Under The Knife 6/12/21
The Inevitable Night Off
This isn’t a complaint, but I don’t take a lot of nights off. When I do, I really try to disconnect and enjoy dinner or go to a show or whatever, all of which have been tough during the pandemic, but last night was one of those (I turned off my phone and finished Hacks, which is great) and inevitably, something happens where when I finally do pick up my phone, it’s filled with messages and tweets. It’s nice to feel wanted, but then again, I wish baseball could make it through a day without a big injury. Last night, we had two, so let’s get to it:
Jacob deGrom SP NYM (inflamed forearm)
The Mets are calling the forearm tightness experienced in-game by Jacob deGrom “flexor tendonitis.” This is exactly as it sounds, an inflammation of the flexor tendon in his pitching forearm. That’s not good, but the Mets feel like this is one where they caught things early and can treat easily. Him coming out wasn’t ideal, especially as well as he was pitching, but talking with multiple team sources, no one seems overly concerned about this specifically, but they are worried about deGrom’s small breakdowns and the sheer amount of force he’s putting into pitches. I mean, a 92 mph changeup? I’ve been doing this for twenty years and when I started, not many pitchers had a fastball over 92.
The Mets have deGrom on an anti-inflammatory already and will give deGrom his normal treatments over the weekend. There’s no plan to change his normal routine, to give him an extra day’s rest, or anything besides the medication, but all of that remains on the table if his forearm doesn’t respond and get back at or near 100 percent. Until then, we’re all on a wait and see, along with the Mets, to see if they have their ace ready early next week or will have to fill in. Expect a decision to be made on Monday.
Carlos Carrasco SP NYM (strained hamstring)
While we’re speaking about the Mets, what’s going on with Carlos Carrasco is less about injury and more about perception and public relations. Mets fans have nothing in the trust bank, even with new ownership and some turnover in staffing. The fact is, Steve Cohen is really about the only person from outside baseball that’s new in the organization and he’s been notably hands-off, keeping his fellow owners from too much panic that the big stack will make itself known.
Talking to sources, I’ve learned that Carrasco’s hamstring is the big holdup. It didn’t feel right off the mound, where the forces on the leg are different (and unknown - where’s all that force plate data, folks?) He shifted back to flatground work and feels good, but also had a PRP injection in the hamstring to help speed the healing. That indicates there was likely some setback rather than this being incredibly slow healing.
There’s not much evidence for PRP, positive or negative, but the Mets hope that Carrasco can move forward. The thing that’s known is that the Mets feel that Carrasco’s work, albeit not on the mound, is significant enough that he’s going to have a short ramp up time. Basically, the idea is that he could pitch now, if it wasn’t for that darned mound. There’s no official timeline, which the team understands is a frustration for fans, but they think once there is, it will be quick. They also acknowledge, this could go backwards and that Carrasco might not pitch at all, but that would surprise everyone I spoke with, inside and outside the organization.
Max Scherzer (inflamed groin)
The video of Max Scherzer came out - he called for the medical staff, threw one pitch, and he walked off - was a bit confusing to me at first. Scherzer never gave any real indication that something was wrong. Usually a player will point to an area or grab at it, especially after a pitch. We know now that Scherzer didn’t do that because it was a groin strain. The question is, how severe is the strain.
The Nats got a quick MRI and say that there is no strain, but instead that there’s inflammation. Easy jokes aside, that’s not normal and makes this a bit tougher to read. There’s a cause for this and some worry that Scherzer is dealing with something like a sports hernia, but again, the Nats are downplaying the severity of this injury to the point of saying they think Scherzer will make his next start. If we take them at their word, this is more an irritation than an injury, but even then we don’t have a root cause, which means the same thing could happen the next time out.
This is one of those situations where it’s going to hang over Scherzer’s head until he goes out a couple times, pitches like we’re used to, and this goes into faded memory as a quirk rather than a sign.
