MASH Report with Velocities (3/19/15)

• The Rays starting rotation is a mess right because of a trio of injuries. Alex Cobb has forearm tendinitis which will cause him to miss time to start the season. Drew Smyly will at least miss his first start with shoulder tendinitis. Alex Colome won’t be in the starting rotation to start the season after showing up to spring training late and then being in the hospital with pneumonia. The Rays rotation now looks to be Chris Archer, Jake Odorizzi, Nate Karns, Burch Smith and one of the following: Enny Romero, Matt Andriese, Everett Teaford, or Grayson Garvin.

Matt Wieters has been shut down with tendinitis in the elbow he had Tommy John surgery on last year. I am not sure how the Orioles lineup with shake out with Wieters possibly being the DH. It looks like Caleb Joseph will get some extra early season at bats at catcher

Zack Wheeler’s elbow was even more screwed up than originally reported because he had a torn tendon since last year.

The examination also revealed more tearing in Wheeler’s tendon in addition to calcifica-tion in the elbow joint.

But the source said that neither issue fundamentally altered Wheeler’s fate last season. Since doctors assured him that the injuries couldn’t be made worse in any significant way, Wheeler was left to decide how much pain he could stand in order to keep pitching.

I have zero expectations from him when he comes back.

Jacoby Ellsbury strained his oblique. These are the type of injuries which linger. I could see this injury affect him for a while.

Evan Gattis’s wrist is also an area of concern for me. I am not a fan of wrist injuries and could see the injury bother him for a month or two. I would look for other catching options as some people may not deflate his value because of the injury.

Anthony Rendon hasn’t hit since March 9th (strained knee ligament) and we don’t know when he might hit the next time.

 

Velocity Readings from Injured Pitchers

Velocity is one of the few spring training stats which is extremely reliable which Mike Fast (now with the Astros) found few years back at Baseball-Prospectus. Here are some velocities of interest comparing spring training values to last year’s average.

From Pitchf/x stadium (homes of Royals, Rangers, Padres and Mariners). The values are mph increases or decreases.

Gainers
Brian Flynn +3
Shaun Marcum +1
Jason Motte +1
Matt Garza +1
Chris Bassitt +1 (maybe +3 on four-seamer)

Same
Yordano Ventura
Kevin Quackenbush
Yovani Gallardo
J.P. Howell
Nick Tepesch
James Shields
Jonathan Broxton
Will Smith
Wily Peralta
Edinson Volquez
Kelvin Herrera
Drew Pomeranz
Erasmo Ramirez

Down
Jon Lester -1.5
Hyun-Jin Ryu -2
Luke Hochevar -2.5
Greg Holland -2.5
Jeremy Jeffress -3
Brandon Morrow -4

From Twitter searches

No velocity bounce for Ubaldo Jimenez

Players with Injuries Going into 2015

(*) 15 Day Disabled List
(**) 60 Day Disabled List
(***) 7 Day Concussion List
(****) Free Agent
Red colored entries are updates since last 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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Cory
9 years ago

I’m starting to be concerned about Greg Holland… I’m only going by memory but wasn’t his velocity down even towards the end of last year?