In the month since Félix Bautista flexed his right hand and walked off the Camden Yards mound, the Orioles have held out hope their All-Star closer would be able to return this season despite the partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow.
Saturday, that possibility came to a public end as executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias announced that Bautista is done for the year and will undergo Tommy John elbow reconstruction. The procedure, which Dr. Keith Meister will perform in early October in Dallas, has a typical recovery time of 12 to 18 months, meaning Bautista will likely miss the 2024 season, as well.
“He should be back to being Félix Bautista in spring training 2025,” Elias said.
Elias added the Orioles have also agreed to a two-year deal with Bautista, covering next season and 2025, which would have been his first year of arbitration eligibility. The contract marks the second guaranteed multi-year agreement Elias has given out in his nearly five years as Baltimore’s general manager; the first came under similar circumstances, with left-hander John Means’ two-year deal last season announced shortly after his Tommy John surgery.
Bautista, 28, was baseball’s best reliever before the injury, with a 1.48 ERA, 33 saves and 110 strikeouts in 61 innings. His 46.4% strikeout rate led the sport and was one of the best in major league history. The American League East champions hoped to have him back for their first postseason appearance since 2016.
“Obviously, we’re going to miss the hell out of the guy,” Elias said. “Unfortunately, this has become part of our game, especially for the more elite pitchers.”
On Aug. 26, a day after , Elias said Bautista had “some degree” of UCL injury. On Sept. 11, , with the update coming in the wake of the hulking reliever nicknamed “The Mountain” playing catch during the Orioles’ preceding road trip.
His workload slowly increased, to the point before Baltimore’s Sept. 17 game, working in fastballs, splitters and sliders, before a in which he faced a batter from the Camden Yards mound. Bautista hasn’t been spotted throwing on the field in any form since.
Elias said Bautista “felt OK” after the session and that nothing changed with his condition between it and Saturday’s announcement other than the Orioles coming to the official determination they didn’t have time to properly ramp up Bautista with their postseason run set to begin in a week. He acknowledged Bautista’s torn UCL would have inevitably required surgery this offseason, even if he had returned for the postseason.
“We’re talking about going to play the highest level of baseball in the world here the next few weeks, and just getting him into a competitive state and a recovery state between outings — it was a pipe dream to begin with, and it just seemed increasingly far-fetched,” Elias said. “But I think it was responsible of everyone, including him, and admirable of him to want to try. He wanted to keep pitching, and the doctors thought this might be a case where there was a glimmer of hope we could pull that off. I think if we had two months left, we maybe could, but look, we’re playing a playoff game here in a week, and to bum rush that doesn’t make sense for anybody, so we’re just gonna go ahead and start getting this behind us.
“It became evident to us that this wasn’t going to get where it needed to go.”
Elias said he’s thought “in the back of my mind” about how Bautista’s 2024 absence will affect his approach to the offseason, but added “laser-focused on this playoff run.”
The Orioles’ hopes of a deep one are seemingly hampered without Bautista. Manager Brandon Hyde called upon Bautista in the eighth inning five times, and each time he finished the game from there to earn the save. In four road games that went extra innings, Bautista pitched a scoreless ninth then came back out for the bottom of the 10th after Baltimore scored in the top half, managing to strand the automatic runner for a victory.
“It’s a lot harder [without Bautista],” Hyde said. “Normally, it would be an eight-inning ball game, and then you give the ball to him and take your chances, or 7 2/3, or tie game in the ninth, back out on the 10th on the road type of situation, and you take a chance with a guy that’s going to punch out 40-something percent of hitters. But it’s been more challenging, and our guys have [risen] to the occasion a little bit. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of matching up late in the game.”
The Orioles have not landed on a set closer in Bautista’s absence, an approach Hyde said has been “the plan since the next day [after] he got hurt, honestly.” Yennier Cano, Bautista’s close friend and a fellow All-Star, initially filled the role, but Hyde has used matchups of late, often deploying Cano in the game’s most crucial situation regardless of whether that comes in the ninth inning. Five Baltimore relievers have earned a save since Bautista’s injury.
As a whole, the bullpen entered Saturday with a 3.66 ERA without Bautista, posting a 3.55 mark with him, though its combined strikeout rate has fallen from 26.5% to 18.9%.
“We were patching it together some nights,” Elias said. “We were fretting it between games some nights, but look back at the record and what happened, and they pulled it off. It’s been a revolving cast all year, too, so I think you have to credit the culture in the pitching staff and the pitching department here that those guys figured out a way to get us to this point.”
The Orioles have gone 20-12 since placing Bautista on the injured list, a 101-win pace exactly matching how they performed with him healthy. During that time, Baltimore clinched its first playoff berth since 2016, first AL East title since 2014 and first 100-win season since 1980. Bautista was part of all of the subsequent celebrations in the Orioles’ clubhouse.
“He deserves it,” Hyde said. “He’s a huge reason why we were celebrating, an enormous reason why we were celebrating. … I just give the guy a ton of credit for doing everything you could to pitch in the postseason, wanting to be with his teammates and pitch and be a part of it. He has busted his butt since the night he got hurt just to have the chance to. We love the guy. Just shows you what kind of unbelievable teammate he is to do this really for his teammates to try to be able to contribute in the postseason. It’s unfortunate that can’t happen.”
But the Orioles’ success without him shows there still could be more to come in October.
“They’ve done an unbelievable job of picking up the pieces a little bit,” Hyde said. “We met as a team the next day after he was hurt and talked a lot about what he has meant and what we need to do to — guys need to step up in different ways, and they have. The bullpen guys have. They’ve pitched in little bit different roles possibly, pitch a little bit earlier in the game, pitch a little bit later in the game than they were used to. I think they’ve taken it head on and have done an amazing job.”
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