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Speaker 1: Hey, it's Master's Week. I'm back from New York City where I nearly froze to death and didn't get to see Juan Soda. I've got some news on him.
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Speaker 2: What have you got, Edward, Why Zack Wheeler's rehab might be cause for major concern.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not looking good. What is looking good is injury Territory. Welcome back to injury Territory. Easy for me to say, I'm Will Carol. That's Edward e Gross and we've got a ton of injuries to go over. Edward has some great stuff, as he said on Zach Wheeler, might not be so great stuff if you're a Zach Wheeler or a Phillies fan. That's coming in the second segment. But right now, let's get to a bunch a bunch of injuries, and we'll start off with one that was really scary, and that was Parker Meadows. I absolutely will not show you that collision. It was brutal. We don't see these very often, and that's one of the things that I think we need to go over, is that these are so uncommon but can be so devastating. I immediately thought back, especially since I had just been to a Mets game, that devastating collision between I can't remember who the other one was. It was Mike Cameron and he just I'm thinking it's Eric Young. But it's one of those things I should probably have looked up. But anytime you have two guys running high speed and you have a potential head injury.
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Speaker 2: And b was it Carlos Beltron.
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Speaker 1: It might have been. It might have been. I mean, two great players, but anytime you have two players there might be a head injury. There's obviously almost always a head injury of some sort of used to concussion, and there's also the worry of spinal injuries. You see guys snap back, you wonder how they land. It's often difficult to see. It's a really awkward motion. One of the things. It becomes almost like a football play where who absorbed the most energy and where did it focus? And when it hits head to head that's often the worst because it's such a small area, it's not built for that. There's obviously no protection. A cap like these isn't going to give you a whole lot of cushion, and they don't pull up. I think this is the one thing that most people don't understand football players are bracing for it, they're used to it, if that can be a thing. But for baseball players, for whatever reason, something has gone wrong too. Guys. This is the other part that's key is the angle. If you think back, if you remember that camera, I don't look it up, probably on YouTube, the camera and whoever it was, I can't think you're right. With Beltran, they were nearly perpendicular. They were coming in on the ball. With Meadows, it was a little bit angular where you're not getting exactly, you know, head to head. It was more of a glancing blow. You see this in car crashes. You know it's not often head on. That's always bad. But if you get these glancing blows, which angle, where does the energy go? For Meadows? If I can go back to this picture here real quick, you'll see super quick response. They were out there. The tigers were out there quickly. You can see the twins immediately went into their planned mode. Their athletic trainers were out there. They had emt out there with the golf cart and the stretcher, which wasn't necessary. Meadows was conscious, He exhibited no signs of spinal injury. He is going to be out for a little while. We'll see exactly how long that is, but it's definitely one that more shocked the team. There is news that he broke his arm now that so that's obviously going to keep him out. So it's one of the ones where he and Riley Green both with some really bad injuries. So a lot of people will wonder, and this actually came up at the Mets game, why don't they just yell I got it? And they do, But in people don't think about the fact that it's a loud crowd. Often you know, the crack of the bat, here's going to be a play, it's going to be exciting. Are they going to make it? Then they see two guys going toward each other? Do you hear it? Sometimes yes? Sometimes no? Is it as simple as that, you know the whole I got it, you'll let tango. I mean, there wasn't a language barrier between Meadows and Green, so I think it's just one of those really uncommon, unfortunate circumstances that you can't really plan for. Especially these two have played together a lot, so I don't think it's unfamiliarity. I think it's both of them thought they could get it. Curious, you know, I haven't looked at it, but statcast, we have all this data about how much range these guys have and from a certain position, how much there's probably a calculable collision risk for each of these plays, and maybe a player can be made aware of that. I don't know, Curious, but with Meadows, he's gonna be out a while. Green was luckily okay in that collision. But I do want to highlight the way that both medical staffs for the Tigers and the Twins dealt with that. It's one of those things you hope you never have to do, but when you see just how well it's handled, I think they deserve a lot more credit than they often get. Let's move on, I go ahead.
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Speaker 2: Well, if I'm a real fast, I'm glad you brought up the idea of like a car crash, because all of that is because it's unexpected, right, and especially if you played with someone for an extended period of time, you're probably even likelier to believe that everything is going to be as routine as it can be.
00:06:41
Speaker 1: Either it's a catch not whatever.
