Orioles manager Buck Showalter said Tuesday that an MRI revealed first baseman Chris Davis has a Grade 1 right oblique strain and is headed for the disabled list, though not immediately.
While that didn’t happen before first pitch of Tuesday night’s game against the Chicago White Sox, Showalter said Davis had a flight to Baltimore scheduled and would need a few days of rest before he started rehabilitating for what could be an absence of at least a month.
“I’m not going to downplay it or make it worse or better than it is,” Showalter said. “It’s kind of out of my [hands]. I just know that it’s probably going to require a disabled list, and I think I know, but I try not to talk about a lot of things I’m really not sure about.
“I think I know it’s potentially on the shorter side, but what’s short? A month instead of two months? I don’t know. Last time, I think he had one that was 16 days, I believe. You can’t put any time on something like this.”
Davis strained his left oblique early in 2014 and the injury lingered all season as he struggled to find his All-Star form from a year before.
“We know the dates he missed last time,” Showalter said. “We’ll just see where we are in a couple of days before we start trying to put a time frame on it. It’s not one of those injuries you can go out and test out— ‘Hey, I’ve got a sore arm, let me go test it out’ —because you can set it back. But he felt it on that swing.”
The swing in question was with the bases loaded and two outs in the third inning, when Davis turned on a pitch to the warning track in right field. He went back in the dugout and immediately made it known what he believed he’d done, and the Orioles scrambled to bring Trey Mancini in from left field to take over at first base. He had already jogged out to the outfield by the time Showalter learned what had happened.
Davis was scheduled for an MRI on Tuesday morning in Chicago that revealed the extent of the strain, and while no timeline is laid out for a return, his absence is the latest the Orioles will have to deal with.
Fellow All-Stars Chris Tillman (shoulder), Zach Britton (forearm), Darren O’Day (shoulder), Manny Machado (wrist) and Adam Jones (hip/ankle) have also missed time this year.
Unlike with them, however, Davis plays a position of strength for the organization. Even if the Orioles weren’t able to get an immediate replacement up from the minors Tuesday, they exist, Showalter said.
“I’ve got options” he said Tuesday. “Some that are here, and some aren’t currently here, but Trey [Mancini is] playing there tonight.”
Showalter was almost rosy about that fact in the pall immediately after Monday’s loss.
“Chris is a good player, but we’ve got some other good players with the opportunity to step up, just like every club,” he said Monday. “Everybody has got their challenges, including us.”
Of all the positions to absorb a loss in the heart of the lineup, the Orioles are built well to slide other candidates into the first base rotation in Davis’ stead to attempt to replicate his .226/.320/.461 line and 14 home runs without altering their roster much.
Mancini moved from left field to first base when Davis left Monday night and started there Tuesday, bringing Hyun Soo Kim out from the wilderness to play left. Mark Trumbo, who was Monday’s designated hitter, has plenty of experience at first, too.
Tuesday’s lineup featured Joey Rickard in left field and Trumbo in right field, with Welington Castillo at designated hitter. That left only Kim, Seth Smith and Rubén Tejada on a short-handed bench.
If a like replacement is summoned, sluggers Pedro Álvarez and David Washington are both hitting well at Triple-A Norfolk and can play both first base and outfield in a pinch, though they’re more hitters than fielders.
As it stands, though, Mancini and Kim are in line to benefit most. Mancini hit his 10th home run of the season late in Monday’s loss, and while he began the season as a platoon outfielder against left-handed pitching, he’s hitting .298 with a .929 OPS and six home runs against right-handed pitchers.
Kim had a hit in three at-bats with an RBI and a run scored to drag his average up to .253 with a .654 OPS. His season hasn’t gone as planned, as he entered camp penciled into the big half of an outfield platoon (and was expected to sit against left-handed pitching, as he did last year) but instead has made fewer starts this year through 62 games (19) than last year at that point.
His most recent start was June 7, and however unconventional his at-bats might seem, his approach was one the Orioles benefited from while he batted .302 with an .801 OPS last season.
A regular spot in the lineup could get him back to that level before long, and Showalter won’t have to choose between Kim and Mancini the way he has over the first two-plus months of the season.
Where the Orioles would suffer is defensively, as Davis’ glove has been a frequent topic of praise from Showalter and the teammates whose throws the first baseman spends games scooping out of the dirt. Neither Trumbo nor Mancini fields that position as well as Davis, and it’s that reason, plus Davis’ general presence, that the feeling after Monday’s loss wasn’t that the team’s franchise first baseman would be easy to replicate in aggregate.
“He’s a middle-of-the-order, constant threat that plays great defense at first base,” Trumbo said. “He is a premier talent and it’s obviously tough if he’s out. We’ll find a way. … We keep moving. No one is going to feel sorry for us, so we can’t either. We’ve got good players, and we’ll find a way to get it done.”
