Notes on roster move, Núñez, Phillips and exit interviews

The Orioles recalled David Hess, who was on the taxi squad, to give them a fresh bullpen arm for tonight's series finale against the Red Sox at Fenway Park.

With Dean Kremer making his final start last night, the rookie has been optioned to the alternate camp site in Bowie.

It's the type of move often made leading into the All-Star break.

"We optioned Dean just because he wasn't going to make another start," manager Brandon Hyde said this afternoon in his Zoom conference call with the media. "Add David to see him again and for depth in our bullpen.

Hess has made three relief appearances, the most recent on Aug. 13 in Philadelphia, and allowed five runs and 10 hits in seven innings.

Renato Núñez isn't in the lineup due to some discomfort in his knee that he's played through for the past few games.

"He's been sore for a few days," Hyde said. "He had a sore knee and woke up a little bit more sore today, so decided to give him a breather today."

Reliever Evan Phillips returned to Baltimore for further testing on his sore right elbow. He's on the injured list after leaving Tuesday night's game.

"We feel good that it's not going to be anything major," Hyde said.

The annual exit meetings, with players stopping in the manager's office, began today with one session and will continue in Buffalo over the weekend.

"I think it's always a good time to sit down and review the year with some of our guys and talk about their offseasons, talk about pluses and minuses, things that we mutually feel like they need to get better at. We let the player talk a little bit, so I think it's a good thing for everybody."

The evaluation process in a 60-game season can be a little more complicated, especially with the team faltering down the stretch and players running out of time to reverse their slumps.

Hyde can fall back on his familiarity with some of the returnees.

"We saw Rio (Ruiz) and Sevie (Pedro Severino) and these guys play last year, too, so I think that we have 200-plus games with them of evaluating," Hyde said. "I'm looking forward to sitting down with those guys at the end of this in Buffalo and talk about their year and talk about things that they want to improve on.

"We talked a lot about this last year, being in an evaluation period where our organization is right now and we're still in that. We're still finding out about our guys and that was the challenge this year because of the shortened season and because of the inconsistency of the play of a lot of our players. These last few weeks have been tough and our guys' numbers have dropped pretty significantly, a lot of them.

"We'll talk about that and continue to try to get these guys better and discuss things they can work on in the offseason."

There's also the group of players who received a more extensive look in 2019. Reliever Branden Kline has made only two appearances this summer, and Hess only three.

"We'll talk about how they threw the ball in Bowie, we'll talk about their outings here, we'll talk about the upside," Hyde said.

"There's a lot of roster management decisions that happen in the next couple months, 40-man decisions, so I think those are ongoing and I'm fortunate to be included. Mike (Elias) includes me in those and we talk about our 40-man roster quite a bit.

"This isn't an ideal evaluation year just because it's only a two-month season and we're going to do the best we can."

The Orioles and Blue Jays aren't listing any of their starters for the weekend series in Buffalo.