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Speaker 2: And that's a big part of this. Like, if you're working with someone you really haven't all that often with then yes, you might be a little bit more hesitant, or you know, maybe you're a little bit more risk averse all of that. But the other thing that I think is important in this equation, Will, is that we're dealing with speedsters here. We're dealing with some really fast outfielders, and that should not be lost in this conversation because if you are not bracing for it, and you're going as quickly as possible, then that's going to add an inherent amount of risk. And it's perhaps my way of complimenting Parker Meadows that he is as fast as he is, but also too, that is the danger when you can cover so much ground that maybe, yes, these are fluke injuries, but it is a little likelier to have happened.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, with you saying that, I'm curious, I know we have the data. I haven't seen. I don't even know if this is successful. How fast were they going? Did they pull up? We should be able to see that, and it's just one more intriguing thing, more miracle of stat cast. Okay, let's move on from Parker Meadows. It's a tough situation for him, but there's more It's a very tough situation down in Houston. They had already lost Hunter Brown, now Christian Hog another shoulder, so we'll have to see exactly where this goes. Christian Javier, this is tough. You can't it's tough to lose two pictures, but you can't lose two pictures your top two pitchers, and not just that, your top two pictures to functionally the same thing, both of these grade two shoulder strains. They're not saying which muscle with Brown. A source told me that it was in the rotator cuff complex, which is four muscles. Another one in there often gets included. But I'm very, very curious if this is the same thing, because that would be either a really curious cluster or something they're doing differently. You just don't see many that many shoulder strains because there's so much focus on it. Another one that Frank Joe doesn't get enough credit for is what's called the Throwers ten, which is something that every pitcher at every level should be doing, and it has reduced so many of those injuries. There are variations on it. There are obviously things that have changed in the last fifty years. People have made a lot of differences to it. I know Mike Reinold, formerly of the Cubs in Red Sox, now at Champion Sports Medicine, has his own version. I'm sure there's more out there. The bands. If people are using Alan Jagger's j bands or something like it, there's a million knockoffs of those. Drive Line has their own, but those throwers ten have really reduced it. But now two grade two strains likely at least in the same area, if not the same muscle, if not the same muscle complex. That's one where the astros, who often have treated themselves like the smartest people in the room, they need to take a look. You know, if you have one, you need to try to figure out why. If you have to, you better call you know, code read get everybody on this figure it out. I am very, very curious. I've been looking this week at what's changed down there. There was a year where the Yankees had just a ton of hamstring strains. What a change. New strength and conditioning guy. His team just hadn't adjusted well to his strength and conditioning program. They were doing more hamstring works. They were fatigued, didn't track that well with baseball activity. He was not a hardcore baseball guy. He was a more of an Olympic sport guy, if I remember correctly. So I'm very very curious what's changed down there, and that's something I'll be looking into for under the knife. Let's move on from that one and say, take a look at Zach Eflin, who is going to have have Tommy John surgery some I shouldn't say that, some form of elbow reconstruction. I think this is his first, not one hundred percent share of that. But he's out for the year. He'll likely be out until early next season. I'm curious to see whether or not we get you know, it sounds counterintuitive, but a resigning, you know, extension for him. He signed a one year, ten million dollars deal fairly low. I thought with the Orioles he would have passed physical. So this is a new, acute problem that's being fixed. But we often see those guys sign an extension because they're gonna be rehabbing this year and you're paying them anyway. If you extend them, often at the same or lower money with innings bonuses, then you get something out of them, and you know them they're at least comfortable with the rehab staff. So we'll see where this goes without Eflyn but out for the season, another tough one for the Orioles. Speaking of elbows and reconstructions, that's where Robert Stevenson is headed. And well, Robert Stevenson isn't you know, He's not a huge name. He's not going to devastate a struggling, weird, weirdly constructed angel's bullpen, which is already dealing with a number of injuries. He is an interesting case. And if you go back to the interview I did with doctor Jeffrey Dugas, one of the things we talked about is that the internal brace surgeries have a very very high rate of success. Now, Tommy John surgery itself very very high rate of success, which is why not many people mess with it, why they're reluctant to mess with the rehab. But for Stevenson, who did have an internal brace but also had a graft, so he basically had both, they put in a new ligament and they overlaid the suture tape. This is what you can see here. The suture tape is that thing that looks like a shoelace, the best description I have for it, and it goes over and connects to that graft, basically strengthening the area over it. Immediately, you know, the graft has to kind of work itself in. All that has to heal is the anchor. For that internal