Under The Knife 10/16/20
Free Friday: Kershaw, Lamet, Clevenger, and COVID
We learned last night that MLB’s experiment in fan attendance was more important to them than dealing with a heavy wind. Open stadiums help MLB sell the safety of coming out to the ballpark and they were willing to put up with “a little wind” as one MLB staffer described it to me Friday morning.
But why is it important? It’s clear that what many thought was going to be a temporary hiccup in attendance is becoming the new normal. COVID restrictions on attendance might well go well into next year, putting the ‘21 season in jeopardy of another no-gate, and simply put, many of baseball’s owners aren’t willing to take the losses.
By putting people in the stadiums, MLB is going to put together a case that they can safely do this under a set of conditions, even as we’re seeing rising cases. Thus far, MLB has made it through the post-season with no problems and they’re watching their fans very closely. While it’s impossible to tell from the outside, the indications MLB is giving people is that their restrictions are working.
This puts them in a position to make a case for fan attendance. 29 of 30 ballparks could follow the protocols that MLB is now, with Tampa the one remaining fixed dome (which is kind of crazy when you think about it.)
Would owners actually shut down the season absent even more concessions than they got for 2020? Of course they would. Owners could lose money and make it up easily with expansion fees, advances on TV money, and other simple moves, but if they could just put it on the backs of players, so be it. A new commissioner might not be in position to fight the owners, though it appears there’s three camps - one of “no losses”, one of “play at all costs”, and one that’s undecided. Even if those are about equally split, it’s going to be tough to get anything negotiated until something coalesces there in the owner’s suites.
So yes, it was “just a little wind”, but it signaled something far more important to baseball. Now, let’s look around the leagues:
Clayton Kershaw SP LAD (back spasms)
Clayton Kershaw did what he was supposed to do in Game 4, but took the L when he went just a little too long, leading to a huge inning for the Braves. Kershaw seems to have fit his normal pattern, as evidenced by this tweet:
The positive news is, as I expected, Kershaw was able to come back from back spasms quickly and effectively. All signs are that the medical staff was able to clear up the spasms quickly and get him back out there. That’s not to say they won’t crop up again. They could and they’re going to be hovering for the rest of Kershaw’s career. The Dodgers have been able to manage this, so I don’t think there’s much we should factor in here.
Would Kershaw be available for Game 7? That’s an open question. He’d clearly be limited and aside from something like another spell of back spasms, it’s likely to be a kitchen sink game anyway. My guess is that Kershaw would make himself available and that the Dodgers would have to consider an inning of work there versus having him available to start Game 1 of the World Series, if they get there.
Dustin May SP LAD (no injury)
The plan for Dustin May never really got on track. Last night, as Kershaw began to labor, I kept waiting for Dave Roberts to get the redhead up in the pen. I don’t know if May was already locked in as the Game 5 starter at that point and therefore unavailable, but that’s really the only explanation that makes any sense. May as super-reliever got derailed by Buehler’s bad game and Kershaw’s shift from Game 2 to Game 4, though if that’s all it took, how committed were they to this plan?
There’s an easy case to be made that May’s usage shouldn’t have been set in stone and that freelancing him all over the place in the highest leverage situations is the best way to handle things, assuming you can get him warm quickly and that you have a good measure on his fatigue and recovery. I’m not sure who to put it on, if anyone, that they couldn’t figure out how to make this work despite the issues.
I’ll be interested to see if the Dodgers somehow make it to the World Series whether they’d go back to it. They’ll have to scramble and go seven games to do it, so their pitching situation isn’t likely to be ideally set up.
Yordan Alvarez OF HOU (post-knee surgery bilateral)
Instagram is breaking news again, with Yordan Alvarez posting video of him running in an Alter-G treadmill. This high-tech treadmill allows someone to run without taking the full force of weight on tender joints, like Alvarez’s repaired knees. Alvarez barely started his season, but the surgery on both knees to repair internal damage, including partial tears to his patellar tendon. This is the first we’ve seen of his rehab and it’s on track.
At 23, Alvarez has old knees and his size is going to act against him. Some people have tried to compare Alvarez’s situation to Edgar Martinez or Harold Baines, but neither carried much weight or swung with such force, which creates a lot of stress on his knees. Even at DH, the knees didn’t hold up this season, which raise a lot of questions for next year and beyond.
That said, Alvarez should be able to come back from this. He’s not going to lose speed and none of the work he had done on his knees is major. The tendons should heal, the knees are cleaned up, and all of the work was arthroscopic, so there’s not really much to heal up, as we’d see with something like a ligament reconstruction. He’s already doing the work to get back and I’d expect to see him near normal at the start of standard spring training.
