UTK Flash 4/6/21
Fernando Tatis Jr's Shoulder
We’ve seen this before, and not long ago. Fernando Tatis Jr left Monday night’s game with what the Padres are calling a subluxation of his left shoulder. He’s headed for an MRI today for clarification about what damage occurred inside the shoulder and what the course of treatment will be. There is a chance doctors recommend surgery, which would cost Tatis, one of the best young players in the game, much or all of the 2021 season.
A subluxation isn’t a dislocation, but the two are similar. The shoulder is a “ball and cup” joint, where the head of the humerus (upper arm) sits in the cup created by the shoulder. It is then held in place by the various structures (muscles, tendons, ligaments) and the shoulder capsule. The cup is not deep so the ball can easily move around and even come out in situations. A subluxation is usually were the head of the humerus moved, but did not come out of the area of the cup, whereas a dislocation comes fully out of the cup and has to be placed back.
That guy you know in softball who said he felt his shoulder pop out and back in? Subluxation. This guy? Dislocation.
(I’d completely forgotten that Dean Norris - Hank Schrader on Breaking Bad - had been in the Lethal Weapon movies!)
The subluxation is just a description. The worry is that when it moved out of place, it damaged the things around it, specifically the labrum. If the labrum is torn, that could require surgery with a four to six month recovery period. The comp here is Cody Bellinger, who had the surgery just after the World Series win when he subluxated his shoulder on a high five, and was back for the start of the season.
If labrum surgery is needed, the surgery is a lot better. Bellinger showed that new techniques, especially a new way of knotting the anchors that hold the labrum in place, have a better return to play. It’s still not something you want, but it’s not the 1 in 50 that it was when I first wrote about the injury in 2004.
It’s not just the labrum that’s at risk. Any of the tendons, ligaments, or other structures that hold the shoulder and allow it to function in a full range could be damaged, ranging from the light sprain or strain to the full rupture.
The Padres likely have an idea about whether or not Tatis has labral damage. There are manual tests that the medical staff can do that allow them to diagnose the injury moments after it occurs, such as this “clunk test”, demonstrated by MLB’s Mike Reinold:
Right now, my best sources aren’t speaking and we’re all waiting on the Padres to release results of the MRI. Those are expected Tuesday afternoon, though we may not get immediate word. If surgery is recommended, Tatis is likely to head north to check in with Dr. Neal ElAttrache or perhaps to Dr. James Andrews. Even with ElAttrache being the Dodgers’ team physician, he’s still the go-to guy for this kind of injury.
We’ll know more soon, so for the good of capital-B Baseball, let’s all send some positive vibes to Tatis. Baseball is better with the best players and this kind of injury has the potential to put a bad spin on the 2021 season very early.
I expect to have more on Tatis and the rest of baseball’s injuries in tomorrow’s UTK.