brace to be at full strength, ligament has to go through a whole process where it literally turns itself on a cellular level from a tendon in most cases to a ligament. It was hamstring tendon that we see more and more from doctor Job's original risk tendon. So in this case with Stevenson, he is headed now for his second elbow reconstruction in I think two years. But this implies a failure of the internal brace. Now I don't know, I don't have the details. Angel certainly aren't saying why did this happen? Did he just put too much loads? That would be an exceptional amount of load because that that suture tape, what the structure of the internal brace is exceptionally strong. Now do we have failures at the anchor? Yeah, those happen. Do we have just something weird happens and the graft itself fails. It's happened. It's unusual, but again it's overlaid by the suture tape. So I'm very, very curious about this. Where is what happened those space Again, we don't have the mechanism, we don't know where it broke. We know there was flexor ten in involvement because the Angels did say he's going to have elbow reconstruction with a flexor ten in repair. So we'll have to see. I hope we get some data on this. But this is notable, not only because Stevenson's been hurt, another injured player that the Angels brought in. They accepted that risk. That's not when they developed on their own. It's not something that just occurred. Stevenson was available because of his fragility. But it's very, very notable because this could be one of the first, if not the first, internal brace failures we have to see. And when I say failure, I just mean something broke. I'm not meaning it's a surgeon's fault. I'm saying Stevenson's fault and certainly not saying it's the angel's fault. Failure implies something broke, So I'm using in a very specific sense there. I don't want to make that clear so that the Angels don't yell at me, let's go quickly through two more Cole Reagan's got hit in the hand, got hit right in the pitching hand by a comebacker ninety miles an hour off the bat. I guess could have been worse, but it's a bad place to get hit. Hit him right basically in the thumb, and he said, you know it hurt. And then as he went on, his hand just went numb. You can't pitch with a numb hand. This isn't something serious so far. They x rayed it on the spot. Every stadium has an X ray. Every stadium now has a digital X ray, I learned this week. So that's something that happens near instantly. So I think that, you know, they we often see. We saw with Jackson Curio that you know they had done an X ray. The swelling had prevented them from seeing the formation of it. So sometimes these things do get delayed. But I don't think that's gonna be the case with Reagan's. It's just gonna be a question of when does his hand field good enough to go out there grip a baseball and rip it ninety five miles an hour and keeping him healthy absolutely key for the team. I can remember talking to Nick Kenney and saying, you gotta keep that guy healthy because I had him on a fantasy team, and he laughed and he goes, yeah, I think that's definitely what we want to do. Last one, Royce Lewis. Lewis obviously one of the most talented players in the league and also one of the most fragile. You know, they do so much up there. I think the world of Nick Paparresta and his staff. But this is called a left knee sprain, and as I've gone over here over and over, he sprained is a tear. So we don't know what ligament. He's had MCL problems in the past. He's obviously said ACL problems in the past. ACL would be stating here. We'll have to see first what ligament it is that's damaged. We'll have to see how severe that is. Hopefully not not something that's significant. We'd hate to lose him for a long period of time because he and Byron Buxton so talented but have had such trouble staying out there. Yeah, when we come back, let's go in more on what you were telling me, Edward about Zach Wheeler and his couple rehabs. Starts look really good at the start, but now there's some concern. We'll go over that when we come back on injury.
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00:19:42
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back to injury Territory. Will Carrol Edward E Gross here, And you know, one of the things that we definitely have to talk about is Zach Wheeler. Everything was going so well with that first start, second start, a little bit off. Third start. Now there's some can concern and it's specifically around the velocity. Tell us what you're seeing edwards for sure.
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Speaker 2: So when we're talking about Zach Wheeler, we're thinking about four seen fastballs that are hovering around ninety six ninety eight miles per hour, which is pretty good stuff, especially for him in terms of the yeah, very good stuff in terms of his effectiveness, the movement, all of that good stuff. But what we're seeing over these last couple of rehab starts involve fastballs that are ninety three miles per hour. And it's not just losing three miles per hour that is significant here, But given where ninety six is in terms of the range of outcomes for pitchers versus ninety three, you're almost a completely different person. If that is what you're throwing. And it's important to kind of go over the data when we talk about what opposing hitters are able to do with ninety three mile per hour fastballs versus ninety six mile per hour fastballs. So say there, you go, look at that ask and you shall receive. So let's start at the bottom here at ninety six, the wOBA allowed waited on base average allowed is three to ten, which is pretty solid. With rate eighteen percent, hard hit rate thirty four percent. All of those are pretty solid numbers as far as you know what opposing hitters cannot do against ninety six