Notes

NEW YORK — ORIOLES

Manager, player suspended

NEW YORK - Baltimore pitcher Alfredo Simon has been suspended three games and Orioles Manager Buck Showalter has been penalized one game after a run-in this weekend against Toronto.

Simon and Showalter also were fined undisclosed amounts by Major League Baseball after home run leader Jose Bautista of the Blue Jays was plunked Sunday following a warning by the umpires.

Simon has appealed his penalty and can continue to play until the process is complete. Showalter missed Baltimore’s game Monday night at Tampa Bay and bench coach Jeff Datz filled in.

Both Bautista and Simon are from the Dominican Republic, and consider themselves friends.

“I do get along pretty well with Simon, so the fact that he hit me, that’s another indicator to me that he might have been told to do so,” Bautista said. “I think he was following orders, I don’t think he wanted to hit me.”

Bautista has 52 home runs this year, including nine against the Orioles. Baltimore starter Rick VandenHurk hit Bautista in the third inning and both benches were warned after Shaun Marcum hit Orioles designated hitter Luke Scott to begin the fourth.

Simon replaced VandenHurk to begin the fifth. Bautista batted with one out and after throwing two balls, the second of which was high and tight, Simon hit the Toronto star on the left forearm and was ejected by plate umpire Bill Welke.

“I understand how it looks and I would have been upset about it, too. There’s nothing you can about it. It looked that way. I can tell you it wasn’t intentional,” Showalter said Monday.

Said Bautista: “It doesn’t give me any pleasure that they were suspended or whatever. It’s just what they deserved.”

Marcum, whose pitch brushed Scott’s jersey, was fined an undisclosed amount. He planned to appeal.

“Everybody around here knows I’ve got good enough control that if I’m going to hit somebody, I’m going to square him up in the back,” Marcum said. “I’m not going to hit him on the sleeve or something like that.”

Marcum didn’t understand why he was fined for hitting Scott before a warning had been given.

“The warnings weren’t even out,” Marcum said. “To hit somebody like that and get a fine for it, I think, is bad judgment on their part.”NATIONALS

Zimmerman out

WASHINGTON - Washington Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman probably will miss the rest of the season because of an injured rib muscle on his right side that’s sidelined him since last week.

Zimmerman was out of the lineup for Washington’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday night, his fifth consecutive day off. After Monday, the last-place Nationals will have five games remaining.

“I’m not counting on him playing through the rest of the season,” Manager Jim Riggleman said before Monday’s game. “If he were to say, ‘You know what? I feel great. Let me take some batting practice.’ ... I guess we would consider it, but I don’t anticipate that happening.”

Zimmerman didn’t want to absolutely rule out the possibility that he could appear again in 2010, although he did say he only will play if he’s pain-free.

“I wouldn’t say it’s all the way done yet,” he said. “Obviously, I’m working every day to rehab and see if I can get back out there. But we’re just being cautious. We don’t want to come back and come back a little too soon and hurt it even worse.”

He also noted that given “the circumstances that we’re under” - the Nationals are assured of a fifth bottom-of-the-division finish in their six seasons in Washington - “there’s really no reason to go out there or take pain medicine or do something like that to play. So for me to get out there and play, [it] would have to be 100 percent better with no risk to hurt it more.”

Zimmerman, who turns 26 today, leads the Nationals with a .307 batting average and is second on the team with a .388 on-base percentage, 25 home runs and 85 RBI. His previous best batting average for a full major league season was .292 in 2009.

WHITE SOX

Guillen says he’s returning

CHICAGO - Ozzie Guillen is all set to return in 2011 as manager of the Chicago White Sox.

Guillen is already under contract for next season with a team option for 2012, but there had been speculation he would leave to join another club.

Guillen said he had separate discussions Monday with White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and General Manager Ken Williams.

“I’m very excited,” Guillen said before Monday night’s game against Boston. “I want to be a White Sox for the rest of my life.”

“It was a very good conversation, a great conversation,” he said.

- The Associated Press