Marlon Byrd was just traded yesterday from the Mets to the Pirates. The 35-year-old is having a resurgent season which may end up being a career best. He has made some swing changes to help maintain some consistency for the rest of 2013 and hopefully into 2014.

I am not going to even try to guess if he is taking some form of PEDs, even though he was caught with them in 2012. He served a 50-game suspension and is being tested more since he is an offender. He will have a cloud over him, but I will base my analysis with the assumption he is clean.

Marlon Byrd has completely changed his approach in 2013 with good results. He believes he has a good swing at times, but lost focus in the past. Here are some quotes on the turnaround.

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Well, after a couple weeks of talking about having a mid-season PAIN metric, I finally got around to coding one up. Besides mid-season PAIN, I have a quick look at Halladay, Buchholz and a handful of others.

• Clay Buchholz was averaging over 92 mph on his fastball before going on the DL. In his first rehab game, he was in the upper 80’s (source).

Red Sox manager John Farrell said. “His velocity was in the upper 80s. He came out of it physically fine, which is the biggest thing. We’ll have a chance to discuss where and when his next outing will be, probably tomorrow.” 

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Not a ton of injury information over the past few days. I promise to get a month-to-month, vice a year-to-year, PAIN leader board. Instead, I examined the HURT and PAIN leaders for well established starting pitchers and hitters.

• I wanted to start by talking about the rash of catchers going on the DL and the fantasy impacts. First off, catching is tough. Kneeling for every pitch, having foul balls hit your head and nads, collisions at the plate. To put it in perspective, six of the last players to go on the concussion DL have been catchers. On the season, 9 of the of the 17 concussion DL trips have been by catchers.

A general fantasy rule is to never pay above or at market price for a catcher. This theme has been backed with such catchers as Joe Mauer and Buster Posey spending significant time on the DL in recent seasons. For these reasons, I try to minimize the risk I take early in a draft or with top auction dollars and not look for catcher then. Additionally, in advanced leagues, all the owners may take this rule to the extreme and catchers can be picked up for a fraction of their value.

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Adam Dunn’s batting average has never been considered great, but it has taken a nose dive over the past few seasons. More and more teams have been using a extreme shift on the left-handed hitter. Dunn has now decided to implement his own shift beating swing adjustment. The change has his batting average up, but at the cost of some home run power.

The 33-year-old has hit at or below the league average AVG over his career.

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Quite a bit of injury information for once. I am looking at a few reader suggestions from last week and examing a few bigger named pitchers coming off the DL. Later this week, I will look at the PAIN and HURT leaders with an attempt to look at PAIN over a section of the season vice the whole enchilada.

First some reader questions from last week.

• Me and Adam Jones asked the following about Adam Jones “Is it an injured psyche from the banana incident or something more?” I am going with the banana. His power was fine (ISO and HR/9 are almost the same as 2012). His Speed Score was the same as last year (5.2 vs 5.3). Also his contact was up about 1.5% points. No sign of a real injury.

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Another few days of little injury news (not even one pitcher came of the DL). I am looking at few players and running the SLOW values for just the last couple of months. Additionally, I am slowing making some changes to the DL table. When applicable, I am trying to be a little more precise when a player will return in 2014. So if they had a major injury (e.g. TJS), I am going to begin to put in some possible return dates (month/year). For players just shutdown for the 2013 season, I will put EOS (end of season).

• Jeremy Hefner was placed on the DL with a torn ligament in his elbow. Cases like Hefner intrigue me. He has been battling the injury since June (source).

Collins said the diagnosis likely explains Hefner’s recent ineffectiveness.

“This certainly had a lot to do with it,” Collins said before the Mets’ 5-4, 12-inning loss to the Dodgers last night. “I know he could pitch with it, that’s why he did, but we just saw a big difference that there had to be something that we tried to address.”

Collins said the organization was aware of Hefner’s elbow soreness since at least June.

At the start of the season, his fastball velocity was at 90.3 mph and his average game Zone% was 42.3%. Since the start of June, his fastball is up to 91 mph and his average game Zone% stood at 46.2%. Signs pointed to Hefner getting healthier as the season dragged on. I don’t see any way of predicting this injury.

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In my last MASH Report, I looked at the full season Zone% (Pitchf/x) laggards and found no additional useful information. Today, I have two new Zone% leaderboards, one for June, July and August and one for just July and August. A few more interesting name show up. Additionally, a bit more injury information was available to report on over the last few days.

• Hanley Ramirez stated he will likely play with a shoulder injury for the rest of the season (source).

Ramirez jammed his right shoulder last Sunday. He completed a full workout Sunday but said he still felt discomfort when extending his right arm on his swing and when throwing to first base … “I’m just worried if I am going to keep feeling that every time I throw the ball,” he said. “If I have to play like that, I’ll play.” … Ramirez said the Dodgers’ medical staff has assured him the condition should improve over time. Indeed, Ramirez said, “I’m getting better every day.”

Owners should expect a drop off in production for a few weeks and maybe lasting until the end of the season. The main drop in production will likely be in the power department.

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Injury information is again on the slim side. For some additional information, I decided to look at pitchers with Zone%’s under 45% and took a request from a FanGraphs writers.

• Chris Archer was removed from his start last night with forearm tightness after only 30 pitches. I went back and looked at the game data and nothing seemed out of place. His velocity and release points were consistent. The Rays may have caught the injury in time.

• Ryan Madson was cut by the Angels. He was coming off Tommy John surgery and was not going to be able to pitch in the majors this season.

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With Biogenesis dominating the news front, injury information again is a little scarce, but I was able to scape up a bit.

Pitchers returning from the DL

• Brandon McCarthy looks fine with his average sinker velocity consistent with his previous speeds.

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Not much injury news with the trade deadline taking all the headlines, bylines and small print. I looked at a few players (Moore, Beachy and Butler) and ran an updated SLOW ranking.

• Matt Moore was placed on the DL with elbow soreness. A 2-mph drop in his average fastball velocity from last season was a big red flag to go along with some command issues. Last off season I was able to identify his high walk rate as an injury red flag.

Moore looked to have a bright future a couple season ago, but it is getting dimmer and dimmer by the day.

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