Under The Knife 4/18/25

In Which We Discuss Domes

I had a lot of people say they would buy a “A Sprain Is A Tear” t-shirt if I had them for sale. Coincidentally, my pal over at 80’s Baseball launched his store. It got me thinking a bit and … would you buy a hat? I’d have to do a run of about 50 to make it make sense and I’d do it at cost because I think it would be cool to have a UTK hat. So tell me, what’s your thought on these and would you pay a premium hat price for it? I’m just saying good hats cost money and small batch embroidery adds to that.

Let me know. I’m unlikely to do anything unless I could do it right. If it’s not a hat I’d wear on my bald dome, I wouldn’t let anyone else wear it either. Anyway, let’s get to some injuries:

GRAYSON RODRIGUEZ, SP BAL (strained elbow/strained shoulder)

It wasn’t the elbow/triceps issue that kept Grayson Rodriguez from making his scheduled Thursday bullpen session. No, this time it was his shoulder and it was concerning enough that the Orioles quickly sent him for imaging. The key worry is that Rodriguez had a lat strain at the end of last year and it’s not hard to think that the elbow-to-shoulder chain might have hit again. There’s a weak link in Rodriguez’s kinetic chain that seemingly moves. Maybe that’s good, maybe there’s two weak points.

There’s no information yet on the location or severity of the issue, whether it’s muscular or structural, or well, anything. That leaves lots of room for speculation and a general unease about a young player with cascading arm injuries. At best, Rodriguez’s return is delayed, but there’s no clarity on just how much yet either.

We should hear soon about the MRI, but there’s whispers of a teres strain. Now, there’s two teres muscles in the shoulder, the major and minor, and my source had only heard teres in discussions. Neither is good, especially with the history of strains that Rodriguez has. If either is significant, it could set him back a month on the short side and complicated by the elbow issue.

Already down Zach Eflin and a ton of depth, the O’s might start having to either find some depth in trade or start accelerating younger pitchers like the Dodgers have the last two seasons. Both seem out of step with the front office’s tendencies, but with only Kyle Gibson on the near term horizon, something’s going to have to give in order to simply give innings. Cody Poteet and Grant Wolfram were brought in at the end of camp and could be options in the near term. Keep your eye on Brandon Young as well, as he was shifted in the minor league rotation in what might be a re-scheduling move.

CLAYTON KERSHAW, SP LAD (sprained toe/strained shoulder)

Clayton Kershaw went into his first rehab start on the exact day the window opened. A rehab assignment is a max of 30 days and as I said previously, many thought that starting the assignment now meant that Kershaw was ahead of expectations. My thought is that the team wanted to know now if the toe and the shoulder were going to allow Kershaw to give the team anything in ‘25 or not. If he pitches like he did on Wednesday, it’s something.

He went thirty pitches in three scoreless, efficient innings. The one downside is that his velocity was down, slightly, but everything else was a big positive. How his toe and arm respond will be as important as the pitching, so making his side work and his next start will be a tell. If this was, as I believe, a way to tell quickly if Kershaw was going to be able to pitch at all, I won’t be surprised to see the rehab paused even if there’s no problems.

If Kershaw continues on this path, he’ll have to make three or four starts ahead of his May 17 expiration, which can be seen as a build but is also three or four starts of workload on a ticking time bomb of a pitcher. Instead, they could do the build work on the side, which isn’t as stressful and then have him make one start down the line in the minors just for feel. Wasting any of whatever Kershaw has left would be a poor use of him, but we’ll see soon what the Dodgers have planned.

Below the paywall you get new information on Kris Bryant, some cool trivia, and something I don’t remember doing in the whole run of UTK - an umpire injury. Subscribe now and get all of it!