Under The Knife 9/25/20

Free Friday: But It's All New!

Normally, Free Friday is mostly a recap of the week’s injuries so that those of you that don’t subscribe can peek a bit behind the curtain, if delayed. This week, not as much. I’ve added a couple things from earlier, but most of this is a look ahead at the playoffs, such as they are, and how teams will set up to get through what is a big unknown. A lot of teams have dealt with injuries and even opt-outs, but at this point, even in a shortened season, we’re dealing with workload, fatigue, and recovery issues. In matches of small margin, how teams deal with those - either via medical or coaching staffs - could be the difference between hoisting a Pandemic Pennant or going back to social distancing from home this off-season. I’m not doing all the teams today, but I’ll catch up on the ones I don’t cover here on Monday.

So let’s take a look:

New York Yankees

The Yankees have been hurt this year, a lot. They’ve lost big names for a long time in a short season, but they’ve managed to put themselves in perhaps the best position they’ve been since baseball came back. With Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton back and hitting, plus a relatively healthy pitching staff, this team is built for short series.

The downside is that they’re not very deep. They’ve been exposed as a normal Yankee team - a lot of stars and some “scrubs” that have been just good enough. The biggest misses are in the pitching staff, where the loss of James Paxton and Luis Severino make the back half of the rotation and issue without off-days. There’s not a lot of depth to the pen either, so how they deploy them, especially in the first round, will be key to how they set up.

The other big downside is that they’re still a risky bunch. Stanton and Judge could go out on one swing, but even players like Gio Urshela and Gleyber Torres have dealt with lingering issues after they’ve come back from muscular injuries. If they stay healthy, they’re at least as talented as any team in this postseason, but they haven’t been healthy much at all.

Tampa Bay Rays

In a weird year, baseball’s weirdest team has rebuilt itself over and over. There’s not a single star in their lineup and not a single pitcher that doesn’t seem to have a thick medical file. (What’s the digital equivalent of a thick file?) They have enough to beat the Yankees, lock down the division, but yet everything about this lineup screams risk.

If the Rays starting rotation holds together, this team can win. It’s the back where things get a little shaky. They’re on the edge of getting back Yonny Chirinos and Jose Alvarado, which is a talent bump at the front and back of the staff. The big worry here is that the schedule could play havoc on a rotation that needs rest. The Rays might have to buy a day here or there with an opener or bullpen game, which leaves them exposed in a short series.

I’m not as bothered by the late season oblique strain to Austin Meadows as others. He came into the season as the pick to pop by many, but his standard numbers and advanced stats like exit velocity just aren’t exciting. Give me all the quirky stats you want, but he’s hitting .205.

I’m much more concerned with others - Ji Man Choi (hamstring), Yandy Diaz (hamstring), and Mike Brousseau (oblique.) Yep, add in Meadows and you can see that the Rays seem to be having a bit of a late season muscular breakdown. That very well could be fatigue, so the Rays medical staff is going to have to focus on keeping these guys and the rest of them from missing any more time. As usual, the Rays just don’t have the depth to lose much, but they make the most of what they have, including a great medical staff.

Oakland Athletics

The Oakland A’s seem like a team that goes into each season with a disaster plan. Moneyball concepts and a substandard stadium give off an aura that this team is making it on money they found in couch cushions, rather than some of the richest ownership in baseball. The A’s don’t spend money, but it’s because the owner chooses not to rather than lacks the capability. It colors everything, but the team’s long drive between the spending guardrails has gotten them used to it and David Forst doesn’t get nearly enough credit for it.

Neither does the medical staff. The team was regularly one of the league’s worst, which tended to exacerbate the fact they usually lacked depth and had the problems that befall teams with largely old or largely young players. Now, they were functionally healthy all season, losing only a player here or a pitcher there, but never in such depth that it siginificantly altered the season.

The downside is that their two major injuries were major. Matt Chapman’s season ended late with hip surgery and there’s no way to adequately replace his glove or bat. On the pitching side, AJ Puk’s shoulder cost him the 2020 season, as it were, and he could have been the ace here. Instead, the A’s made do with good pitching, kept Jesus Luzardo relatively healthy, and had to make a late deal for Mike Minor that just hasn’t paid off. The mix-and-match pen hasn’t been overtaxed, but neither has it been overpowering.

