BALTIMORE -- Orioles reliever Richard Bleier exited Wednesday's 5-1 loss to the Red Sox in the eighth inning with what's being initially ruled as a left lat injury. Bleier threw a pitch and put his glove down to grab his throwing arm in pain as head athletic trainer Brian Ebel rushed out.
"He had an X-ray right now. I just saw him. It's got the characteristics of a lat, so we'll see. Hope for the best," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. "Obviously, he was in a lot of discomfort, so we'll see. He never had anything like that before. I didn't get a chance to talk to him for very long. He was pretty down, as you can imagine."
Bleier, who recorded the first out of the eighth, ended the seventh inning and had been one of the bright spots for the Orioles this season. The lefty is 3-0 with a 1.93 ERA in 31 appearances.
"It's self-explanatory," a shaken-up Bleier said of how scary the moment was for him. "Any injury is not good, and [this was] to the point where there was no question I couldn't make another pitch. That's obviously not good."
Bleier has an MRI scheduled on Thursday's off-day and didn't want to speculate on a timeline or the severity of the injury right away. He said he didn't feel anything prior to the pitch that forced Bleier out of the game and brought on Brad Brach.
"I knew they wanted me to get through that inning, so, for the other guys, it's tough," Bleier said. "Thankfully, we have an off-day tomorrow, so it will kind of give everybody a chance to regroup, but it's obviously not good for everyone and everything's kind of not going well, so it kind of just compounds that."