Under The Knife 5/6/24

Both Sides Now

How do you deal with Jurrangelo Cijntje? The switch-pitcher is good enough from both sides at Mississippi State to be considered at the bottom of the first round. If MLB has issues with two way players like Shohei Ohtani (and Jac Caglianone, who will likely drop pitching when drafted in the top five), an even rarer two-way is sure to be a problem.

But I had a different question. While Cijntje uses both arms to throw, he uses the same legs. While he might have a pitch count for each arm, his legs are involved on both sides, though push and land is different enough to be notable, especially if the per-side counts are uneven. Add in that he rotates differently, creating issues in his obliques and pelvis, that we simply haven’t seen much. Pat Venditte - who’s reportedly become a mentor to Cijntje - and Billy Wagner are about the only ones I know that could throw with both at any high level. (Wagner was right-handed but threw lefty due to an early arm injury. He never threw with the right in game, but could do so in pens. There are also rumors that Ichiro Suzuki can throw left handed, just as he could switch-hit if he’d wanted to.)

The unique set of forces that Cijntje creates are as complex as getting his name past autocorrect. Pronounced “SAIN-ja”, the Curaçaoan-born player is the son of a former Dutch catcher and is “naturally” left-handed. Despite this, his velocity and stuff is better right handed, where he’s touched 99 and lives in the mid-90s. He has swing-and-miss stuff from both sides and a clear platoon advantage. There’s questions about whether he profiles better as a reliever or starter, given his developing secondary stuff. He has a curve from the left and a slider from the right, both of which are rated as average, and a change that is seldom used in game.

But can you keep not one but two arms healthy? One pro pitching coach I spoke with wondered if he had “Ohtani insurance”: “If he blows out one, could he still throw with the other, like Shohei Ohtani can still hit?” (The answer according to multiple medical personnel is that a pitcher could throw with a healthy arm while the other was healing on the glove side.) The problems of workload management would be unique, however, in that all but the simplest solutions - pitch and inning count, which don’t take anything into account - aren’t designed for this problem. It could be done, but would almost need to be completely manual and customized.

The positive is that he’s been very healthy at Mississippi State. Whether that’s credit to the coaches and medical staff there, or just luck, we can’t know, but let’s tip our cap to the Bulldogs just in case. Looking back on notes from when Cijntje was drafted previously, there were no questions about his health though durability was an issue because of his body type. He was very skinny then, but is listed at 200 now and looks much more solid if not projectable.

In a conversation with a crosschecker, he turned things around on me and asked if I thought Cijntje would stay healthy and how to best calculate it. My answer then is one I’ll stand on: I think he profiles as a reliever and that they’ll have to be careful to monitor his legs and his overall fatigue level. Used properly, he’s a weapon, especially against teams that platoon heavily. Even more, I’d move him very fast, starting him at Double-A so that teams don’t get too much tape on him, allowing him some value of quirk even in a Statcast age.

We’ll see come July, so let’s look at the (one-handed) injuries now:

TREA TURNER, SS PHI (strained hamstring)

Trea Turner isn’t a pure speed guy. Yes, he’s fast, but his value isn’t totally wrapped up in his run tool. It helps his range, but he’s also fundamentally sound and he’s more fast than quick. (Which reminds me, I’d really like to see speed broken down differently that mph. Even after a couple years, my mind hasn’t adjusted to that way of presenting it.) He’s got power and pretty much every other skill, so a hamstring strain doesn’t take away all his value, but it’s certainly not good for him or for the Phillies.

In the short term, the Grade II strain in the belly of the muscle should heal up. There’s not really much for the medical staff to do but wait and support it. The danger will be in those early days where he starts activity up, but portable ultrasound has made that easier, allowing the staff to know exactly how healed the muscle is and how it responded to both activity and treatments.

The six to eight weeks the Phillies gave quickly is reasonable. It could be either side of that and the team is likely to be more careful with Turner than most. His speed does make a more severe re-injury likely, especially in the early days, but a good complete healing should make recurrence or worse chronic issues an unlikely outcome.

MIKE TROUT, OF LAA (torn meniscus)

This article quote from ESPN shows the issue I warned you about with Trout:

Los Angeles Angels star Mike Trout had surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee on Friday, and the three-time AL MVP is expected to return this season.

Trout had a partial medial meniscectomy procedure performed in California. The team said the outfielder will remain in Anaheim for the start of his rehab process.

In two lines, we see “repair” and “meniscectomy” used. Neither is incorrect, but the colloquial use of repair is confusing to many and I’m seeing a TON of confusion online. This is simply because most of the sports world simply doesn’t care about injuries. It’s part of the game and they’ll just take the word of the team for everything. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s why I started writing. I cared, and I felt some others would care. (That’s you. Thank you for caring.)

Everything else is the same. The surgery went as expected, they took out as little as possible, but they didn’t name the surgeon. Again, doesn’t affect anything and I still expect Trout back on the low side of the original six to eight week estimates.

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