Have the Orioles added effective fill-in players? | MAILBAG

Question: Is it time to give management some credit for signing players like Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Leody Taveras, and Jeremiah Jackson? None of these are stars, but they’ve performed well enough to help keep us in range of a wild-card spot at this point in the season. From: Tom Paullin 

Answer: Tom wrote this on Tuesday, the day before Jeremiah Jackson was sent to the minor leagues. The Orioles have done a decent job at finding some useful role players, but Jackson was sent down to Triple-A Norfolk after going hitless since July 20^th. At the time he was optioned. Jackson was in an 0-for-25 skid.

Encarnacion-Strand has been a nice find and has filled in well while Blaze Alexander has been out.

Taveras has been an acceptable fill-in outfielder.

Question: Why does everyone keep talking about Adley Rutschman’s three times on the injured list to emphasize being injury prone when one was due to being hit on the head while running? Also, he is a catcher — not unusual for the other two. From: Tom Carlson Lincoln City Oregon  

Answer: Coincidentally, both questions today come from readers named Tom. Rutschman was on the injured list five times in just over a season, which is a lot.

In 2022, 2023 and 2024, Rutschman wasn’t on the injured list at all.

He had two oblique strains in 2025 and played just 90 games. Yes, he was hit in the head with a ball, which was a freakish injury, but he did have left ankle inflammation and left wrist inflammation. I’m not sure that any of those four injuries were catching-related.

Most weekdays, I’ll be answering at least one Orioles question. If you’d like to submit a question, send it to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com. Questions may be edited for clarity, length and style.