Under The Knife 5/15/26

Dutton Ranch Day

MAX FRIED, SP NYY (inflamed elbow)

Max Fried is still waiting on the final read from Dr. Chris Ahmad and perhaps others. The delay itself probably says less about panic than timing. The Yankees were off Thursday, which often slows the public-facing part of the process even if imaging has already been completed. Players frequently undergo scans immediately, then wait for comparison review, consultation with specialists, and increasingly a second opinion before teams commit publicly to a diagnosis. Especially with pitchers and elbows, clubs have become very careful about not speaking too early and having to walk it back later. Friday should bring much more clarity simply because the baseball calendar starts moving again.

What Fried told Bryan Hoch is interesting because the location and sensation he described don’t sound like classic UCL pain. Fried said it felt more like hyperextension, “like when you bang that back of the elbow, triceps area.” That could involve irritation around the olecranon at the back of the joint, inflammation from valgus extension overload, or even posterior impingement where tissue gets pinched repeatedly during extension. Pitchers who generate heavy extension sometimes develop irritation back there simply from the elbow slamming toward its mechanical endpoint thousands of times.

Many are reading his description as ulnar nerve irritation. The nerve question is reasonable because anyone who has “hit their funny bone” immediately thinks nerve pain. The ulnar nerve does run through that area and can create tingling or electrical symptoms when irritated. Fried’s description, though, sounds more mechanical than neurological at first pass. More ache and compression than shock or numbness.

That’s encouraging if true because posterior elbow irritation often lands in the manageable category rather than the reconstructive one. The problem is that elbows rarely exist in isolation. Sometimes the back of the elbow starts hurting because the front or inside is subtly changing how force gets distributed. That’s why the imaging and second opinions matter. Friday should tell us whether this is a brief interruption or the beginning of a more complicated conversation.

GARRETT CROCHET, SP BOS (strained shoulder)

Garrett Crochet threw a 20-pitch bullpen session and will follow it with an up/down session Saturday, the kind of test teams use to simulate inning breaks and recovery rather than simply raw stuff. If that goes well, the Red Sox are expected to skip the traditional rehab-assignment buildup and put Crochet directly back into the major league rotation, letting him build pitch count and stamina in games that actually matter instead of wasting bullets in Worcester. That’s aggressive, but it’s also logical.

Crochet is not a young starter trying to learn how to navigate a lineup anymore. The question isn’t whether he can dominate Triple-A hitters. It’s whether his body responds cleanly between outings while ramping back toward a normal starter workload. You learn more from the recovery cycle than the stat line anyway. If the medical staff trusts the scans, the strength markers, and the way he’s bouncing back after side sessions, I’ve long argued that controlled MLB innings are more useful than simulated rehab innings against hitters who can’t really challenge him.

Boston also doesn’t have the luxury of patience right now. The season already feels destabilized after the Alex Cora firing, and watching the Rays battle the Yankees atop the division while the Sox drift around the edges has only sharpened the urgency. Crochet changes the shape of the rotation immediately even at 70 or 80 pitches.

The recent Sonny Gray model probably helped reinforce the thinking. Gray returned directly into meaningful games, built workload progressively, and looked sharper because the adrenaline and competition level mattered. Rehab outings can restore mechanics. They don’t always restore edge. Boston needs both.

Tons more injury discussion below - in fact, there’s seventeen more players after the two I put up here above the paywall. You can probably guess a couple of them but wouldn’t it be better to know? I do 3,000 plus words and an average of 600 texts per day doing this so you can read, learn, and know more. Oh and between newsletters, I often update things on Fanarchy the way I used to on Twitter. That’s free, if five bucks just isn’t in the cards.