{"id":787016,"date":"2026-08-24T09:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/787016\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T09:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:18:16","slug":"felix-bautista-begins-minor-league-rehab-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/787016\/","title":{"rendered":"Felix Bautista Begins Minor League Rehab Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Felix Bautista<\/a> threw 22 pitches today with Double-A Chesapeake, allowing a hit and three walks while retiring just one of five batters faced in the first game of his minor league rehab assignment. \u00a0Michael Howes of the Baltimore Sun<\/a> was among those to report that the right-hander averaged 95.1mph on his fastball, hitting 97mph with one pitch.<\/p>\n

While Bautista would\u2019ve surely preferred to be sharper, Chesapeake manager Robert Mercado told Howes that \u201cwe\u2019re not concerned about the results.\u00a0 The goal was he threw and is healthy coming off the mound, and that\u2019s the biggest thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bautista\u2019s previous game at any level was an inning of work for the Orioles on July 20, 2025, and he was placed on the 15-day injured list a few days later with what was initially termed as right shoulder discomfort.\u00a0 Unfortunately for Bautista, further testing revealed a far more serious problem, and it was almost exactly a year ago that he underwent surgery to fix a torn rotator cuff and torn labrum.<\/p>\n

The initial 12-month recovery timeline has largely been met, but it isn\u2019t yet known how many rehab outings Bautista will need before he is fully ready.\u00a0 Bautista believed that his rehab assignment will continue at the Triple-A level, and the organization will monitor his recovery from Sunday\u2019s outing before lining up his next appearance.<\/p>\n

This is the second major injury absence of Bautista\u2019s career, as he missed the entire 2024 season due to an October 2023 Tommy John surgery (plus a right elbow debridement and ulnar nerve transposition procedure in February 2024).\u00a0 He posted a 1.85 ERA, 10% walk rate, and a stunning 40.4% strikeout rate over 126 2\/3 innings in 2022-23, emerging as Baltimore\u2019s closer late in the 2022 campaign.\u00a0 Upon returning from TJ rehab in 2025, Bautista still had a 2.60 ERA and 35.2% strikeout rate, but his walk rate shot up to 16.2%.<\/p>\n

It is too early to tell if Bautista can harness his control during his rehab assignment, but even returning to something close to his 2025 form would be an enormous help to the Orioles\u2019 bullpen that is also missing Ryan Helsley<\/a> to injury.\u00a0 Assuming Bautista\u2019s rehab work goes smoothly, the O\u2019s could bring him back as part of the closing committee (that includes Rico Garcia<\/a>, Andrew Kittredge<\/a>, and Yennier Cano<\/a>) if the club doesn\u2019t want to throw him right into the deep end of full-time ninth inning duty.<\/p>\n

In other Orioles injury news, Blaze Alexander<\/a> is expected to start a Triple-A rehab assignment of his own on Tuesday.\u00a0 The utilityman broke out to hit .312\/.368\/.439 with four homers over 246 plate appearances this season before his left hand was fractured by a Lucas Erceg<\/a> pitch on July 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Felix Bautista threw 22 pitches today with Double-A Chesapeake, allowing a hit and three walks while retiring just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,30643,584],"class_list":["post-787016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-blaze-alexander","tag-felix-bautista"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117149742156676057","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}