Under The Knife 9/5/23

The Good Stuff's Behind The Paywall Today

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend (or at least those in the US.) Labor Day is always a more interesting holiday given baseball’s place in the labor world, plus this being the “summer of strikes” but luckily not in baseball. For this week, UTK will be Tuesday-Thursday, though I may have a UTK Special on Friday or Saturday, if things come together on the story. I meant to put this in Friday’s UTK, so I hope no one was thrown off. Let’s get to it:

MIKE TROUT, OF LAA (fractured wrist)

Friend of UTK Jeff Fletcher got the scoop directly from Mike Trout on how his wrist is doing. In an article at the OC Register, Trout says he still has some pain in the wrist (though Trout continually refers to the issue as his hand.) He’s not swinging yet, but intends to be back with the team. While he rushed it coming back and was right to stop when it was still painful, he’s well past the normal recovery time. The surgery was on July 5th and the key study on this shows six weeks being the normal recovery time.

Something more is going on here, but I also think we need to look at Trout’s history. He just doesn’t seem to be a very quick healer and of course the team is going to be ultra-conservative with him. However with this, this isn’t the team’s doing and the extended absence is a bit concerning from a macro perspective. The time missed is functionally meaningless aside from racking up career numbers, but it’d be nice to see him back and hitting if only in a cameo.

The other issue is Trout himself. He’s got quite the ways to go on his contract and while still among the best in the game, he’s become more and more fragile as he’s aged. That doesn’t bode particularly well for the Angels, though I still think this would be the ultimate time to deal him and get the maximum return to start another rebuild of the Angels.

SHOHEI OHTANI, OF/SP LAA (sprained elbow/strained oblique)

On the Ohtani front, Nez Balelo - Ohtani’s agent - spoke with the local media on Monday and had a lot of details, though to be clear, Balelo is translating information and wasn’t always perfectly clear. He’s not a doctor. Balelo said that Ohtani was in a “positive place” and that they’ve been collecting information from specialists.