MASH Report (8/27/15) – August PAIN Report

• 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.

• Shane Greene is out for the season after needing surgery on his shoulder and should be ready for spring training. His struggles may have been caused by the injury.

Tigers right-hander Shane Greene will undergo an operation Thursday morning to repair the circumflex artery in his throwing shoulder, and he will miss the remainder of the season.

The pitcher is expected to be ready for Spring Training, according to manager Brad Ausmus.

According to head athletic trainer Kevin Rand, Greene’s blood vessel issue had caused a “pseudoaneurysm” in his right middle finger, leading to numbness and potentially explaining why the righty’s season deteriorated so dramatically after a promising start.

“I can’t say if it did or didn’t [have an effect], but it certainly makes me think that there might be a relation or some type of correlation between the two,” Ausmus said Wednesday afternoon.

Greene is a borderline usable pitcher in most leagues, but a season like 2014 is not out of the question.

• Jeremy Affeldt hurt his knee playing with his kids.

“We were just playing with their water stuff they have out there,” he said. “We were having a good time. It wasn’t like we were knee-boarding or wakeboarding or anything like that. I was just playing with them on some of their float stuff and I just lost my footing. I tried to favor my right knee so I wouldn’t hurt that, and then my good knee decided to buckle and pop. And I tore the patella ligament.”
..

Doctors told Affeldt he’ll probably be able to avoid surgery this time.

Said Affeldt, “The structure of the knee is fine, the ACL is fine, the MCL is fine, the meniscus is fine. I guess it’s just a little ligament up there near the knee that kind of tore off. … It could have been a lot worse. … I’ll probably be pitching with two knee braces. By the end of the season, I’ll probably have every brace known to man on every joint known to man.”

Here are some of his other great injury moments.

Affeldt’s previous unusual injury occurred in May 2012. Returning home from a game, he was enthusiastically greeted by his son Walker, who at the time stood 4-foot-6 and weighed 40 pounds at age 4. Walker bounded into the arms of Affeldt, who sprained his right knee.

Affeldt endured a scarier incident in September 2011, when he cut his right hand while try-ing to separate frozen hamburger patties with a sharp knife. The deep wound came within a millimeter of an artery, and he needed surgery to repair nerve damage in his pinkie.

Someone get this man a bubble.

• Kendall Graveman is done for the season with a strained oblique.

Manager Bob Melvin is not ready to say as much but hinted at the possibility, noting Graveman won’t even be back to playing catch for another three or four weeks.

“So whether or not the rest of the season is in jeopardy for him, we’re not sure yet,” Melvin said, “but it could be a significant amount of time.”

• Twins Rule 5 pick, J.R. Graham is on the DL with a strained shoulder

Graham is 1-1 with a 5.15 ERA in 34 games this season. He’s struck out 47, walked 17 and allowed 10 homers in 57 2/3 innings. He said he felt shoulder soreness after his outing on Tuesday, when he picked up his first Major League win, and it didn’t get any better on Wednesday. His velocity was down on Tuesday, as his fastball averaged 94 mph, which is two miles slower than his season-average of 96 mph, according to Brooksbaseball.net.

“I came in yesterday and thought it was just normal soreness, but I woke up this morning and it was still sore,” Graham said. “It’s just a little sore and weak and just kind of rest it up. It should be fine. Nothing I’m too worried about. Just rest it up and come back in September.”

• Desmond Jennings could be shut down for the season after re-injuring his knee.

OF Desmond Jennings may be headed back to the DL after leaving Tuesday’s game with a bruise on the same left knee that sidelined him for 31/2 months and required surgery and sitting out Wednesday.

Though Tuesday’s game was Jennings’ first on the Trop turf since returning from the DL, manager Kevin Cash said that was “not at all” a factor. He said that it was “more him banging it” on a slide into second Saturday and that “it never felt quite right,” and that he may have aggravated it running the bases Tuesday.

• Johnny Giavotella is on the DL with an undisclosed illness. He is expected to only miss the minimum 15 days.

•  Imaginary player Curt Casali was placed on the DL with a strained hamstring.

• T.J. House is now on the MLB DL with shoulder inflammation. This change is because he filed a grievance with the Indians because he felt he was injured while in the majors and owed an MLB salary. As for House’s recovery, it is taking longer than expected.

Antonetti admitted he is surprised House’s recovery has taken so long.

“Based upon the initial symptoms,” Antonetti said, “the initial way he was feeling, the ini-tial diagnosis, we were hopeful that it would be a shorter time for him to get back healthy but it hasn’t played out that way.”

• Our own David Wiers examined some lightly owned players who could be returning from the DL soon.

• Corey Dawkins (formally at Baseball Prospectus) has started his own baseball injury website, Baseball Injury Consultants.

• The Dodgers head physician, Stan Conte, goes into detail on the three greatest myths associated with Tommy John surgery. The three myths are:

• [P]itchers throw harder after having Tommy John surgery.
• [P]itchers can be expected to return in 12 months.
• [T]ommy John surgery is always successful.

Velocity Readings

• Cody Anderson’s average fastball velocity is fine.

• Chad Bettis is also.

• And so is Blaine Boyer’s.

• Archie Bradley came off the DL, but was optioned to AAA. The best velo info I could find was he hit 97 mph.

Archie Bradley hit 97 on a fastball in the 2nd. 1-2-3 with 2 K's; he has 4 in 2 innings. 'Hide lead 4-1.

— Donny Baarns (@DonnyBaarns) August 24, 2015

• Juan Nicasio’s velo is fine

• Wily Peralta has all the signs of an injured pitcher. Huge velocity drop and he can’t seem to get the ball in the strike zone

The Brewers are all over the place on the cause from nothing is wrong to he has a dead arm to his mechanics were off.

Peralta labored through a 25-pitch first inning in Tuesday’s 11-6 loss to the Cleveland Indians at Progres-sive Field, seeing his usual mid- to high-90s fastball register markedly slower on the radar gun.

…
Pitching coach Rick Kranitz suggested afterward that “dead arm” could be a possible explanation. Peralta spent roughly nine weeks on the disabled list due to a strained left oblique and is six starts into his return to the rotation.
Manager Craig Counsell said he spoke to Peralta, but it’s wait and see until his next start.

“There’s nothing further,” he said. “There’s no new news I guess is the way I’d say it. He’s just going to go through his normal routine to get ready for his next start.”

Peralta said he doesn’t recall ever seeing his velocity drop so markedly from one start to the next. He suggested something could have been amiss with his mechanics.

Lots of questions with few answers. I would not start him in his next start and see if there is any improvement.

• Michael Pineda’s velocity seems fine.

• Rick Porcello’s velocity is even to even a bit up.

PAIN (Pitcher Abuse INdex) Rankings (introduction/explanation)

Any player with a PAIN value over 100 (red) has the traits of a pitcher likely to be hurt

Comparing April-July to August (min 100 pitches)

• Madison Bumgarner is the name which sticks out.

While he has seen some drop in velocity (92.3 to 91.9 mph), the drop in Zone% is the biggest red flag.

Players on the DL in 2015

The Red players have had updates since the last report. Click on the “Date” for a link to go to the latest article on the player.