Mike Clevenger SP SD (strained elbow)
Dinelson Lamet SP SD (strained elbow)
The Padres are hoping that they’ll avoid surgery this offseason, at least for two of their top three pitchers. How that works will largely determine the course of their ‘21 season and how open their window of success is. With young players like Fernando Tatis Jr, they’ll want to have the pitching to match it and without Mike Clevenger and Denilson Lamet, the Pads just won’t have the solid starting to carry them past the Dodgers.
Clevenger’s elbow situation, which has been variously quoted as valgus overload syndrome and a bone chip/spur situation, is one that is curious. The problem doesn’t appear to show up on MRIs, but it does show up when Clevenger is on the mound at 100 percent. Ignore the “high intent bullpen” until he shows that can translate to the mound, but the Padres doctors and consulting doctors all agreed that it’s possible for him to come back without surgery. This one’s a wait and see.
Lamet’s situation is a bit clearer, with biceps tendonitis at the distal (elbow) end of the muscle. He’s had multiple injections there, including PRP and stem cells. This isn’t unusual and often effective in helping heal up an inflamed tendon or ligament. The worry is that this goes chronic and creates a situation where the tendon stiffens or breaks down more. While Lamet isn’t headed for surgery, the Padres seem to be a bit more aggressive with therapy here. There’s not really a surgery that helps until we get to a far more problematic area and at that point, Lamet wouldn’t be pitching.
How they handle these two issues is going to be everything for their chances next year, even with a lot of good young power arms that they’ve showed a bit this offseason. “Next man up” is really the next man down the depth chart and you can only go so far without losing significant talent. The downside here is that we won’t really see any of this progress absent a major setback or until they show up at spring training. If you’re thinking of keeping either of them on a fantasy roster, it’s going to be risky.
Jose Abreu
Jose Abreu won the Sporting News Player of the Year, voted on by his peers, and I won’t argue this award a bit. Leading the league in hits and RBI is rare, and he was close to a triple crown. Old stats or not, Abreu was 8th in fWAR so he’s certainly in the discussion. Abreu was also 7th in OWAR, so the defensive deficiencies that kept him from being higher on the overall list seem discounted by players. I’m not sure quite what to make of that little fact.
Abreu’s an interesting case. He’s been solid since signing in 2014 and at 33, he’s having his best season since being named Rookie of the Year. Baseball Reference says his most comparable batters are Josh Hamilton and Travis Hafner. There’s parallels with Hamilton, but they’re mostly on the late debut - for far different circumstances.
Abreu’s also an absolute bargain on the 3/50 deal he signed that gets at least the first year of this deal at below the MLB qualifying offer level. This contract won’t end up an anchor, even if Abreu has a Hamilton-style drop off, but that seems unlikely. Instead, we have to wonder if a 34/35 year old can continue as the centerpiece of an organization on the rise.
I think the downside case has to be Albert Pujols and it’s odd to call a future no-doubt Hall of Famer a downside case. Pujols obviously hasn’t been challenging for MVPs or Sporting News awards in a while, but he’s been plugging along, adding numbers to his resume, and could still challenge for 700 homers. The pandemic probably made that nearly impossible and with only a year left on his long Angels deal, would they or someone else keep him around to chase the number for 2022?
Back to Abreu, he’s not a Hall of Famer unless he suddenly establishes this season as his new level and holds it, the way that Nelson Cruz has up to age-40. I asked a former advance scout and a front office type whether they believed Abreu had that in him and both said roughly the same thing - yes, but. Yes, Abreu has the skills to do this - certainly through his current contract, but probably a couple years more. He’s always had “old guy skills” and a shift to more power is often the case. With better players around him, he should have the context numbers like RBI stay higher even if he loses some of the hits to luck. A Cruz-like level run is unlikely for everyone, but it’s possible, especially if he shifts to DH full time at some point.
Finally …
Baseball has already seen that heart issues can follow even a mild COVID infection. Now college football is seeing it in much greater numbers, as detailed in this BET article. If MLB and others are going to insist on fans in the stands, does the standard ticket waiver, designed to protect from foul ball lawsuits, work against claims of super spreader events?
The new iPhone is coming next week and that will again change baseball. Wait, what? Yes, the ability of a phone to take high quality, slow motion video has led to the rise of overlays, well-shot travel games, and a flood of 4K HD YouTube clips. Soon, it will add more elements as apps like Mustard hit the open market and put motion capture in a phone instead of a lab. (Google has a beta of a motion capture solution that I’ve tested and if they decide to put it out, wow.) What’s next? That powerful machine learning engine is going to be used to predict pitch sequences.