Xander Bogaerts SS BOS (knee soreness)
The Red Sox are being very quiet about Xander Bogaerts. He’s having some sort of knee soreness, but there’s no details about it beyond that. My sources were also quiet, but indicated to me that they don’t believe this is something chronic or terribly worrying. Of course, when a team source tells me not to worry, that’s usually what fans are already doing.
The course of a long season is always going to create some soreness and at points, it’s smarter to rest and get something healthy than it is to power through. No one has a bonus for playing 162 games, but for production and awards. While Bogaerts has been exceptionally durable, never less than 136 games in a full season, he is human. As long as this doesn’t last longer than the weekend, I’ll file this soreness away and only note it again if it continues to recur.
Cody Bellinger OF LAD (lower leg soreness)
Max Muncy IF LAD (strained oblique)
Corey Seager SS LAD (fractured hand)
Sometimes, injury stats are confusing. The thing that simple counts of injuries or days lost or even value lost miss is timing. Get guys healthy at the right time and don’t allow too many of them to overlap and you can succeed. If your medical staff is good enough, you can have injury prone players, guys with problematic histories, or bad elbows when you draft them, or even just survive the inevitable slings and arrows of a season better than most even when the stats don’t look great. The Dodgers haven’t been at the top of the injury stats for the better part of a decade, but that’s not because they’re bad.
Right now, they’re as close to a breaking point as I’ve seen them, but most of the injuries are traumatic. Neal ElAttrache and Ron Porterfield and the rest of the staff can’t keep Corey Seager’s hand from breaking or Cody Bellinger’s leg from getting contacted on a slide. Those kind of traumatic injuries happen and have to be minimized, which is what they’re doing well.
On Friday, there’s a bunch of things for that medical staff to do. Cody Bellinger left with “lower body soreness”, a hockey-ism that made me immediately wonder if he’s still feeling something in the area of his lower leg where the fracture was. There’s a lot going on down there in terms of ligaments, tendons, and dynamic structures, so it wouldn’t be unusual for there to be some interrelation that the team will have to maintain, so this one bears watching for a guy who’s swing needs a stable base.
Max Muncy left the game, not with an ankle re-injury as initially speculated, but with what’s variously been described as a cramp and as oblique tightness. If you watch Muncy’s home run earlier in the game, he makes a small twist back against his body after the swing. I wonder if that indicates that he stretched or strained something on that swing. Either way, the team doesn’t think it’s serious, but will monitor it.
Also, the Dodgers did have some good news, as Corey Seager passed another milestone and is about two weeks away. His baseball activities will ramp up and he could start a rehab assignment by this time next week as his hand is nearly completely healed at this stage.
Kyle Lewis OF SEA (meniscus repair)
Kyle Lewis didn’t have a great sophomore season. Or is it rookie season again with last year’s weird rookie eligibility rules? No matter, he’s not winning any awards because his season is done after surgery to repair his meniscus. The surgery went well and the Mariners expect to have him back for next season. He could actually be back in four months, but the Mariners aren’t going to be playing in October most likely. It will let Lewis have a normal season, take his time with the standard rehab, and let that meniscus heal. There is a high failure rate with meniscus repairs - about 50/50 - but the revisions have a much quicker recovery time.
Going forward, the hope is that Lewis will not just be normal and close to his rookie level, but durable. Knee injuries like this aren’t something that recurs, though the risk of a second surgery in a short period of time, plus the damage surrounding a problematic meniscus certainly have to be taken into his account in terms of value. It also makes it tougher to see if the Mariners will pull up out of this long rebuild anytime soon. Getting players like Lewis to the majors is only half the battle.
Joe Beimel (no injury)
You might remember the name of Joe Beimel. He last pitched in the majors in 2015, but in the meantime has been working out as the owner of an elite baseball facility. We’ve seen a number of these comeback stories, where something clicked, or re-clicked for a pitcher, but Beimel’s a bit different at 44. He had pretty good success, but age is inevitable. We’ll have to see whether what he did in his training leads to sustained success or even a trip back to the big leagues, where the Padres could use an extra pen arm. Beimel Elite is a big user of PitchAI, so while I’m not saying my tool could help you get to the big leagues, I’m not not saying it either.
