MASH Report (9/29/14)

• For the offseason, I am going to track every player who had or plans on having off-season surgery. I will remove them once they are at 100% in spring training. For some of the injured players in the post season, like Josh Hamilton and Rajai Davis, more information will become available as the postseason goes on or once it is over. Additionally, I am working through all the 2014 injured players individually to see if I need to track them in the offseason. Right now, I have two lists. One of players I have gone through (short) and one I have not examined (long). I should be done next week and have just one list.

• Must See: The Dallas Morning News created a couple of great graphics showing how much time and money was lost to the disabled list this season with a focus on the Rangers. I will go through and run my own values later, but a nice peek at how teams performed health wise in 2014.

Eddie Butler has back issues as he heads to the AFL. We will find out how bad his back is once it is his turn to pitch.

Mike Napoli will not have surgery on his finger after it bothered him for most of the season.

Though Mike Napoli missed the final 10 games of the season with a barrage of nagging in-juries, most notably a left ring finger that plagued him all year, the slugger doesn’t believe he will need surgery this winter.

“No, they said with time it’s going to get better,” said Napoli. “With the rest, I’m going to do whatever I have to do. It’s been swollen the whole time. It definitely doesn’t feel good trying to grip a bat to do the things I have to do. With rest, they said it will get better.”

Just check to see if he has it wrapped in any way in spring training.

Ryan Braun will have surgery to repair an nerve near his thumb. Here is how he describes how the injury has hurt his production.

“I’ve kind of known [that I would have an offseason procedure] the whole time, but based on where the team was at, I thought I had a chance to succeed and hopefully find a way to get through it,” Braun said. “It’s not like I can’t play. I can play. I think the longer I’ve dealt with it, I’ve learned to deal with it. The pain, physically, is not so much the issue, it’s the body’s reaction to not being able to use the top hand in my swing for the majority of the year.

“It impacts my bat speed, it impacts my bat path, it impacts everything I’m trying to do as a hit-ter. And then mentally, knowing where I’m at physically is difficult, too. I have to change my swing, I have to start my swing earlier, I have to do a lot of things that I’m not used to doing.

More information on his recovery will become available once the operation happens.

Travis d’Arnaud (bone chips in elbow) and Jenrry Mejia (hernia) both have surgeries set for this week.

A.J. Burnett will have hernia surgery soon.

Burnett has pitched with an inguinal hernia since April. He said he wished he would have taken care of it earlier, because it bothered him throughout the season.

Burnett said he will have surgery next week to repair it. The rehab should take two to three weeks. After that, he must decide if he will pitch next season. He has until five days following the World Series to exer-cise the $12.75 million player option he earned when he made his 32nd start of the season last week.

Paul Goldschmidt is basically game ready. He will now rest until Thanksgiving.

Matt Cain will have bone spurs removed from his ankle and should be ready by spring training.

Cain already was sidelined by surgery to remove bone spurs and chips from his throwing elbow, a procedure that was performed Aug. 11. The three-time All-Star was expected to begin a throwing program in December. That timetable should remain intact, given the two-month recovery period the Giants cited for Cain’s ankle surgery.

Brandon Moss will have surgery on his hip after his season is over.

Moss has been dealing with the injury since mid-May, but only recently has it really become a concern, which is why he opted to go for an MRI exam on Monday that revealed torn cartilage. He was unavailable Wednesday after receiving a cortisone shot but returned to the lineup for Thursday’s four-game-series opener in Texas, playing in left field.

But a cortisone shot can only mask an injury for so long, and Moss understands offseason surgery isn’t even up for debate at this point. It’s simply a matter of deciding what kind is best, be it microfracture surgery, which would sideline him through the majority of Spring Training, or a more minor clean-up procedure.

Seems like he may miss part of 2015 if he has the micro fracture surgery.

Nick Swisher played with bad knees in 2014.

… he first felt discomfort in his right knee in San Diego at the end of Spring Training. Over the course of the season, he then began experiencing pain in both knees, which eventually sent him to the disabled list for good on Aug. 10 in New York.

Ten days later, Dr. Neal ElAttrache performed debridement procedures on both knees, clean-ing out “a lot of things that shouldn’t have been there,” as Swisher phrased it

Look to him as a buy low candidate for 2015. To see if his knees are back, look for some 1B times from 2013, 2014 and 2015 and compare.

David Ortiz’s wrist acted up at the end of the season. Some report don’t make it out as a bid deal, but …

And, most ominously, David Ortiz is out with a wrist injury that sounds suspiciously like the one Ortiz had in 2008 that cost him several months.

“He’s dealing with some wrist soreness,” said Farrell. “Two nights ago, in his second-to-last at-bat, he felt it in his swing. He was checked out (Wednesday) and that confirmed the inflammation that was there. What we want to be careful of is, back in ’08, when he had a popping sensation take place after feeling some similar symptoms.
…..

“It’s similar,” confirmed Farrell. “It’s hard for me to say it’s not different. It’s in the same general area of the wrist. It’s something we’ve got to be cautious with.”

Let’s wait and see with him.

Carlos Beltran will have surgery on his elbow soon.

Jurickson Profar’s shoulder is a mess. He cannot use it for 3 months. I do not seeing him having much if any value in 2015.

Mike Minor states all his struggles were caused by his January urinary track issue.

Now that a frustration-filled season is complete, Minor can now begin preparing for what he can only hope will be a much smoother offseason. Most of the problems he experienced over the past nine months were seemingly influenced by the idle January he was forced to experience after undergoing a urinary tract procedure on Dec. 31.

Maybe he can be more focused and ready for 2015.

Players on the DL

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

Players with Injuries Going into 2015

Players I have not yet examined





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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Whirling Darvish
9 years ago

Jeff, Love your mash reports. What’s up w/Matt Wieters and why’s he not on the list (or did I miss something)?