The A’s head into the playoffs looking like what they were in the regular season, which is good and bad. A team built for 162 or even just 60 is not the same as a team that can win short series. As Joe Morgan always says, the A’s stuff doesn’t work in the playoffs.

Houston Astros

These aren’t last year’s Astros. It’s a lot of the same names, but it wasn’t the influence of a new manager, a new GM, or even the so-called penalties from their cheating scandal that shifted things. Instead, it was injury and a bit of hubris. The team lost Justin Verlander from the jump, with his elbow finally giving out, costing him all of ‘20 and likely ‘21 (see below for more details) at the same time that Gerrit Cole was moving on. The young arms worked, but often were as much replacement level as real replacement.

The rest of the team dealt with the kind of injuries everyone else did. Alex Bregman and Michael Brantley missed significant time, several players took steps back, but they get to the playoff part of 2020 with almost everyone they expected intact. Yordan Alvarez barely got his season started, but the rest of the lineup is there and currently healthy.

The same isn’t true for the pitchers. Beyond Verlander, the team has lost both Roberto Osuna and Chris Devenski at the back of the pen, plus trusted arms Brad Peacock and Joe Smith. That’s left Dusty Baker with a bunch of young arms behind a mostly young rotation, which is not where he typically succeeds. Baker isn’t learning any new tricks at this stage and even the wizardry of Brent Strom hasn’t changed that much, so the pen remains a real weakness in terms of usage. With no off days and short series, Dusty’s plug and play preference will be a problem.

San Diego Padres

The Padres finally make the playoffs, but have they really come to challenge the Dodgers? One difference here is health, where the Dodgers medical staff remains one of the best in baseball while the Padres overhaul of a couple years ago is still catching up to being just average. (Average, in this case, is a big improvement.)

The big worry is the pitching. Late acquisition Mike Clevinger is a huge question mark for the playoffs - more on his shoulder issue below - and closer Kirby Yates was shut down weeks ago, allowing the pen time to adjust to the new roles. The downside is that the Padres under Jayce Tingler have been functionally a four man rotation and are down to three, with younger pitchers who haven’t proven themselves ready for this kind of extended usage. The team has been unusually protective of these young pitchers, even to the detriment of their own team last season, but it’s worked so far.

On the player side, they’ve been relatively healthy all year. They have a combo of the young and old, but have melded together into a lineup that can go all “Slam Diego” without the deep slumps that super-hot teams usually see as well. Part of that is that health allows for consistency, that they never had to really alter what they did or get out of the rhythms that can help a ball club.

There’s also the steadying hand of Larry Rothschild. Pitching coaches tend to either get too much or not enough credit for what a team does and Rothschild’s teams don’t tend to be flashy. His work with the pen shines, as he and a new manager could have very easily burned through some fragile arms there. Instead, it became a strength of the team.

The odd thing is — watch this video below and tell me that pretty much everything that’s happened with the Padres wasn’t predicted. Yet I guarantee that at no point will anyone - including some of the same guys in the video - tell you that the Padres didn’t “come out of nowhere” or that health was a big key. Dammit.

Atlanta Braves

The Atlanta Braves have overcome injuries in 2020, rather than avoiding them. From the very beginning, when Freddie Freeman became one of the highest profile players to catch COVID to Max Fried rolling his ankle in what was supposed to be his last start, the medical staff has had a consistent workload but has never lost control of the team.

The pitching staff is where most of the work happened. Fried’s struggles with arm, back, and now ankle injuries have always been minor, but the team has kept his long-levered mechanics going despite this, which is a big credit to them. They coped with Cole Hamels, lost Mike Soroka to an Achilles, and just soldiered through. It’s left them perilously thin in the rotation and leaning on the pen, but they have kept an overworked and shifting pen healthy enough to be effective.