mile per hour fastballs. But you go down to ninety three, wOBA goes up by forty five points. With goes down by ten percentage points, hard hit rate goes up by eight percentage points. These are all massive, massive changes when you drop from ninety six down to ninety three. So one of the things that I wanted to do was I wanted to look at where do we see other significant drops if we look at it in say three mile per hour bands or windows gaps, however you want to call it, and across the league, you subtract three miles per hour to a four seam fastball. It doesn't have the same devastation everywhere going from say the mid nineties to the low nineties. So let's say like ninety four to ninety one. Well, that ninety four is not going to be as effective anyway, and so when you get down to ninety one, basically, yeah, it's significant, but it's not necessarily near the devastation when you're losing about one to two percentage points off of with rate, small increase in wOBA, but it's specifically in Wheeler's neighborhood from ninety three to ninety six, or from ninety six down to ninety three, those three ticks, that's the forty five points of wOBA. That's the massive drop in with rate. That is a clear measurable difference. He is operating in a part of the velocity scale where every tick does significantly less damage to hitters than it would for a harder thrower. And we're talking about decisive bat missers going from ninety six to ninety eight to hitting ninety three, where hitters can play much more like ordinary heaters, they can see much more ordinary heaters, and the league data says that's one of the more expensive places on the spectrum to be giving back that kind of velocity will.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's exactly the thing you have to worry about with him, is you know, is this something that's just him getting used to it? Is this something that's going to be Is this just where he lives now? Is he just a little bit less? Is it going to come back in a couple starts. Is it going to come back next year? We still don't know. But there's some great comps out there. I mean, some of them goes way back. You know. You can take a look at someone like, you know, Josh Beckett, who was one of the all time thrastic outlets syndrome success stories. That's a that's a tom of Twister. Alex Cobb, now he had an extent. He's still I don't know if he's actually retired, but he did lose velocity. But that made him lean harder into being a split change guy and he became much more of a ground ball pitcher. He was one of the first guy that's really leaned into sequencing. So he's more of the you know, didn't get it all back, but got enough and made adjustments kind of guys. I think the modern example that we have to look at is Merril Kelly. And you know, I know he's having some injuries at the start of the season here, he's looked pretty good in rehab, should be back soon. But man, he's been maybe one of the underrated number two kind of pitchers around with him and Gallon, they've kind of been miscast as the ace level pitcher. But I don't think being a really good, really consistent number two one that brought back prospects that the Rangers brought in last year kind of as a rental boomerangked back to the d Bacs. But that's the kind of player you need to have around. And for Wheeler, I think he has to be looking at. I mean, Wheeler is a better pitcher overall than Kelly. Don't get me wrong. I think even Merrill Kelly would agree with that. But which path is it going to be? Which one is going to come back? I mean, we do have some cases. You have to look at Matt Harvey who had a ton of other problem. You look at Stephen Strasbourg in case it'll be interesting to see exactly where this goes. But you highlighted with all those numbers exactly why the velocity is so important and if you're not up at the top, and also why we're looking for guys who live at the top. Like, I don't know if you saw the we didn't talk about this one. Sorry to go off book, but seth Rnandez the single a pitcher. We saw him shocking Max Clark in the spring breakout. But single a pitcher for the Pirates. Imagine that throwing one hundred and one miles an hour. I think he's gone fifteen innings like one run, just tons of strikeouts, obviously because he's pitching his single eye. And I look at this as why are all the scouts looking for velocity? Because A it's easy to see and it succeeds. Why do we see so many arms that go out there. I was at the Mets game on Wednesday and boom, here's a reliever for the Diamondbacks. I forget who it was, but I was like, I don't think I've ever heard of this guy. I don't know anything about him. I bet he's gonna throw ninety six pop first pitch, fourteen fastball, ninety six on the corner. And I was like, see this is every guy now, every single unknown reliever throws ninety six. And when I was growing up, if somebody threw ninety six and they weren't named Nolan Ryan, you learned who they were, you started buying rookie cards, you got excited about it. Now it's random Wednesday reliever for the Diamondbacks. So with Hernandez, I'm very curious about this one because as a prospect, what does he need to learn? They're gonna say, oh, he needs a season, Oh he needs secondary pitches. And I realized pitchers have more pitchers pitches than anybody today. And he's young, but my god, they've got Skeens. They're not gonna have Skiens forever. Even with the signing a Connor Griffin to the all time record. This is a team that's on the up with a window. They've got Chandler, they've got Skeens, they'll get Jones back. Why not push a kid like this? Obviously, Griffin came through the system very very quickly. Obviously schemes came through, but he was kind of fully formed at that. But when Seth Hernandez is pumping like this, please tell me what he's going to learn against these single A hitters.
