Under The Knife 4/19/23

WMLB

The WNBA draft was last week and here in Indianapolis, people paid a bit more attention to it given that the hometown Fever - still a dumb name - had the first overall pick. Coming on the heels of more and more attention at the college level, an epic tournament with narrative heroes and villains, and even the non-sports focus on Brittany Griner at a national level, there’s more attention on the league and sport than ever before.

Women’s sports are having a moment, but MLB really can’t capitalize on that. While women play and women are fans and consumers of the sport, there’s little way for the league or the general sport to invest in growth on that side as players. There’s exceptions, like Olivia Pichardo, and big steps up on-field and in the front office for women, but there’s not going to be a WMLB any time soon.

The simple answer would be for MLB to adopt softball and build it in much the same way that the NBA did with its distaff counterpart. It’s not baseball, but the softball version of the College World Series is every bit the equal of the guys road to Omaha. Imagine a league where there are 30 teams, attached to MLB teams. Some might play at or near their home stadium, others could play at high level nearby colleges, which could help fund growth there as well.

The costs would be negligible and the gains could be high. The WNBA doesn’t do NBA numbers, but the franchises have grown in value over the decades. Eventually, the softball franchises could be sold out the way the WNBA has or even along the lines of MLS’ value increase as they went from near-single ownership to rapid growth ahead of the 2026 World Cup in North America.

MLB has always been diverse in ways, even a leader in terms of Jackie Robinson’s impact on society, but in others, it’s been constrained both by the nature of the game and the old, rich, white ownership. Adopting and uplifting a sport that’s not the same as their own shouldn’t be seen as a problem, but an opportunity.

Now, let’s get to the injuries:

FERNANDO TATIS JR, OF SDP (strained shoulder/rehab)

A lot has been made of Fernando Tatis Jr’s trip to El Paso. Aside from some great food - check out Padma Lakshmi’s Taste of the Nation on Hulu, though the car wash has closed - Tatis’ mashing has been the story. It’s not a hard stadium to hit dingers in, but Tatis has surprisingly shown almost no issues with his shoulder. Post surgery, a lot of players that have had similar issues - think Michael Brantley - have struggled and taken longer. The surgeries aren’t identical, but going back to Matt Kemp, shoulders and returns have been more complicated than expected and before that, they were career enders.

So what’s different here? A source tells me that there’s two key things. First, Tatis’ shoulder wasn’t that bad. I don’t mean that as a diminishment, but Tatis had regularly played through this and wouldn’t have had the surgery aside from the suspension clearing up some time on his calendar and losing leverage with AJ Preller. The shoulder was essentially tightened up without much work needing to be done. There wasn’t a lot of collateral damage and the labrum remained asymptomatic.

Second, the surgery itself was as minimal as the damage. The labrum was essentially untouched and the rest of the surgery was termed “a clean up.” The rehab was simple and quick, with no real biomechanical changes inside the shoulder. Having talked with two people with knowledge of the surgery and the rehab, I’m loathe to even call this a “tightening up” inside the shoulder though there was some work on the shoulder capsule.

There’s simply no reason to expect that anything will be different for Tatis or for his shoulder. He’s had no issues with it during the rehab, during his time in El Paso, nor has he needed any special maintenance. He’s healthy, his swing is good, and he’s going to be leading off and playing right field to start.

As for the questions about how steroids might have affected his rehab, the answer is that it didn’t. He’s passed several drug tests, both to be sure the clostebol was well out of his system, and then at least three random “accelerated” tests in addition to one Tatis caught during spring training, which may have been standard or random. He’ll have more of these, up to nine additional tests in a season, of both urine (6) and blood spot (3), for the rest of his career.

One other interesting note, though I was unable to confirm this. With the signing of the minor league players’ CBA, I believe they are now subject to the same Joint Drug Agreement as major leaguers, which would carry over penalties, but release minor leaguers from marijuana positive suspensions.

JEFFREY SPRINGS, SP TBR (sprained elbow)
ZACH EFLIN, SP TBR (strained back)