• I wrote about the currently state of Tommy John surgeries at The Hardball Times on Monday and Tuesday.

The key points for fantasy owners are ..

… no velocity increase after surgery…

Tommy John surgery doesn’t help a pitcher increase velocity. While there was a small increase from Season 1 to Season 3 in our sample, it would not be worth it for a pitcher to miss at a minimum one season to see a 0.1 mph bump that they then will immediately lose. Probably most of the increase is from a decline in production before the injury knocked them out of action, as well as the time spent rehabbing.

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• Albert Pujols is hurt … again.

He disclosed after Sunday’s game that he has played with a swollen lymph node in his left groin since Wednesday.

The Angels did not send Pujols to a doctor. Pujols said the team athletic trainers considered the condition more of an infection than an injury, even with what he said was a gland swollen to the size of a golf ball.

Talk about TMI. With baseball, stating it is groin injury is just fine. No more gory details are needed. But since the Angels gave out the unwanted information, he may have to deal with the swelling for a couple of weeks after looking up the symptoms.

Painful lymph nodes are generally a sign that your body is fighting an infection. The soreness usually goes away in a couple days, without treatment. The lymph node may not return to its normal size for several weeks.

His owners may look for a replacement for the next couple of weeks. In most cases, owners are just going to have to ride through the pain also.

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• Right after I published the MASH Report earlier this week, Andrew Cashner went on the DL for shoulder discomfort.  I look at his pitch data and here is what I found. First, he quit throwing his fastball in the last inning he pitched.

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• Michael Wacha is headed to the DL with a “stress reaction in his right shoulder”. You haven’t heard of the injury before? Other people  haven’t either.

There is also no timetable for Garcia’s return, though he’ll begin a rehab program immediately. Yet it is Wacha’s injury that comes with more questions since it is not commonly found in Major League pitchers. The injury does not require surgery, and the MRI did not reveal a fracture in the bone. But having Wacha continue to pitch could have led to one.
….
D-backs pitcher Brandon McCarthy is one possible comparison for the Cardinals to use in determining how to move forward this injury. McCarthy has had recurring stress reactions in his pitching shoulder, and those have cost him several starts over several seasons.

So what we know right now he is “shut down for at least a few weeks”. OK, at least 3-4 weeks with no pitching. Another month to get back up to speed. I think we are looking at a late August return with no setbacks.  In 2011, McCarthy missed 81 days with his stress fracture and various 30 day stints around it. Josh McKinney missed 89 days last season with the same injury. Depending on how things shake out, Wacha may done for the season.

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• Reader Cason Jolette asked about Jason Kipnis possibly still being hurt. He basically lost the entire month of May because of a strained oblique. Since coming back off the DL, his injury indication stats show he may still be injured.

Stat: Pre-injury, Post-injury
ISO: .160, .037
HR&FB Dist: 272ft, 257ft
K% (contact issues): 14%, 18%

It would be nice to see him hit more than two extra base hits over the time frame. For owners looking to see if he gets back, there two places I would look. Go to Baseballheatmaps.com’s individual player batted ball distance page, set it to the past couple weeks and see if his distance is improving.  Also, check out his ISO graph here at FG and look to see if it starts to final trend up (not stay constant).

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•Bronson Arroyo has been hurt for a while now.

Arroyo, 7-4 with a 4.08 ERA, said the right elbow has bothered him his past six starts but has gotten progressively worse.

“I can’t keep going out there and putting different inflammatory (medicines) in my body and beating myself down because I can just see the arm is going south,” he said. “If it would have stayed the same as it was five to six starts ago I could deal with the pain, but it continues to get more swollen. I’m waking up every day not being able to touch a ball for two to three days.”

I have noticed the problem for a while, especially with him near the top of the PAIN ranking (146 value the last time I ran it).

Bronson Arroyo says his elbow doesn’t hurt while his manager says it does. I am guessing it does. His fastball velocity is down 1.4 mph from 2013 and his Zone% is down over 10% points (56.1% to 45.6%). His current PAIN value, comparing 2013 to 2014, is at 154 (more than 100 means he has traits of an injured pitcher). I believe he is hurt and is just trying to throw through it which I don’t think will turn out well.

His velocity is down 2 mph and has been trending even lower. He hasn’t been able to throw strikes (Zone% down from 56% to 48%).

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The data is a little thin today. My RSS reader is down/under attack so I had to go old school and check as many websites as I could manually.

• Carlos Gonzalez had a “fatty mass with tentacles” or a “Cheeto” or a “shrimp” removed from his hand. Which ever  it was, it is probably good it is no longer in his hand.

• After scoring a 158 the last time I ran my PAIN report, Francisco Liriano now heads to the DL with an oblique stain. These core injuries for pitchers usually take about two months to heal.

• The Rangers have just been snake bitten with injuries. Tanner Scheppers is back on the DL and Jim Adduci re-broke his finger on a minor league rehab assignment. Grantland’s Jonah Keri looked in detail at the Rangers struggles to stay healthy.

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• Alex Avila sustained a mild concussion a few days ago.

Trainer Kevin Rand joined Ausmus in checking on Avila after Ortiz got him with his massive backswing, something he’s prone to doing. Rand asked the catcher a few questions to test for a concussion.

“He didn’t get one right,” Ausmus said. “When I had a concussion, I remember being asked particulars about the game and remembering I had to look at the scoreboard to figure out what the count was, and look in the dugout to figure out who we were playing.”

It seems and makes sense that catchers will be more concussion prone with foul balls and balls flying around their heads. So far this season, six players have gone on the DL for concussions and three have been catchers (Travis d’Arnaud, Carlos Santana, Jarrod Saltalamacchia) and the other three are outfielders (Denard Span, Aaron Hicks, Sam Fuld). I went back and looked at how many players went on the DL for concussions since the 7-day concussion DL was implemented in 2011. I didn’t just limit the search for just 7-day DL stints since a few players went immediately on the 15-day DL.

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• Jedd Gyorko’s struggles at the plate (.162/.213/.270) could be related to plantar fasciitis in his left foot. He says his foot only started bothering him on May 30th, which I don’t buy one bit.

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• MUST READ: The American Sports Medicine Institute released a position statement on Tommy John injuries. Read the whole thing. Orders.

• Angels pitching coach Mike Butcher has two theories on the increase in Tommy John surgeries. The first:

He’s one of many who believes it’s bad for kids to play only baseball year-round, which often results in them putting too much stress on arms that have not yet matured.

The second one theory I have not heard before:

And just as importantly, Butcher says too many professional pitchers are throwing from the opposite side of the rubber (meaning, a right-hander throwing from the first-base side and a left-hander throwing from the third-base side).

Butcher has found that more than 30 of the pitchers who have undergone Tommy John surgery this year fit that description.

“Some guys do it because they feel like they’ll be in the strike zone more, they’ll have better command that way — there’s all sorts of different philosophies about it,” Butcher said. “But for me, if you’re on the opposite side of your throwing arm on the rubber, you are constantly pronating [Definition] your arm at a higher rate than if you are on the other side. There’s no leverage behind the baseball.

Looks like another stat to track and it will nice little research project for me to do later on this year.

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