• Tomorrow roster’s can expand to allow anyone on the 40-man roster to join the MLB team. This is when the official DL becomes about useless. Teams won’t move players to the DL because teams no longer need to free up roster spots. Also, hitters who can hit, but not play in the field will return. It will keep a list of players who should be on the DL, but aren’t starting on Thursday.

• Stephen Strasburg owners may not want to start him this week as he is again dealing with back issues.

Still, Strasburg left after throwing 60 pitches in four innings, allowing seven hits and four runs, all four on home runs. Nationals Manager Matt Williams described the problem as a “recurrence” of the upper back trouble he had earlier this season, which contributed to his first of two 2015 disabled list stints. Asked if this discomfort may lead to a third, Strasburg said, “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.”

We will know more after he pitches his mid-week bullpen session.

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This is what Chris Davis does. He’s always going to swing hard, resulting in what Brooks Baseball lovingly refers to as a “disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss.” But sometimes he’s going to connect on those swings with pleasant results.

This approach lends itself to results like the past three seasons when his wRC+ bounced from 168 to 95 to 138. Plenty have tried to figure out exactly what went wrong with Davis in 2014, and now with the benefit of a rebound season’s worth of data, I think it’s worth seeing if we can learn anything.

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• Carlos Carrasco is on the DL with a sore shoulder. It is never good to have pain, but this injury sounds pretty minor.

The Indians said they expect Carrasco to require just the minimum stay on the DL.

“Watching him throw his bullpen yesterday, he’s OK, he’s just a little bit stiff after,” Indians manager Terry Francona said before Tuesday’s game. “I was glad they did the MRI. Sometimes when you give MRIs to pitchers, you have to be careful because anybody that’s thrown a baseball can have something wrong in there. But his was very clean. We were thrilled.”

The news could have been much worse.

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• I having traveling and enjoying Massachusetts for the Saberseminar. I just have not been able to keep up on MASH and need to get out an update before more injuries mount up. Well, this morning I think I may have caught up …. maybe. Today’s MASH is pretty much just a status report with little to no analysis. On Thursday, I will run an in depth on several of these injuries.

• Hunter Pence will probably miss close to the minimum 15 days with a strained oblique

• Billy Hamilton is out with a sore shoulder.

• While the team won’t admit it, Jake McGee will not throw for the major league team this season. The team is putting a 6-8 week return time for him which will be after the regular season.

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• Christian Yelich is on the DL with a knee contusion (official report). Here is the report from the team’s website.

Yelich bruised his right knee last Sunday at Atlanta. He’s been dealing with swelling in the knee. If the knee doesn’t respond in another couple of days, Yelich likely will return to Miami and get an MRI.

So we have possible swelling, bruising, and/or contusion of the knee. With the wide variance in possibilities, here are the possible return times for players with any of the three injuries to the knee.

The return times are all over the place, but an estimate of three weeks is reasonable with the chance it could last until this season’s end.

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• It may be time to pick up Hector Olivera if you want him as rehabs his hamstring injury in the minors. The Braves are saying he is two weeks off from debuting in the majors so I think it is now or never to pick the player up.

Olivera, who hasn’t played since injuring his hamstring in Triple-A in June while still a member of the Dodgers’ organization, will play two or three days in the GCL according to Hart, and he’ll be moved up through the system from there.

“Get his legs under him a little bit, and we’re satisfied that the hamstring is not an issue — with the idea that we’ll bring him to Atlanta at some point.”

Hart feels that Olivera could make his Major League debut in two weeks, barring any setbacks.

• As expected, Jose Fernandez went on the DL with a strained bicep. I expect him to do a full recovery, pitch a game or two, and then be shut down.

• Koji Uehara is on the DL and will miss the rest of the season with a fractured wrist. Follow the Bullpen Report to find out who may end up with the Save chances in Boston.

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• Jose Fernandez will likely go on the DL later today with a strained bicep. Less than 10 previous pitchers (2002 to 2014) officially going on the DL with a strained bicep and their median and average return times was 25 days.

• Denard Span may be getting to the droppable in redraft leagues with his personal return time being the playoffs.

Span was able to run sprints and play catch without problem Saturday. He may go to the team’s complex in Viera, Fla., next week to continue baseball activities.

There are days when Span doesn’t know if he is going to play in the second half of the season. But when he has a day like Saturday, he believes he can make it back for the postseason push. There is no timetable on when Span will return to action.

Even if he does returns this season for a bit, do we know if he will be productive? I doubt it.

• Howie Kendrick will likely go on the DL today with a pulled hamstring.

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• I have been working on ways to better determine DL return times. Well, I have a BETA graphic I would like to use from now on. Let me know what you like or don’t like about. I have included another one to show the time Freddie Freeman is likely to miss.

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• Steven Souza will supposedly miss four-to-six weeks with a broken wrist.

“Certainly wasn’t [the best news on Saturday],” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “We got a phone call [after Souza’s hand was X-rayed] that it is a fractured hand. Four to six weeks. Obviously not an ideal thing for us or him, because his at-bats are crucial right now. But he’s going to go back to Tampa, probably get re-evaluated there in two or three weeks and we’ll go from there.”

With wrist injuries, the average return to MLB time is over two months. I had this same argument when Giancarlo Stanton hurt his wrist (median 56 days)

Stanton estimates low IMO @soumyajeetghosh Avg. historic return time for a broken wrist is 77 days. If fractures included, down to 65 days

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) July 16, 2015

Now news comes out that Stanton will take longer to return than originally estimated.

The recovery for the broken hamate bone in Giancarlo Stanton’s left hand is taking longer than initially expected, the Marlins’ All-Star right fielder admitted prior to Saturday night’s contest against the Padres.

“Definitely slower,” Stanton said of his progress from June 28 surgery.
….
He added that while he has been hitting off a tee recently, he still feels pain and is swinging “as strong as it allows.”

“Getting decent — the ball’s coming off OK,” Stanton said. “It’s just the pain level of it.”

If I can come up with a reasonable return estimate, I am not sure why teams can’t.

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• Not much injury-related news to write about since most information coming out over the past week or so has been associated with trades.

• Mookie Betts is on the 7-day concussion DL after falling over a wall to make a catch. There will be fairly constant updates on him since the Red Sox aren’t in the playoff picture and the Boston media needs to cover something.

• Manuel Banuelos is on the DL from pain caused by a bone spur.

The Braves gained some concern as Banuelos’ velocity steadily dropped as he made the first five appearances of his Major League career this month. His fastball averaged 90.3 mph during his July 2 Major League debut. But that number dropped with each subsequent appearance and stood at 87.8 mph during last Friday’s start against the Cardinals.

It seems like the Braves and Banuelos are waiting for his elbow to calm down before giving a full evaluation.

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