On the player side, wrist injuries to Ronald Acuna and Ozzie Albies were dealt with and haven’t been issues since they returned. Acuna’s power is unquestionable, but his niggling injuries remain the sole question mark in his game. The Braves have minimized these as much as any team could, so kudos. Assuming Austin Riley’s quad strain is as minor as they let on, the team will have pretty much everyone ready for the playoffs, always a plus.

The Braves are going to come down to whether their remaining starters can hold up. Best of three and best of five play to them, but they’re as likely to hit a team like the Reds or Giants that could put up a shortened staff that’s more talented. They could also see Fried and Ian Anderson become stars with big performances. This is going to be an interesting October in north Georgia.

Chicago Cubs

It’s been the Theo Epstein era in Chicago but it’s funny to think he could gorilla costume his way out of the brand new offices outside Wrigley and get a lack of credit despite being one of few general managers that will likely head to Cooperstown. (We’re in the golden era of GMs, I think, but more on that next week in a UTK Special.) I grew up a Cubs fan and I can remember back in the 90’s and 2000’s, when the Cubs would go on a playoff run - it was always “this is the year!” - we would talk about how Jody Davis would never have to buy a beer in Chicago or that the manager of the team would be immediately dipped in bronze.

Joe Maddon didn’t last two years before he was shown the exit after holding up the hunk of metal. Theo? He gets one, maybe two extra.

David Ross is the bridge, but there’s no one in baseball that seems to have a handle on him as a manager. Most people think he’s forced to be hands-off and “player friendly” to a Francona extent because he’s so close to the current players and that if Ross manages for years - which no one thinks will happen - he might develop a different persona. Essentially, the Cubs are Kevin McAllister - left without real adult supervision and winning all the same.

The team certainly hasn’t stayed healthy. Kris Bryant has been on and off, with his latest oblique strain a worry. They’ve had a lot of muscular injuries - backs, hamstrings, obliques, shoulders - that have had me questioning the discipline of the players in terms of adhering to or even listening to the medical and performance staffs.

Still, the team comes into October in a good place. Aside from Bryant, the team is relatively intact. Only Tyler Chatwood is unavailable from the predicted rotation, the bullpen has long reconfigured, and the team has used pieces and parts - Jason Kipnis, Billy Hamilton, Jeremy Jeffries - to fill in the gaps that occurred along the way.

Maybe Ross is just what this team needs and its not crazy to think that the Cubs could go on a run through the short series given the talent they have. They could just as easily get knocked out in the first round by the Marlins or Cardinals. Combine “that’s baseball” and “that’s 2020” and that’s this Cubs team in a nutshell.

Miami Marlins

Wait, we’re almost in October and we’re talking about the Marlins? Yes, 2020 is the weirdest timeline. The team isn’t just squeaking into the playoffs - well, by record, they are - but could find themselves with the five or six seed, depending on how the Cardinals do and how the math of non-equivalent schedules falls out. If you can find someone that predicted this team to compete for anything aside from the first pick, please send a link.

That’s not to say this team is good or that Derek Jeter’s fractional ownership has turned the corner. They haven’t avoided injury. They’ve just been better than everyone else at the bottom of the National League and that’s enough this season.

The Marlins do have good young pitching. They’ve lost some of it along the way, as is expected with a staff this young. Sixto Sanchez finally came up and did what they thought he would do all along, giving the team the possibility of a real playoff ace. They have kept Pablo Lopez’s balky shoulder at bay, so credit where it’s due.

In the field, they’ve lost their expected starting catcher, left fielder, and whichever infield slot that Logan Forsythe would have slotted in at, but they’ve taken a very Rays-like approach to putting together spare parts like Matt Joyce and Starling Marte that were cheap castoffs and making them into a valid if uninspiring lineup.

It’s hard to look at this Marlins team and give much credit. This isn’t a team that would normally be competing for a playoff spot in a normal year and my baseball mind hasn’t stretched to think of 500 teams as playoff contenders the way it has with the NBA or NHL. The Marlins were just good enough and just healthy enough to be here and sometimes, just being here is enough. A Marlins playoff run would just be so 2020, wouldn’t it?

