Rich Dubroff

Orioles’ John Means leaves game in 1st inning because of left shoulder fatigue

BALTIMORE—Orioles left-hander John Means left Saturday’s game against the Cleveland Indians after throwing just 29 pitches in the first inning. The Orioles announced that Means was removed because of left shoulder fatigue.

He had a similar condition last year and was scratched from his Opening Day start. He did take his next turn in the rotation.

On Saturday, Means allowed a leadoff home run to Cesar Hernandez. After getting two outs, he gave up a homer to Harold Ramirez. After Eddie Rosario followed with a single, pitching coach Chris Holt went to the mound. He was joined by manager Brandon Hyde and head athletic trainer Brian Ebel.

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Means quickly left with Ebel and was replaced by Adam Plutko.

The 28-year-old left-hander, who threw a no-hitter against Seattle on May 5th, hadn’t pitched fewer than 4 2/3 innings in any start this season. On August 16, 2019, Means also left the game after throwing 2/3rds of an inning.

Rich Dubroff

Rich Dubroff grew up in Brooklyn as a fan of New York teams, but after he moved to Baltimore, quickly adopted the Orioles and Colts. After nearly two decades as a freelancer assisting on Orioles coverage for several outlets, principally The Capital in Annapolis and The Carroll County Times, Dubroff began covering the team fulltime in 2011. He spent five years at Comcast SportsNet’s website and for the last two seasons, wrote for PressBoxonline.com, Dubroff lives in Baltimore with his wife of more than 30 years, Susan.

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  • Palmer had commented on how much he was moving his arm between pitches. He said maybe he just couldn’t get loose. Let’s hope that’s all it was. Tho I gotta say, it’s hard to believe he should’ve had a problem “getting loose” on a 90 degree day. This is very disconcerting.

  • Well obviously all pitchers should be able to throw 250+ innings every season and load management is a ridiculous concept...amiright?

    • If you want to see something truly fascinating and something tgat tells you just how much the game has changed, look up Orioles pitchers statistics from 1971. That’s the year they had 4 20 game winners. The 4 20 game winners were the top 4 in number of games pitched. Only 3 other pitchers started ANY games and one, Dave Boswell, started only one. So yeh, I’m just gonna say it, load management is a ridiculous concept. It’s been lost on baseball that pitchers in fact need to pitch as long as possible to work up arm strength. If baseball insists on using 4, 5, 6 pitchers every game so be it, but the quality of their product is diminishing every year. I really hope Kumar or Leiter are available when the O’s draft. I’ll bet they’ll make fine relief pitchers.

      • I've been very skittish about rushing young pitchers along since the Dylan Bundy fiasco ... but I'm beginning to wonder if you're right DL.

        Although I'd stop short of saying it's a ridiculous concept, load managemnet sure hasn't seemed to have done this kid any good ... has it?

  • That arm shake looks like what a lot of pitchers do after the UCL goes. I was hoping that they would be abe to trade him next month.

  • Pultko should be sent back to planet Pluto. As for the 40 man roster Stevie Wilkerson was added just remove him and give this kid McCoy a shot until Jones is ready atleast. Bringing Wilkerson or Urias who didn’t even hit at Norfolk is a step backwards

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Rich Dubroff

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