Orioles activate reliever Félix Bautista from injured list, Albernaz returning, Mancini retires

BALTIMORE (AP) — The Baltimore Orioles activated reliever Félix Bautista from the 60-day injured list Saturday, setting up the former closer to return from right shoulder surgery 14 months after his last major league game.

Bautista saved 33 games and struck out 110 in 61 innings while earning an All-Star nod in 2023, but he missed the final month of that season and all of 2024 while recovering from Tommy John surgery. He had 19 saves in 35 games in 2025 before surgery to repair his torn labrum and torn rotator cuff ended his season.

Bautista had a 2.35 ERA in nine minor league rehab games.

“He is as close to full go as he could be,” manager Craig Albernaz said. “We’re going to try to be as smart as we can with using Félix. But also, the game is chaotic and unpredictable, so you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The Orioles also optioned pitcher Cade Povich and outfielder Heston Kjerstad to Triple-A Norfolk, activated outfielder Christian Franklin from the 10-day injured list and transferred outfielder Tyler O’Neill to the 60-day IL.

Mike Elias, Baltimore’s president of baseball operations, said Saturday that Albernaz would return in 2027. The Orioles are 75-79 in Albernaz’s first season and began the day three games out of an AL wild-card spot.

“It’s a great vote of confidence,” Albernaz said. “Obviously, this season hasn’t gone the way I wanted it by any stretch, by how the players wanted the season to go, how the front office, how the fanbase. … That’s something I wear pretty heavily because of the seat I’m in and I don’t take that lightly.”

In addition, Trey Mancini signed a one-day contract to retire with the Orioles, the franchise he played for during the bulk of his eight-year career in the majors.

The former first baseman and outfielder had four 20-homer seasons for Baltimore. He also was an emotional centerpiece of the Orioles after he recovered from a colon cancer diagnosis that cost him the entire 2020 season and earned the AL’s Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2021 by hitting .255 with 21 homers and 71 RBIs.

“I know there have been players that were better players than me overall and that haven’t gotten this treatment and haven’t gotten to retire with the team they came up with and played with for a long time and really identified with,” said Mancini, who was honored before the Orioles’ game against the Milwaukee Brewers. “It’s not something I take for granted at all.”

Mancini hit .263 with 129 homers and 404 RBIs in the majors, making 701 of his 836 appearances with the Orioles.

Mancini was dealt to Houston at the trade deadline in 2022 and helped the Astros win the World Series. He struggled in 79 games with the Chicago Cubs in 2023, spent the following year out of baseball and then played the first three months of the 2025 season with Reno, Arizona’s Triple-A team.

Mancini hit .308 in five games with the Los Angeles Angels in June, then announced his retirement on Aug. 18.

“The whole goal was to make it back up and end my career on my terms more so than how they were kind of ended for me three years prior,” Mancini said. “I knew that the rest of my life I could look back and have no regrets.”

See AP’s full MLB coverage here

FILE - Baltimore Orioles pitcher Félix Bautista delivers to the Tampa Bay Rays during the ninth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, June 17, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara,File)

Former Baltimore Oriole Trey Mancini, right, waves to his daughter before signing a one day contract with Baltimore Orioles general manager Mike Elias and returning to the team as he announces his retirement during a news conference on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Gail Burton)

Former Baltimore Oriole Trey Mancini smiles before signing a one day contract with Baltimore Orioles and returning to the team as he announces his retirement during a news conference on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Gail Burton)

Former Baltimore Oriole Trey Mancini poses with his wife Sara Perlman and daughter Sadie after announcing his retirement as an Oriole during a news conference on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Gail Burton)

Iranians are suffering as economic misery and internal repression leave “no room for people to breathe” after 1½ years of wars, Iran's most prominent human rights activist has told The Associated Press.

Narges Mohammadi, 54, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023, was temporarily released from prison for medical reasons earlier this year after falling unconscious and being transferred to a hospital.

