguez is still just 25 but he was once billed as an elite pitching prospect and his potential has seemingly been a big part of why the Orioles have chosen to avoid signing and trading for big name starting pitchers, Corbin Burnes excluded.

The Orioles need him to both be available and to live up to his prospect hype. So far, that's been far from the case. He's been solid, but by no means spectacular. And he's thrown nowhere near the kind of workload that you'd expect from a top-tier starting pitcher.

Maybe that'll change. Maybe he'll surprise us and return in short order from this injury, and put up strong numbers when he comes back. Unfortunately, it's tough to feel like that's the most likely outcome. We'll have to wait and see about the results of the MRI, but this feels like a major setback for the Orioles in 2025.