Indians 7 Royals 3 – Shelley Freaking Duncan
April 19, 2011The Elusive Art of the Nickname
April 19, 2011If you’re one of those people who believes that a team should communicate injury information clearly and quickly, I would wager you’re not a big fan of the Indians’ PR department. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception that there will be obfuscation, delay and some good old fashioned hemming and hawing before you ever actually figure out what’s going on with a player’s injury situation.
We saw it with Hafner’s “tired” shoulder. We saw it in the weeks leading up to Jake Westbrook’s Tommy John surgery. And we saw it again last week with Mitch Talbot.
The Indians originally told the press that Talbot was being skipped in the rotation because Fausto prefers to pitch on four days rest rather than five. When asked if Talbot was injured, they said no, and that they wanted to keep it that way.
Then they said that he’d need at least a week of rest: his elbow was sore and an MRI revealed a “strain”.
Then he’d be back in the rotation in three or four weeks.
And now he won’t even start a minor league rehab assignment for at least four weeks.
Now, in the Indians’ defense, they can’t divulge a player’s medical records to the press; we’ve got some pretty neat laws in this country that prohibit that sort of thing. On the other hand, we’re not asking for confidential medical information here: “Is Mitch Talbot’s arm falling off” is hardly classified information, right?
Whatever. I’m actually not all that concerned about the Indians’ willingness to share the information with me because I’m not really into “breaking” news. I figure that when we find things out, then I can write about them, but (luckily) it’s not my job to actually find that stuff out. For those who do have that job though? It must be pretty frustrating to be consistently misled.
Anyway, that’s not what I’m really interested in writing about today. One of those links above is a link to Jordan Bastian’s twitter account. After he tweeted about the ligament strain in Talbot’s elbow, I asked him whether the ligament was the ulnar collateral ligament—the UCL which is what is replaced in Tommy John surgery.
Guess what? It is.
Guess what else? A “strain” is really the same thing as a “miniature tear”, it just sounds better.
Now let me say two things very clearly. First, I’m not a doctor. Second, I’m not a reporter. This means that not only do I not have any inside information, but even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
But if you asked me to gamble, I’d say we’re not going to see Mitch for a while. I wonder if the Indians will ever bother to let us know?
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Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images
12 Comments
See: Jason Stanford
I guess let’s see how deep our stable of 5th starters really is.
mgbode, or the Tribe could do something really amazing and go back to the old way of doing things with a 4 man rotation. You know, that thing they used to do before every pitcher’s arm fell off after a couple of years.
I personally hope they only use the fifth starter when absolutely necessary.
What do you mean “those people?”
Is it blasphemous for me to say that I still haven’t bought into Mitch Talbot and that I think Jeanmar Gomez is an equally effective option at this point? Talbot has done well so far, but the guy wastes too many pitches and it feels to me like he is rarely going to last longer than 5-6 innings, even on days when he’s effective. The Tribe is throwing out such a solid defensive team that it’s tough to believe any pitcher wouldn’t be more effective than last season. I mean, find the regular starter who is a below-average or even average defender at his position? I submit that you can’t find one.
Pat, I agree that it is not worth worrying over the 5th starter, especially since I don’t think it has to be used that often. But if Talbot does miss a good chunck of time that is one more guy down that could help in some capacity this year.
Always good to have more pitching depth ready to go.
i agree vengeful pat. Gomez impressed me early last year but fell off. talbot is not bad tho.. i hope he doesnt need tommy john
there might not be room for him in the rotation in 2012 after a long recovery
@5K – sadly, I think a 6man rotation is more likely at this point.
@VP – yes, I agree that there shouldn’t be much difference in 5th starters. however, with our defense, we want groundball pitchers.
Gomez right around 50% GB% for his minor league career:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=GOMEZ19881002A
Talbot was near 60% GB% for his minor league career but right at 50% last year at the MLB level.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=TALBOT19831017A
So, Talbot seems to be a better fit for our current team IMO.
I am with Pat. Excited to see what Gomez can do. No pressure….just get us 7 innings and less than 5 runs. that is all I want out of a #5.
a follow-up: imagine how good 65% career GB% pitcher Jake Westbrook would be with this defense:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=WESTBROOK19770929A
read this quote from Chris Antonetti. at least sounds promising:
“I understand why people have that perception,” GM Chris Antonetti told Rumblings. “But if you look back at the deals we made in 2008 and 2009, we made them because we weren’t competitive. If we had been the team we wanted to be in 2008, we wouldn’t have traded CC [Sabathia]. … So this year, if we play up to our expectations, if we’re a contending team, we’ll be looking to acquire guys, not trade guys [like Sizemore] away. Our focus is, let’s get back to winning and start bringing in guys at the deadline.”
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&page=rumblings110419