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Speaker 2: That's fair and I think specifically when we're talking about like Wheeler here, you know someone who's thirty five years of age, six different pitch types for him. The question then is, Okay, you lose three miles per hour and you're down to a ninety three inventory. Then are you going to go to your other pitchers a great deal more. Are you going to emphasize sequencing a little bit more? Or are you at a certain stage in your career where it's what you see is what you get. And now what we're seeing is significantly less than what we saw before, which was greatness.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I think all those guys had to adjust. Either you get it back or you have to adjust. I think the all time great for that was Roger Clemens. You know, he learned a new pitch when he left Boston and basically that carried him through the rest of his career. You know, we should we should all be so lucky to have one great pitch. He also threw really hard. Let's burn through some good news. We don't often get good news here, but I've got three guys who are coming back, and I'm excited about this now. I didn't get to see Juan Soto in New York because he's got the calf strain. But all indications are that he didn't really need to go on the IL, but it made sense they were gonna hold him out. It was freaking freezing in New York this week. You know, it was like forty at game time. It was a little windy. The minute the the uh shade came over the stadium, it was second jacket time. It was bundle up, think about heading back to the club time. So it was one of those days where you would not have played him. I don't know if he would have played if it was a standard day without an injury. But the calf is doing fine. It's a fairly insignificant strain. It's a mild strain. So is he going to be out significantly past the minimum? I don't think so. Is he going to need a rehab start, I don't think so. So it's very good news for the Mets. The faster they can get one Soto back, the better. Jacob de Gram he felt a pop in his knee. They had the MRI. They say no structural damage. This is one of those statements that I hate because, Okay, you're telling me what it's not We can argue about the definition of structure, but what was it? There are a lot of things. I went over this and under the knife on Thursday. It's often a synovial plika. It can be just something moving. The kneecap can pop a little out of place and go right back in. That's worrisome, but not problematic, especially if he remains asymptomatic and free. So de Gram he's had a couple starts, and he's had a couple of problems. He had that neck issue that vanished. We hope. He's had this knee issue that really isn't so it's a maintenance issue. It's something they're gonna have to keep him ready to go and healthy. Last one for today is Andrew Volpi. Hasn't made his start yet this season, hasn't made his debut, but he is about to go out on rehab. He had the labor surgery. How much did that hold him back last year? He was not good at all. Jose Cavaliero has been quite good, certainly good enough to hold the position. Is Anthony Volpe gonna have to earn that position back? How are they going to figure it out? Are they gonna need to see something from him in triple A. I don't know if he has options left. I can't remember. He seems like he just debuted yesterday, but he didn't. And then on top of that, George Lombard is right there and he is going to push for that job or third base at some point very soon, so we'll at least get a look at Volpi here. I think that he's going to start hit that rehab assignment. We don't know where yet. It'll start next week, which puts him on track for that first week of May, maybe even into April. They're twenty days for position players is the max. There are ways to extend it. You can stop it and start it again in the twenty day clock starts going. But I do think we'll be seeing Anthony Volpe on some level at some place with some stat cast data real soon, which is going to give us an idea on both his throwing and how it's going to affect his hitting. Edward, It's been a quick show, but good tons of information.
00:32:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's Master's week exactly right, and hopefully Scotty Scheffler can put it all together and put that bad Friday behind him, and then that matters to.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: We'll have to see if anybody can catch Rory McElroy or if he goes back. Luckily, no injuries to talk of on the golf front, so we'll sign off. Let everybody get back to golf or get back to baseball, and we'll see here next time on injury territory.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Master's Week. I'm back from New York City where I nearly froze to death and didn't get to see Juan Soda. I've got some news on him.
00:00:10
Speaker 2: What have you got, Edward, Why Zack Wheeler's rehab might be cause for major concern.
00:00:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not looking good. What is looking good is injury Territory. Welcome back to injury Territory. Easy for me to say, I'm Will Carol. That's Edward e Gross and we've got a ton of injuries to go over. Edward has some great stuff, as he said on Zach Wheeler, might not be so great stuff if you're a Zach Wheeler or a Phillies fan. That's coming in the second segment. But right now, let's get to a bunch a bunch of injuries, and we'll start off with one that was really scary, and that was Parker Meadows. I absolutely will not show you that collision. It was brutal. We don't see these very often, and that's one of the things that I think we need to go over, is that these are so uncommon but can be so devastating. I immediately thought back, especially since I had just been to a Mets game, that devastating collision between I can't remember who the other one was. It was Mike Cameron and he just I'm thinking it's Eric Young. But it's one of those things I should probably have looked up. But anytime you have two guys running high speed and you have a potential head injury.
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Speaker 2: And b was it Carlos Beltron.
