Baltimore Orioles Choose Sunday Starting Pitcher vs. Athletics

The Baltimore Orioles are going to stick with the hot hand and give an injured starter one more rehab start at Triple-A Norfolk.

Apr 17, 2024; Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Baltimore Orioles pitcher Albert Suarez. / Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports

The Baltimore Orioles made their decision about their starting pitcher for Sunday’s series finale with the Oakland Athletics.

The Orioles will start Albert Suárez on Sunday and give John Means at least one more rehab start at Triple-A Norfolk, per MLB.com.

Baltimore was toying with the idea of activating the 31-year-old left-hander for Sunday’s game. In his last rehab start, he threw 79 pitches and went 4.1 innings. He gave up seven hits, three earned runs and one walk. He also struck out five.

But Means has been up-and-down in his five rehab starts since his debut on March 31, with a 0-1 record and a 13.89 ERA. In two of those appearances he pitched an inning or less.

So the Orioles will give him one more start and then he will join Baltimore. He is working back from a forearm injury that set him behind the rest of the pitching staff by about a month when spring training started. The injury is not related to his Tommy John surgery from 2022.

The Orioles can afford to be cautious thanks to the emergence of Suárez, who has been brilliant in his two starts since stepping into the rotation.

Per Sarah Langs, Suárez is the first pitcher with an outing of five-plus innings and no runs allowed in each of his first two appearances after not appearing in MLB for five or more years, since the mound was moved to its current distance in 1893.

The 34-year-old right-hander is 1-0. Baltimore signed him to a minor-league contract in January and invited him to spring training. He was called up last week to take Tyler Wells’ place in the rotation, who is recovering from an elbow injury.

Before that, Suárez had not pitched in the Majors since he made 18 appearances with the San Francisco Giants in 2017.

After that he bounced around minor league baseball for a bit before he played overseas in Japan with Nippon Professional Baseball’s Tokyo Yakult Swallows (2019-21) and the Korean Baseball Organization’s Samsung Lions (2022-23). He posted a respectable ERA of around 3.00 with both teams.