Her memoir — titled “A Woman Never Stops Fighting” — was written behind bars, with parts of it smuggled out by fellow inmates. Editions in French, German and nine other languages are being released this month. The English and Farsi editions will be released next year.

In an interview conducted Friday by The Associated Press from outside Iran, Mohammadi said that Iranians are grappling with multiple crises stemming from the ongoing war and deepening economic pressure, and the brutal crackdowns on protests.

“I am sorry to say, but since the outbreak of war, in the past months and last year and a half, we have seen that repression in society has severely increased and now, with these economic pressures and with the repression that really has left no room for people to breathe, it’s the people who are paying an extremely heavy price,” she said.

But she said that many Iranians continue to resist, a change she traces back to the 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in a hospital after being detained for violating authorities' strict Islamic dress code.

The release of Mohammadi's book this month coincides with Amini's death to honor her memory, her representatives said. The English and Farsi editions will be released in September 2027 for the same reason.

“If you go out into the streets, you see a wave of resistance among the people, a wave of awareness, and their determination to stand up for their rights,” Mohammadi said. She said that government repression has intensified, but that many in a new younger generation “know their rights” and were standing firm. “And that gives us reason for hope,” she said.

The AP agreed not to ask Mohammadi specific questions about the political situation and leadership in Iran, because of concerns for her safety, though she commented generally about the cost of war.

In her interview with the AP, Mohammadi — who has been jailed repeatedly over decades of advocating for human rights and was behind bars when she was awarded the Nobel Prize — described her most recent arrest, detention and health.

She said that she was severely beaten by security forces when detained in December, in the northeastern city of Mashhad. She and a group of activists were attending a memorial ceremony for human rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi, who was found dead in his office.

She was arrested while giving a public speech. She was sentenced to 16 years and more than a 100 lashes for attending that rally. She hasn't been flogged, but spent long periods in solitary confinement.

“My detention was really life-threatening,” she said. “My head was severely hurt, because most of the hits were to my head, and despite being in that condition, they kept me for two months in solitary confinement during which my condition was really concerning.”

She lost consciousness on May 1 and was released on bail nearly 10 days later and transferred to a hospital in Tehran, where she remained for another two weeks.

She smuggled out fragments of her memoir, which she had started writing in 2019 during an earlier stint in Iran's notorious Evin prison in Tehran, where many political prisoners are held. She had lost her handwritten notes that year when they moved her to another site.

This time, “with the help of fellow inmates, we got a few pages out, a few pages at a time,” she said. “If it weren’t for them, I couldn’t have done it.”

As for her health, “I am recovering,” Mohammadi said.

Mohammadi said that she took inspiration from other women’s stories growing up, beginning with her own mother.

“I tried to put an image to each of these — how these women really managed to change their world, their society, themselves, the next generation — make them aware, make them resist,” she said.

She also recalled “terrifying memories” from her childhood during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and how she developed “a hatred for war.”

“I wasn’t more than a child when the Iran-Iraq war happened, but I remember a lot of the repression, repression of many political currents and forces, many executions that happened in the silence and darkness of Evin and prisons around the country,” she said.

She recalled her concern when she learned that Evin prison had been bombed during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in 2025, a period when she was out of prison.

“At that moment, I felt that, in this country, we are at the intersection of injustice, discrimination, war, authoritarianism,” she said. “All of those are trampling on our people’s human rights.”

Mohammadi has been handed down sentences totaling 44 years. She has already spent 10 years in prison, including 161 days in solitary confinement. She has been banned from traveling abroad since 2009, and is unable to join her husband and two children who live in exile in France.

“My sentence is currently suspended, and I must return whenever the judiciary issues the order,” Mohammadi later said in a text message shared by her team.

FILE - A photo of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Narges Mohammadi is projected onto the wall of the Grand Hotel in central Oslo before the Nobel banquet on Dec. 10. 2023. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP, File)