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Speaker 1: It might have been. It might have been. I mean, two great players, but anytime you have two players there might be a head injury. There's obviously almost always a head injury of some sort of used to concussion, and there's also the worry of spinal injuries. You see guys snap back, you wonder how they land. It's often difficult to see. It's a really awkward motion. One of the things. It becomes almost like a football play where who absorbed the most energy and where did it focus? And when it hits head to head that's often the worst because it's such a small area, it's not built for that. There's obviously no protection. A cap like these isn't going to give you a whole lot of cushion, and they don't pull up. I think this is the one thing that most people don't understand football players are bracing for it, they're used to it, if that can be a thing. But for baseball players, for whatever reason, something has gone wrong too. Guys. This is the other part that's key is the angle. If you think back, if you remember that camera, I don't look it up, probably on YouTube, the camera and whoever it was, I can't think you're right. With Beltran, they were nearly perpendicular. They were coming in on the ball. With Meadows, it was a little bit angular where you're not getting exactly, you know, head to head. It was more of a glancing blow. You see this in car crashes. You know it's not often head on. That's always bad. But if you get these glancing blows, which angle, where does the energy go? For Meadows? If I can go back to this picture here real quick, you'll see super quick response. They were out there. The tigers were out there quickly. You can see the twins immediately went into their planned mode. Their athletic trainers were out there. They had emt out there with the golf cart and the stretcher, which wasn't necessary. Meadows was conscious, He exhibited no signs of spinal injury. He is going to be out for a little while. We'll see exactly how long that is, but it's definitely one that more shocked the team. There is news that he broke his arm now that so that's obviously going to keep him out. So it's one of the ones where he and Riley Green both with some really bad injuries. So a lot of people will wonder, and this actually came up at the Mets game, why don't they just yell I got it? And they do, But in people don't think about the fact that it's a loud crowd. Often you know, the crack of the bat, here's going to be a play, it's going to be exciting. Are they going to make it? Then they see two guys going toward each other? Do you hear it? Sometimes yes? Sometimes no? Is it as simple as that, you know the whole I got it, you'll let tango. I mean, there wasn't a language barrier between Meadows and Green, so I think it's just one of those really uncommon, unfortunate circumstances that you can't really plan for. Especially these two have played together a lot, so I don't think it's unfamiliarity. I think it's both of them thought they could get it. Curious, you know, I haven't looked at it, but statcast, we have all this data about how much range these guys have and from a certain position, how much there's probably a calculable collision risk for each of these plays, and maybe a player can be made aware of that. I don't know, Curious, but with Meadows, he's gonna be out a while. Green was luckily okay in that collision. But I do want to highlight the way that both medical staffs for the Tigers and the Twins dealt with that. It's one of those things you hope you never have to do, but when you see just how well it's handled, I think they deserve a lot more credit than they often get. Let's move on, I go ahead.
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Speaker 2: Well, if I'm a real fast, I'm glad you brought up the idea of like a car crash, because all of that is because it's unexpected, right, and especially if you played with someone for an extended period of time, you're probably even likelier to believe that everything is going to be as routine as it can be.
00:06:41
Speaker 1: Either it's a catch not whatever.
00:06:43
Speaker 2: And that's a big part of this. Like, if you're working with someone you really haven't all that often with then yes, you might be a little bit more hesitant, or you know, maybe you're a little bit more risk averse all of that. But the other thing that I think is important in this equation, Will, is that we're dealing with speedsters here. We're dealing with some really fast outfielders, and that should not be lost in this conversation because if you are not bracing for it, and you're going as quickly as possible, then that's going to add an inherent amount of risk. And it's perhaps my way of complimenting Parker Meadows that he is as fast as he is, but also too, that is the danger when you can cover so much ground that maybe, yes, these are fluke injuries, but it is a little likelier to have happened.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, with you saying that, I'm curious, I know we have the data. I haven't seen. I don't even know if this is successful. How fast were they going? Did they pull up? We should be able to see that, and it's just one more intriguing thing, more miracle of stat cast. Okay, let's move on from Parker Meadows. It's a tough situation for him, but there's more It's a very tough situation down in Houston. They had already lost Hunter Brown, now Christian Hog another shoulder, so we'll have to see exactly where this goes. Christian Javier, this is tough. You can't it's tough to lose two pictures, but you can't lose two pictures your top two pitchers, and not just that, your top two pictures to functionally the same thing, both of these grade two shoulder strains. They're not saying which muscle with Brown. A source told me that it was in the rotator cuff complex, which is four muscles. Another one in there often gets included. But I'm very, very curious if this is the same thing, because that would be either a really curious cluster or something they're doing differently. You just don't see many that many shoulder strains because there's so much focus on it. Another one that Frank Joe doesn't get enough credit for is what's called the Throwers ten, which is something that every pitcher at every level should be doing, and it has reduced so many of those injuries. There are variations on it. There are obviously things that have changed in the last fifty years. People have made a lot of differences to it. I know Mike Reinold, formerly of the Cubs in Red Sox, now at Champion Sports Medicine, has his own version. I'm sure there's more out there. The bands. If people are using Alan Jagger's j bands or something like it, there's a million knockoffs of those. Drive Line has their own, but those throwers ten have really reduced it. But now two grade two strains likely at least in the same area, if not the same muscle, if not the same muscle complex. That's one where the astros, who often have treated themselves like the