Orioles News: Ryan Helsley injury update, Orioles trade for Cam Sanders, and Irish and Dzierwa's futures game

The Baltimore Orioles got an interesting injury update from their closer Ryan Helsley. When Helsley went down with his second elbow-related injury of the season, many people assumed that he would have to get Tommy John surgery and be out for the rest of this season and potentially most of next season. However, Helsley recently revealed that the pain in his elbow was caused purely by inflammation and there is no structural damage to his UCL. With no structural damage, there is no need for major surgery, so Helsley is going to rest and try to get the inflammation to go down before making a comeback this season.

Last time Helsley was out with elbow inflammation, he missed six weeks, and the Orioles bullpen really struggled without him. Even if the Orioles are optimistic they will be getting Helsley back later this season, they should be aggressive at the trade deadline looking for relievers who can help fill his role. So far in his absence, Tyler Wells has closed a few games, and Andrew Kittredge has closed one. Wells and Kittredge are both veterans and won't be overwhelmed by the idea of the ninth inning, but they are not the kind of arms that teams typically look at as closers and would be much better off in setup roles.

The Orioles made a move to increase their bullpen depth

The Orioles did make one move already to address their bullpen depth. This morning, they traded cash for Cam Sanders, whom the Pirates DFA'd two days ago to make room for Jacob Gonzalez, whom they traded for to fill in for an injured Konnor Griffin.

Sanders is a 29-year-old minor league veteran who has been grinding his way through the minors for the last eight years. He's pitched for the Pirates at the Major League level in very short bursts both this year and last year. Both times, it's been a rough go, as his career 8.44 ERA would indicate.

Despite the poor performance, there are things to like about Sanders; stuff+ rates three of his four pitches as above average, and he has a sub-three ERA in 24 innings in triple-A this year. Looking at his game logs, you can see he's a bit of an all-or-nothing proposition out of the bullpen. This year, he has six scoreless appearances and three appearances where he's given up multiple runs and nothing in between.

The Orioles are always shuffling through arms like this. They will try to make some adjustments to Sanders; if they take him, they'll try him out at the MLB level; if they don't, they'll DFA him and try again with another recently DFA'd arm.

Ike Irish and Joseph Dzierwa didn't get to play much in the Futures Game

The MLB Futures Game was on Sunday, overlapping with the Orioles' actual game and the MLB draft. An undeniably weird time for MLB to put it.

The Orioles had two representatives, Ike Irish and Joseph Dzierwa, both drafted in 2025. Irish and Dzierwa are fast-rising prospects and, as such, are two of the more exciting names the Orioles could have sent.

Unfortunately, neither Dzierwa nor Irish ended up impacting the game much. Irish came off the bench as a DH and went 0-1 with a walk in his two at-bats. Dzierwa faced just one batter in the last inning of the game and induced a flyout. Sending two prospects to the Futures Game and them coming home with a 0.00 ERA and a .500 OBP sounds nice, but it would have been cool if they had been more involved.

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