MASH Report (5/23/13)

Lots of pitcher news today. Five pitchers coming back from the DL and a few others dealing with injuries.

• Johnny Cueto returned from the DL and had a bit of an issue finding the strike zone. I covered him in detail earlier in the week for the main site. His velocity seems fine for now and it will be interesting to see if he eventually fixes the twist in his pitching motion.

• Matt Garza returned from the DL with mixed results. His velocity was fine compared to the past:

He had problems throwing strikes with a 43% Zone%(pfx). Also, his release point from the game was all over the place.

His next start needs to be monitored for improvement.

• Andrew Bailey’s velocity is up a bit. He’s throwing in the strike zone (50% Zone%). All seems good for now.

• Miguel Gonzalez seems fine also.

• Sean Burnett is back if you care. His velocity is not down, but not as much as it was earlier in the year.

• Chris Sale missed his start yesterday with shoulder tendinitis. Initial injury indicators do not point to an injury. His velocity was constant. His Zone% was high (52%). I went and ran him through my late game consistency tool at baseballheatmaps, and he has been trending up the last few games.

After digging a bit more, I found his release point was getting more and more scattered. Here is a comparison from his start on May 1st to his last start on the 17th.

A noticeable difference which I am sure the great White Sox medical staff noticed. They are outstanding at minimizing the amount of time a player misses by dealing with the problem immediately. If Sale makes another start, I will be looking to see if he can tighten up his release points.

• Kyle Lohse is expected to miss his next start with an elbow injury. Loshe has generally been healthy over his career. While some pitchers have several signs pointing to an injury, really nothing pointed to him being hurt. The only possible indicator was drop in Zone% over the last few games.

• Matt Moore on the other hand has a couple flashing neon signs pointing to a possible injury. His Zone% has dropped below the magic 47% threshold from 50% in 2012 to 46% this season.

Also, his velocity is down almost 2 mph from last year (94.4 to 92.5 mph).

Great results so far from him, but as our own Mike Podhorzer pointed out the other day, Sell, Sell, Sell.

• Eno took his first stab into pitcher injury predictions. He gave clean bill of health to Ryan Dempster and a not so clean bill of health to Doug Fister.

Players on the DL

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