smartest people in the room, they need to take a look. You know, if you have one, you need to try to figure out why. If you have to, you better call you know, code read get everybody on this figure it out. I am very, very curious. I've been looking this week at what's changed down there. There was a year where the Yankees had just a ton of hamstring strains. What a change. New strength and conditioning guy. His team just hadn't adjusted well to his strength and conditioning program. They were doing more hamstring works. They were fatigued, didn't track that well with baseball activity. He was not a hardcore baseball guy. He was a more of an Olympic sport guy, if I remember correctly. So I'm very very curious what's changed down there, and that's something I'll be looking into for under the knife. Let's move on from that one and say, take a look at Zach Eflin, who is going to have have Tommy John surgery some I shouldn't say that, some form of elbow reconstruction. I think this is his first, not one hundred percent share of that. But he's out for the year. He'll likely be out until early next season. I'm curious to see whether or not we get you know, it sounds counterintuitive, but a resigning, you know, extension for him. He signed a one year, ten million dollars deal fairly low. I thought with the Orioles he would have passed physical. So this is a new, acute problem that's being fixed. But we often see those guys sign an extension because they're gonna be rehabbing this year and you're paying them anyway. If you extend them, often at the same or lower money with innings bonuses, then you get something out of them, and you know them they're at least comfortable with the rehab staff. So we'll see where this goes without Eflyn but out for the season, another tough one for the Orioles. Speaking of elbows and reconstructions, that's where Robert Stevenson is headed. And well, Robert Stevenson isn't you know, He's not a huge name. He's not going to devastate a struggling, weird, weirdly constructed angel's bullpen, which is already dealing with a number of injuries. He is an interesting case. And if you go back to the interview I did with doctor Jeffrey Dugas, one of the things we talked about is that the internal brace surgeries have a very very high rate of success. Now, Tommy John surgery itself very very high rate of success, which is why not many people mess with it, why they're reluctant to mess with the rehab. But for Stevenson, who did have an internal brace but also had a graft, so he basically had both, they put in a new ligament and they overlaid the suture tape. This is what you can see here. The suture tape is that thing that looks like a shoelace, the best description I have for it, and it goes over and connects to that graft, basically strengthening the area over it. Immediately, you know, the graft has to kind of work itself in. All that has to heal is the anchor. For that internal brace to be at full strength, ligament has to go through a whole process where it literally turns itself on a cellular level from a tendon in most cases to a ligament. It was hamstring tendon that we see more and more from doctor Job's original risk tendon. So in this case with Stevenson, he is headed now for his second elbow reconstruction in I think two years. But this implies a failure of the internal brace. Now I don't know, I don't have the details. Angel certainly aren't saying why did this happen? Did he just put too much loads? That would be an exceptional amount of load because that that suture tape, what the structure of the internal brace is exceptionally strong. Now do we have failures at the anchor? Yeah, those happen. Do we have just something weird happens and the graft itself fails. It's happened. It's unusual, but again it's overlaid by the suture tape. So I'm very, very curious about this. Where is what happened those space Again, we don't have the mechanism, we don't know where it broke. We know there was flexor ten in involvement because the Angels did say he's going to have elbow reconstruction with a flexor ten in repair. So we'll have to see. I hope we get some data on this. But this is notable, not only because Stevenson's been hurt, another injured player that the Angels brought in. They accepted that risk. That's not when they developed on their own. It's not something that just occurred. Stevenson was available because of his fragility. But it's very, very notable because this could be one of the first, if not the first, internal brace failures we have to see. And when I say failure, I just mean something broke. I'm not meaning it's a surgeon's fault. I'm saying Stevenson's fault and certainly not saying it's the angel's fault. Failure implies something broke, So I'm using in a very specific sense there. I don't want to make that clear so that the Angels don't yell at me, let's go quickly through two more Cole Reagan's got hit in the hand, got hit right in the pitching hand by a comebacker ninety miles an hour off the bat. I guess could have been worse, but it's a bad place to get hit. Hit him right basically in the thumb, and he said, you know it hurt. And then as he went on, his hand just went numb. You can't pitch with a numb hand. This isn't something serious so far. They x rayed it on the spot. Every stadium has an X ray. Every stadium now has a digital X ray, I learned this week. So that's something that happens near instantly. So I think that, you know, they we often see. We saw with Jackson Curio that you know they had done an X ray. The swelling had prevented them from seeing the formation of it. So sometimes these things do get delayed. But I don't think that's gonna be the case with Reagan's. It's just gonna be a question of when does his hand field good enough to go out there grip a baseball and rip it ninety five miles an hour and keeping him healthy absolutely key for the team. I can remember talking to Nick Kenney and saying, you gotta keep that guy healthy because I had him on a fantasy team, and he laughed and he goes, yeah, I think that's definitely what we want to do. Last one, Royce Lewis. Lewis obviously one of the most talented players in the league and also one of the most fragile. You know, they do so much up there. I think the world of Nick Paparresta and his staff. But this is called a left knee sprain, and as I've gone over here over and over, he sprained is a tear. So we don't know what ligament. He's had MCL problems in the past. He's obviously said ACL problems in the past. ACL would be stating here. We'll have to see first what ligament it is that's damaged. We'll have to see how severe that is. Hopefully not not something that's significant. We'd hate to lose him for a long period of time because he and Byron Buxton so talented but have had such trouble staying out there. Yeah, when we come back, let's go in more on what you were telling me, Edward about Zach Wheeler and his couple rehabs. Starts look really good at the start, but now there's some concern. We'll go over that when we come back on injury.
