MASH Report (3/18/14)

A cascade of pitcher injuries has happened the past few days. Here are a couple of  links looking what can be done to help prevent injuries.

While these  injuries seemed to happen all at once, the pitchers did have a chance to end up injured.

Name: DL%, extra injury indicator
Patrick Corbin: 30%
Parker: 30%, low Zone%
Medlen: 40%
Beachy: Never re-established himself after TJS. About 30% pitchers never do.

Jarrod Parker will miss the entire 2014 and part of 2015 season with his second Tommy John surgery. He had a couple injury indications coming into 2014 season. His velocity continuously dropped last season while his Zone% was also low.


With the above low values and a 2009 Tommy John surgery already in the bag, he had several health related red flags.

Patrick Corbin has a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament.

Corbin said he had been feeling tightness in his forearm through much of the spring and during his Saturday start, but the pain went to a next level with the final three of his 91 pitches in Saturday’s game. He said he felt “a little shock” but no pop in his elbow those last few pitches, and he decided to shut it down.

“It was just the same tightness I kind of had the first three starts, but nothing out of the ordinary,” Corbin said. “Just those last three pitches it kind of got to me when I called out Gibby and Harkey. I knew was something wrong there then. … There was probably something wrong with it the whole game, but I didn’t feel it much until the end and those last couple of pitches, so I was probably smart to stop throwing.”

He didn’t have any injury indications from 2013, but it sounds like he had an in game issue. More information will be coming, but best case scenario will be a couple months on the DL.

• On Saturday, I saw Albert Pujols play in person and wanted to see how good his legs looked. The best I could say is he was laboring on base paths. He reminds of Konerko. Expect no steals. His Run numbers may be down because he will be station to station on the bases.

Jose Iglesias has stress fractures in both of his legs. The fractures were diagnosed as shin splints last year.

Iglesias said he won’t know how long he’ll be out until he visits another specialist, Dr. Thomas Clanton, on Tuesday in Colorado to determine the best course of treatment. He expects to play at some point this season.
….
Iglesias said he has been playing through pain in both shins since last Spring Training, when he was a member of the Red Sox. Not until the last few days, however, did he know how severe the issue was.

Seems like more information will be available later today.

Jon Niese was a pitcher who actually got some good news. After a small scare, he found out he had no structural damage to his elbow.

Collins said it’s uncertain whether the latest setback will cause Niese to miss his first scheduled start of the regular season — potentially the opener. Collins said if the Mets feel that Niese needs to remain in Florida for an extended Spring Training when the club breaks camp in less than two weeks, then that will be the plan.

“We’re not sure if Jon’s going to get the pitch count where we need it to be,” Collins said. “We’ll see. Probably by the end of the weekend, we’ll make that decision.”

We will know more about how much time he will miss when begins throwing again in a few days.

Kris Medlen is going to have Tommy John surgery again.

Michael Bourn may not be ready for opening day because of a hamstring strain.

Doug Fister will probably make his first regular season start on April 6th as he still deals with elbow discomfort.

Chris Stewart will likely miss some time because of possible surgery on his knee.

Jeff Locke will miss two to four weeks to start the season.

• In insanely deep leagues where Alcides Escobar is rosterable, you may need to look for a backup while he deals with shoulder discomfort. Pedro Ciriaco looks to be his replacement up right now. Also, Dayton says all is fine.

Angel Pagan is dealing with the dread back stiffness.

Josh Beckett looks DL bound because of the thumb he slammed into a door.

Players on or Probably on the DL to Start the 2014 Season

(*) 15 Day Disabled List
(**) 60 Day Disabled List
(***) 7 Day Concussion List
(****) Free Agent
Red colored entries are updates since last report.

Major League Report

On DL

Probably on DL

Minor League Report





Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.

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Mark Freeman
10 years ago

Good stuff. I beleive Fister is *elbow* as opposed to shoulder.

bdhudsonmember
10 years ago
Reply to  Mark Freeman

It was elbow, but he now has some soreness in his right shoulder.

bdhudsonmember
10 years ago
Reply to  bdhudson

Scratch that.