Shawn Armstrong has explained it so often that he knows he needs to start a certain way: He’ll never completely give up eating meat.
But after that caveat, the Orioles reliever has a myriad of reasons, both empirical and anecdotal in his own life and career, why the plant-based diet that’s largely cut meat out of his life has helped him maintain his body and arm and allowed the 29-year-old right-hander to apply the same critical mind he brings to the pitcher’s mound into the kitchen.
Armstrong, a North Carolina native, said he started to be more mindful of his diet and how he ate after he was traded to the Seattle Mariners from the Cleveland Indians in 2018.