Now, here’s the normal Free Friday look-back at a couple big injuries:

Justin Verlander SP HOU (sprained elbow)

This is the first player you’re reading about today, but it was the last one I wrote. I was actually hovering over the send button when I remembered that Justin Verlander was headed for surgery. Out of sight, out of mind happens fast and Verlander will be that for a while. A normal Tommy John timeline for him would put him out through the ‘21 season and touch the ‘22 Spring Training, and who knows what the world will look like by then?

There’s not many details public on this and Verlander hasn’t made public if he’s made a choice on surgeon, which will give us some additional information. However, we know that this was a “100 percent problem,” which is common. Verlander was coming back from a strained forearm and had no issues until he went full-go on the mound. There’s no other way to test an arm, but it’s like driving a race car when you’re not quite sure the brakes work. In this case, they didn’t and Verlander’s UCL snapped.

There’s simply no good comp here. (Jon Heyman asserted Tommy John himself, but we had no idea what the rehab would be like, he had a major setback, and was only 31 at the time of his surgery.) Age should have no issue here and Verlander is in good physical condition, so there’s no reason to see any complications.

Verlander’s not the only one with decisions to make. This isn’t a great team right now and with Verlander gone for ‘21, the team has to figure out whether they’ll trade away Zack Greinke to a contender and start a rebuild that hopefully won’t be quite as extreme as the start of the Jeff Luhnow Experience. I’m curious if Verlander’s big contract is insured, which has been tougher to get in recent years, though Verlander’s long history of health should have helped.

Mike Clevinger SP SDP (inflamed shoulder)

I won’t go all technical on you, but it seems crazy that we’d have a debate about anatomy in 2020. I remember being at one of the ASMI conferences back better than a decade ago and hearing Robert O’Brien talking about the “biceps-labrum complex” and watching surgeons bristle at the term. I had lunch with O’Brien, Neal ElAttrache, Jim Andrews, and Marcus Elliott later that day and the debate about that area hasn’t been settled, despite O’Brien’s work. #namedrop

Which is a long way around to say that “mild biceps tendinitis” for someone like Mike Clevinger can point to a bigger issue. That’s not to say that Clevinger won’t be back in brown mid-week as expected, but this is going to be something that his new medical staff will need to manage and control. Clevinger’s not a big guy and his body type reminds me of Tim Lincecum to some extent. Maybe it’s the hair.

That kind of force from a smaller body is going to put stress on varying places and seek out the weak link in the kinetic chain. Clevinger will throw a bullpen on Monday as a prep, so as long as he makes it through that, he’s on track. The Padres are good, but Clevinger has the potential to be the kind of playoff ace that a team needs. The playoff schedule might really work against him however.

UPDATE: It didn’t take long for Clevinger’s arm to start barking again. He made it through one inning on Wednesday night, albeit a good inning.

Michael Conforto OF NYM (strained hamstring)

The idea that the Mets sale didn’t involve everything isn’t as big a deal as it sounds, or maybe it is. Part of it is that MLB owners didn’t want SNY lumped in on the $2B plus deal, because the TV rights are worth almost as much as the team. Selling all of it would have been a big number that would have looked and sounded like a record. Owners want franchise prices to increase, but not sound like they’re increasing.

The part that the Wilpons kept, however, could be very important and its subtle. Jeff Wilpon appears to maintain control of the minor leagues in some way, with one of those key facilities being St. Lucie’s spring training facility. If Wilpon is keeping control of the off-season and strength programs, currently overseen by his handpicked guy in Mike Barwis.

One of the prerogatives of any owner ought to be that he has control and one of the hopes any fan base should have is that the owner will leverage that control where he can make the quickest, biggest impact. It’s not like teams can dump bad contracts overnight, but adding in a modern sports science program? That’s doable. If Cohen is already ceding some of that, a quick turnaround of an area every Mets fans laments - health and performance - is off the table too.

Oh and Michael Conforto has some hamstring tightness. Jake Marisnick too, who goes to the IL and ends his season.

Back Monday with the rest of the playoff teams, then daily updates through the playoffs!