Touch 'Em All: Orioles' Wieters strictly a DH for time being

Baltimore Orioles catcher Matt Wieters was out of the starting lineup Wednesday night after making a trip to have his sore right elbow examined by orthopedic surgeon James Andrews.

Wieters flew from Tampa to Pensacola earlier in the day for the exam and rejoined the Orioles for the game against Tampa Bay.

While it was determined that Wieters would avoid the disabled list, he will likely be limited to designated-hitter duty for a period of time.

"It doesn't hurt him to hit at all, either way," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said.

The elbow has bothered the switch-hitting Wieters for the last couple of weeks. He went 2 for 5 as the DH Tuesday night in a 5-3 win over the Rays.

Wieters called the test results a good thing.

"Anytime it's a positive outlook to where we definitely see getting back on the field sooner rather than later," said Wieters, who arrived at Tropicana Field about 90 minutes before game time.

Nationals manager Matt Williams said his car was sideswiped by another vehicle that then took off, chased by police, while he was stopped in traffic a few blocks away from Nationals Park.

"I'm fine. No worries. Car's not real good, but I'm good," Williams said.

The accident happened during a weekly radio interview on a sports station in Washington.

"Sorry, guys, I just had an accident," he said, according to the Washington Post. "I've got a police officer behind me. This guy's going to try to escape. The guy's running. He just ran right into the back of me. I just got rear-ended by a guy in a car. Hold on. This guy's crashing into people."

"The cops are gone, they're chasing him," Williams continued. "That's the strangest thing I've ever been a part of right there. . . . We've got a helicopter overhead right now. Unbelievable. That's unbelievable."

After a pause, he asked: "So what about baseball?"

Major League Baseball maintained its racial and gender hiring practices in the last year, while the percentage of African American players equaled a study's all-time low set in the 2007 season.

That's according to the annual report by Richard Lapchick's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida. It gave MLB an A grade in racial hiring and C-plus in gender hiring.

The baseball rosters on opening day featured 8.2 percent of players who identified as African American, equaling the all-time low for the second time since the study began in 1988. It's a decline from 8.3 percent in 2013 and 8.9 percent in 2012.

- Staff and wire reports