Under The Knife 8/1/22

August and Everything After

The trade deadline is supposed to be cranking now, but while we’ve had a couple deals, we’ve had less than expected. Will this go down to the wire, or are too many teams in it and not enough teams willing to admit they’re sellers? It’s as much about PR in some places as it is about making your team better for the future, or the now, depending.

The more people I talk to, I think the compression of the draft, the ASB, and the trade deadlines has simply led to fatigue. People in front offices are tired, they don’t have enough to time to check and cross-check, and while they have resources, they often don’t have the man-power or man-hours necessary to finish things. We’re seeing more and more of those “cheap data” guys go to private enterprise, or to a sport like soccer or basketball where the pay and support is simply better.

I’m sure the deadline will have some action, but burning out the back office is no smarter than burning out your rotation in July. It’s a long, long season. For now, let’s get to the injuries:

JULIO RODRIGUEZ, OF SEA (bruised wrist)
TY FRANCE, IF SEA (inflamed wrist)

I feel like James Hetfield at Lollapalooza, holding the mic out to the crowd, because you know the words: “padded gloves.” Julio Rodriguez and Ty France are the latest reminders for the Mariners - a progressive medical team - that there are things they could do that would protect or at least reduce the severity and even instance of this injury.

While X-rays came back negative, the Mariners medical staff is taking every precaution with Rodriguez’s wrists. He’s shut down and will likely have more imaging done Sunday or Monday, depending on the bruising and swelling. The worry is that x-rays can miss small fractures and the wrist is almost always small fractures. The best case is that Rodriguez just needs to let the immediate trauma subside and he can come off the IL at the minimum.

The worst case? That’d be Fernando Tatis Jr- like, with season ending surgery to fixate or remove a bone. This isn’t unprecedented or career changing. The player Rodriguez is often compared to, Ken Griffey Jr, broke his wrist on a defensive play and certainly went on to have a fine career.

It wasn’t just Rodriguez with issues as Ty France was sent for an MRI on his wrist. France had been dealing with the injury for a couple days, attempting to play through it, but it got problematic enough that the images were necessary to see how to best manage it. The Mariners said that the imaging showed no structural damage, but they didn’t say what is going on. France avoids the IL for now, but the wrist remains an issue.

Look, how can you not like a guy who does a video like this and still goes out and gets it done on the field? This is the kind of star baseball needs - young, brown, Latin, charismatic, and talented - so I’m glad to see him doing his own promotion so that baseball won’t fail at it again.

*Yes, I’m trying to figure out how 16-year-old-me would take the sentence “We can watch Metallica live streaming on Hulu at Lollapalooza in Chicago.” Honestly, only one of those words - Metallica - would register with that kid and the rest? Well, he’d probably just go along for the ride, even though the people that were into Metallica were considered pretty extreme back then.