This is your reminder that yearly subscriptions to Under The Knife are currently $49. It will only be this price until Saturday so if you’re thinking about it, or want to send someone a gift, it’s a great time to do so. After that, it will go to $60 - basically the same as monthly. Maybe I’ll do $59.
While the calendar has flipped to February and we’ve already seen trucks rolling from home parks and heading down to Florida and Arizona, we’re in a weird sort of quiet period. Sure, calm before the storm and all that, but if you’re Alex Bregman or Pete … pardon, Peter Alonso, then you’re still out on the street metaphorically and there has to be some stress after the seasons that last season’s late signees experienced.
The thought has been that those two have been holding up the market. Once Bregman signs, the dominos will start falling, probably starting with a Nolan Arenado trade. Arenado seems to be Plan B for Boston if they don’t get Bregman and maybe even for the Mets, moving Mark Vientos across to first. I’m not sure I buy it, or that Hal Steinbrenner will pay to put Arenado in pinstripes.
For Alonso, some think that with him gone, Toronto might have to listen to a Mets pitch for Vladimir Guerrero Jr, in the last year before his free agency. Detroit made some late buys, bringing Jack Flaherty on a relatively on-market deal that strengthens their pitching depth and getting in on Alex Bregman (mystery team!) I’m not sure that any of these moves really hurts any of the other teams in a fatal fashion. There’s options, especially if owners are willing to spend.
Which brings me to the NL Central. The Cubs were only willing to go to a certain number and it’s not clear they’ve improved themselves. The Brewers will rely on mostly internal help and Matt Arnold et al will likely go back to their very successful pattern of making deals mid-season. The Reds have been aggressive, but they remain a team where I’m not sure where all the moves fit together. The Pirates? Well, nothing. Bob Nutter was evidently listening on players about to get expensive, which makes the Paul Skenes window even shorter - three more versus five more - and losing anything along the way makes it even less likely. I’d hoped a couple smart moves could make the Pirates a fringe playoff contender and instead, they start the season under a ten percent chance, per Clay Davenport’s odds.
With all due respect to the people in Pittsburgh not named Nutting, that’s just pathetic. It’s a missed opportunity, again, and the kind of behavior that reminds me that instead of going after the Dodgers’ ownership, owners (and players) should be pointing and shaming this type of failure. The Pirates were gifted one of the most electric players in the game and while they’ll get plenty of TV appearances out of it, I’m not sure they’ll get much else.
I said about seven days ago that I thought Alonso and Bregman would sign within ten days. I’m not as confident now, but I do think it will be before camps open or even flights need to be made. And I fully expect some unexpected team to get involved late. There’s just too much opportunity to do something that really moves the needle. Super Bowl week is a tough place to get media traction, but there’s are moves to be made for the willing and the bold.
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There’s some public Dodger injury updates and I’ll admit, a lot of these don’t make sense on the surface, but do with a bit of context.
The first is that the promise of internal brace surgeries is not being met, but it’s not the fault of the technique; this is a baseball problem. The Dodgers aren’t any different than most teams in that internal brace procedures that show significantly reduced rehab times in almost every context aren’t meeting those in baseball. It’s reluctance to risk, use of old rehab protocols on new techniques, and an acceptance of the standard.
Most pitchers do come back from Tommy John surgery or the variants. That they’re not doing it faster is on the game and this is an area where a single team could get a serious advantage. We’ve seen this happen with thumb surgery. Several players from Dustin Pedroia to Mike Trout have had internal brace surgery on a sprained thumb and returned a couple weeks (four vs six to eight) quicker, with no discernible issues. The same is true of knee surgeries such as the Lavender/BioACL and ankle surgeries that have been going on in Euro soccer for better than a decade.
The Dodgers have both Emmett Sheehan, who’s been out almost a year, and Shohei Ohtani, who’s been out almost eighteen months as a pitcher, coming back from these procedures. Ohtani’s is a revision (second time) and don’t forget the shoulder injury very likely cost him some off-season pitching time, so him being a bit behind isn’t unexpected. What you’d like to see is that he’s throwing well, if not built up enough to be ready. Then again, the Dodgers don’t lack in pitching (for now) and could easily accommodate some sort of tandem/short start early on.
Tyler Glasnow told the Dodgers fans at their recent convention that his elbow injury was a flexor tendon strain and that it has healed per recent images. That’s a positive and a data point. With internal brace procedures, we don’t have fifty years of data. We have about five and not much at that. Add in the different types and techniques and it gets even more complex, which admittedly contributes to that risk-aversion I noted previously. While saying he’s healthy is a positive, I’m still a bit hesitant until we see a bit more. This could be one of those where an impressive pen or two could convince me, and on Glasnow, I want to believe.
