Under The Knife 3/18/24
Korea Conundrums
There’s always a balance between “growing the game” and the grumbles of front offices and players when they head across time zones for an oddly structured game or series of games. The Korea series, especially in light of the Dodgers’ off-season explosion, is going to be good for ball, but it’s not just the Dodgers (and Padres) complaining.
Time zone issues notwithstanding, it does throw off how everyone, not just the teams involved are going to set themselves up. First, it should - in a perfect world - give the Dodgers and Padres an extra start for their top two starters. The two games, then rest, then start the season make that, plus add rest days that won’t exist for the rest of the league. (I know, rain outs should change that, but this is SoCal and even climate change isn’t changing that much just yet.)
Second, these are obviously two teams in very different positions. The Padres lost one of their top players, plus their best pitcher, plus their owner and have a new manager. This isn’t the team they’ll be in June. The Dodgers, on the other hand, might not be exactly the same, but they’re much closer to the team they need to be. They’ll add some pitching in Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler, but their best lineups might just happen in these first two games.
It throws off schedules, timing, and comes as the NCAA tournaments - yes, plural, because I think the women’s brackets might be a bigger story - gear up. Baseball in Korea will go behind a big upset or a Caitlin Clark miracle come Thursday’s SportsCenter. Opening Day should be a national holiday and Rob Manfred has - with reason - diminished it. Just because there’s good reasons doesn’t mean it’s good, or that I have to like it.
And if it’d not good, it should be reconsidered, like everything else. For now, let’s get to the injuries:
GERRIT COLE, SP NYY (inflamed elbow)
Someone on Facebook set me off, saying “Yankees are just delaying the inevitable. They should tell Cole to just go have the surgery and be done with it.” First, how dare anyone think that they know better than one of the world’s best doctors and the patient himself. Second, thinking the team can just tell a player to have surgery shows the plantation mentality that players (and the world) have worked so hard to fight off hasn’t entirely been lost by some of the fans, which is sad.
The rule is: if surgery can be avoided, do it. In the scheme of things, taking a month to save 12 to 18 is a smart play, not to mention the risk of surgery, infection, and even the small chance of surgical failure. While elbow reconstruction is one of the most successful operations of all time, the failure rate is not zero and the time lost is significant. There’s a reason one pitcher who’s had Tommy John is in the Hall of Fame, and that only a handful are on track to add to it despite a third of modern pitchers having had the operation.
As for Cole, the facts are that there’s something unclear going on the elbow. (Cole noted the nerve in comments on Saturday.) It’s not clear that it even involves the UCL, making the calls for “just have the surgery” even more stupid, if that’s possible. He’s shut down for now, but there were no details on even the simplest details, which is getting to be a pattern. PRP? We don’t know. Further findings with testing? We don’t know. Between Chris Ahmad and Neal ElAttrache there’s a lot of expertise, but not a lot of transparency. For now, we have to nod and trust, which is uncomfortable even if correct.
What we know is that Cole will be shut down for a “short period”, variously described as a couple weeks or a month. I think that might be the shutdown and build up, but I couldn’t confirm. If this is ulnar nerve irritation, the worst case is a transposition which would cost him months, if not a full season, but it can also be calmed with anti-inflammatories and treatment, as well as maintained.
And let me whisper this: we may not know, but someone does and that someone might leak it. If a gambler who’s looking for an edge on Yankees wins or Cy Young props dangles a grand at a team employee who’s making less in a year than Gerrit Cole makes in an inning, that employee might just share. Integrity firms are good, but figuring that out is tough and simply, it doesn’t have to be like that.
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