MASH Report (6/17/14)

June 17, 2014

•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%).

• Adam Wainwright missed his scheduled start with elbow tendinitis. He has seen about a 1 mph drop in velocity. Besides the drop, not much else sticks out. As I said last week, his next start will be key in determining his health.

• David Wright says his slump is not injury related. The problem is he has some distinct injury signs. His power(ISO) is way down going from .2017 to .091. Also, he is making less contact (Contact% down from 83.4% to 81.2%). His Speed Score (2.5) is at a career low. Well David, start hitting the ball harder and more often and running with some athority and then maybe people won’t think your hurt.

• Jeremy Hellickson is getting close to returning. Here is a report on his minor league velocity.

Hellickson struggling in bottom 1st, 89-91 seems to be working alot of offspeed, cant command fastball.

— Castle ⚾ (@TheACastle) June 12, 2014

The velocity is the same as his 2013 season values, but down from 2011-2012.

• Russell Carleton at Baseball Prospectus came to the following elbow related conclusion on high school pitchers from states with unregulated high school pitch counts.

Those findings are still fairly robust when you control for a host of other factors. It seems hard to argue anything other than that unregulated pitch counts at the high school level are a significant contributor to injury risk for pitchers who get to the MLB level. The fact that I looked only at pitchers who manage to make it to MLB (because it’s what we have data on) ignores the possibility that some pitchers flame out in the minors before making it to the bigs. That effect might be lurking out there too, and we don’t have a way to formally study it.

Fastball Velocity Watch for Pitchers Returning From the DL

• Tom Gorzelanny’s average fastball velocity is down 2 mph

• Mat Latos saw his velocity drop over 2 mph and got a shutout in his first game back. He only got 6% swinging strikes and was helped out with a .125 game BABIP. Right now, I would sell since everything seems great on the surface, but there seems to be some swing-and-miss issues.