While Clayton Kershaw isn’t officially a Dodger, he’s not going anywhere else. (Sorry, Rangers fans.) Kershaw missed the playoff run with a toe issue, which was fixed surgically. While there’s not specifics, all signs are that it was corrected and shouldn’t recur. That still leaves Kershaw fighting a bad back, a repaired shoulder, and time itself. He showed in a small sample that he’s still got stuff, but this feels like there might be a plan to bring him in late, Clemens-style, at the first injury. It’s not a bad plan as they go and Kershaw has shown that he can be ready on his own. It’s tough to monitor, but one can accept that if he’s active, Kershaw is still good, if not still great.
It’s not just pitchers. There’s been a lot of confusion about Freddie Freeman’s ankle surgery. Many think this was something complex like a tendon repair. It was a cleanup, what surgeons used to call a “scrape and tape.” Freeman’s not only had time to heal from the injury itself, he’s had plenty of time to heal up even if we start at the surgery. Freeman might have some residual laxity, but the fix to that is tape. The minute you see him looking confident and stable in the box, you can put this completely out of mind.
TLDR: The Dodgers have a lot of health problems coming back, but they also have as much or more upside with these than any team in the league.
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It’s not just Dodgers, though it seems that way sometimes. The Red Sox have three key pitchers who should be back. Liam Hendriks is coming off two lost years but the elbow should be healthy from his TJ, while Lucas Giolito is just shy of a year on his. The one to watch is Garrett Whitlock, who had an internal brace repair and will come back as a reliever. That should shorten the build phase and get him back quicker, though we still don’t have good ideas on whether relievers actually are “safer”. They don’t get the predictable rest of starters, but is that a plus or a minus? Here in 2025, we just don’t know.
The Braves have Spencer Strider coming back and there’s been some muddy waters on just when. Again, this is mostly due to risk aversion. I don’t anticipate him missing months, but weeks? That’s possible. The Braves tend to be slightly slower on all rehabs, but their recurrence rate is also slightly lower. I’m not sure that’s a positive return on the finite time that any team possesses in terms of lost man-days, but it’s more than a trend, it’s a philosophy.
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One guy we know almost nothing about is going to be one of the most difficult fantasy picks. Mike Trout is at a stage in his career where there’s no question he’s a Hall of Famer, but what kind? He’s basically Ken Griffey Jr at this stage — 86.2 WAR currently versus Griffey’s 83.8 total. What he does with the remainder of his career will determine whether we talk about him like we do with Griffey or whether it’s more like Carl Yastrzemski (96.5). He’s unlikely to catch Mickey Mantle (110) now.
Trout managed to put up 4 WAR in his last two injury-plagued seasons, which is just less than Yaz put up in his last five seasons. Granted, the Boston legend was almost a decade older in those seasons, but it does show the decline that comes at the end of careers. George Brett had a 4 win season at age-37, but the next three seasons were under 1 win.
There’s been almost no information on Trout since his season ended. He often goes off to Arizona to work on his own with a well-regarded team, popping up at Philly events. The Eagles are in the Super Bowl, so maybe he’ll be in New Orleans this week and we’ll get some idea of how the knee has responded.
If there’s any issue remaining after the second meniscus surgery, it will be a witheringly bad sign. Meniscal repairs are a tougher operation with a much higher failure rate. A meniscectomy is one where they send normal people back to work in a couple days. Trout isn’t normal and isn’t working a desk job, but even at the high end, Trout should be as normal as possible when we see him in Arizona in a couple weeks. It’d be fine if they say they’re easing him back or holding him at DH, but a limp or real limitations? That would drop him by rounds on my theoretical draft lists.
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Fay Vincent passed away at the age of 86. He was at the heart of the Pete Rose investigation and the later negotiations where Rose accepted his lifetime ban. He consistently supported that ban throughout his life. He banned George Steinbrenner and Steve Howe as well, as he should have.
Being an accidental baseball commissioner is one of the least interesting things about Vincent’s life. He was almost paralyzed as the result of a schoolboy prank, but went on to be the President of Columbia Pictures. The guy green-lit everything from Stir Crazy, Stripes, and Tootsie, to Gandhi and Kramer vs Kramer.
I hope he’s remembered more for that, or for something like the work he did for Negro League recognition, than having been fired.