Under The Knife 4/12/24
It's Not A Shortcoming, it's a Sprain
This is a sports story more than a baseball story and a journalism story more than an injury story, but let me use this ESPN article about Anthony Richardson as the exemplar. Stephen Holder is a good writer and a good guy, well sourced, so this isn’t about him or Richardson, but about this type of article.
I can’t count how many times I’ve read it. Player gets injured. Player is sad. Player misses the game. Player works hard, is “on a mission”, promises to be better than ever. And then, we wait for the triumphant comeback and the “no one believed in us” quotes. Sigh.
Except injuries aren’t about desire and comebacks aren’t about effort. I’m sure there are plenty of guys who jaked it through a rehab and didn’t come back as well as they could. Richardson didn’t fail when his shoulder was slammed into the turf, tearing open two ligaments in his shoulder. His rehab won’t go better because he wants it badly. Everyone - or almost everyone - in professional sports does.
Injuries are not a morality play. For someone like a Stephen Strasburg, who had the highest of highs and lowest of lows, he didn’t succeed when he was a good person and fail when he was a bad person. We can’t even say he failed anything but the unreasonably high expectations we all put on him when we first saw that fastball.
Aaron Rodgers ruptured his Achilles on the first series of the season. He had the best possible surgery with the best possible surgeon, then sought out the most advanced treatments like smart suits and blood flow restriction. At the same time, he was espousing pseudo-science and flat-wrong science on his paid media appearances. If he’d made it back, it would have been about using advanced techniques and because he didn’t (largely because he didn’t ever really intend to), he’s likely set those techniques back in gaining acceptance. The “good” and the “bad” are political or moral, but the comeback wasn’t about that.
There’s boy scouts and bad guys pitching and they both fear Tommy John surgery, at least as much as you can with a surgery that has a near 90 percent return rate. The rehab room is one of few places where there really is true equality. An ACL or a UCL doesn’t have a color or nationality.
Holder’s not wrong. Richardson wants it, I’m sure, and the fans wants assurance that he’s working hard for their season ticket money. Same with Spencer Strider, Shane Bieber, or any of the other injured pitchers trying to come back now. Just know that wanting it and working hard isn’t solving the problem. That takes real work.
On to the injuries:
JOSE URQUIDY, SP HOU (strained forearm)
FRAMBER VALDEZ, SP HOU (inflamed elbow)
The Astros pitching is in need of some help and maybe some is on the horizon. With Justin Verlander leading that hope with at least one more rehab start to go before he returns, two more of the key starters might be back at some point. That doesn’t help after Thursday’s meltdown, where Hunter Brown gave up 9 runs in the first inning, but it should be some improvement on the horizon.
The first back should be Framber Valdez. Despite the shutdown for elbow soreness, Valdez is going to quickly be throwing again, indicating that either it went away or that treatment worked. My guess is the latter, likely simple anti-inflammatories. The downside here is that there doesn’t appear to be any real cause and that it could come back, injecting some uncertainty into an already problematic rotation. Valdez’s return shouldn’t be right on the minimum, but close. He’ll throw this week and could progress rapidly based on his response.
Further away is Jose Urquidy, but his return from his forearm strain is moving to the mound, one of the later stages of the standard throwing program. He should progress to live hitters and a rehab assignment in the next few weeks, but how much he’ll need to build after being down a month with the arm issue remains to be seen. At best, he’ll need a couple rehab starts and still be a bit short of C when he gets back. That combined with the rest of the rotation might put the Astros pen in some risk for May and into June.
Getting these back, followed by Luis Garcia at some point, should give the Astros the quality they need, but they still have none of the depth that looks necessary. Losing any of them puts them into the territory they were last year, when the team went to get Justin Verlander. There’s not another one of those on the market and they’re likely to have to pay as much or more this season, but the Astros have to figure out their pitching situation one way or the other.
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