00:18:40
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00:19:42
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back to injury Territory. Will Carrol Edward E Gross here, And you know, one of the things that we definitely have to talk about is Zach Wheeler. Everything was going so well with that first start, second start, a little bit off. Third start. Now there's some can concern and it's specifically around the velocity. Tell us what you're seeing edwards for sure.
00:20:06
Speaker 2: So when we're talking about Zach Wheeler, we're thinking about four seen fastballs that are hovering around ninety six ninety eight miles per hour, which is pretty good stuff, especially for him in terms of the yeah, very good stuff in terms of his effectiveness, the movement, all of that good stuff. But what we're seeing over these last couple of rehab starts involve fastballs that are ninety three miles per hour. And it's not just losing three miles per hour that is significant here, But given where ninety six is in terms of the range of outcomes for pitchers versus ninety three, you're almost a completely different person. If that is what you're throwing. And it's important to kind of go over the data when we talk about what opposing hitters are able to do with ninety three mile per hour fastballs versus ninety six mile per hour fastballs. So say there, you go, look at that ask and you shall receive. So let's start at the bottom here at ninety six, the wOBA allowed waited on base average allowed is three to ten, which is pretty solid. With rate eighteen percent, hard hit rate thirty four percent. All of those are pretty solid numbers as far as you know what opposing hitters cannot do against ninety six mile per hour fastballs. But you go down to ninety three, wOBA goes up by forty five points. With goes down by ten percentage points, hard hit rate goes up by eight percentage points. These are all massive, massive changes when you drop from ninety six down to ninety three. So one of the things that I wanted to do was I wanted to look at where do we see other significant drops if we look at it in say three mile per hour bands or windows gaps, however you want to call it, and across the league, you subtract three miles per hour to a four seam fastball. It doesn't have the same devastation everywhere going from say the mid nineties to the low nineties. So let's say like ninety four to ninety one. Well, that ninety four is not going to be as effective anyway, and so when you get down to ninety one, basically, yeah, it's significant, but it's not necessarily near the devastation when you're losing about one to two percentage points off of with rate, small increase in wOBA, but it's specifically in Wheeler's neighborhood from ninety three to ninety six, or from ninety six down to ninety three, those three ticks, that's the forty five points of wOBA. That's the massive drop in with rate. That is a clear measurable difference. He is operating in a part of the velocity scale where every tick does significantly less damage to hitters than it would for a harder thrower. And we're talking about decisive bat missers going from ninety six to ninety eight to hitting ninety three, where hitters can play much more like ordinary heaters, they can see much more ordinary heaters, and the league data says that's one of the more expensive places on the spectrum to be giving back that kind of velocity will.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's exactly the thing you have to worry about with him, is you know, is this something that's just him getting used to it? Is this something that's going to be Is this just where he lives now? Is he just a little bit less? Is it going to come back in a couple starts. Is it going to come back next year? We still don't know. But there's some great comps out there. I mean, some of them goes way back. You know. You can take a look at someone like, you know, Josh Beckett, who was one of the all time thrastic outlets syndrome success stories. That's a that's a tom of Twister. Alex Cobb, now he had an extent. He's still I don't know if he's actually retired, but he did lose velocity. But that made him lean harder into being a split change guy and he became much more of a ground ball pitcher. He was one of the first guy that's really leaned into sequencing. So he's more of the you know, didn't get it all back, but got enough and made adjustments kind of guys. I think the modern example that we have to look at is Merril Kelly. And you know, I know he's having some injuries at the start of the season here, he's looked pretty good in rehab, should be back soon. But man, he's been maybe one of the underrated number two kind of pitchers around with him and Gallon, they've kind of been miscast as the ace level pitcher. But I don't think being a really good, really consistent number two one that brought back prospects that the Rangers brought in last year kind of as a rental boomerangked back to the d Bacs. But that's the kind of player you need to have around. And for Wheeler, I think he has to be looking at. I mean, Wheeler is a better pitcher overall than Kelly. Don't get me wrong. I think even Merrill Kelly would agree with that. But which path is it going to be? Which one is going to come back? I mean, we do have some cases. You have to look at Matt Harvey who had a ton of other problem. You look at Stephen Strasbourg in case it'll be interesting to see exactly where this goes. But you highlighted with all those numbers exactly why the velocity is so important and if you're not up at the top, and also why we're looking for guys who live at the top. Like, I don't know if you saw the we didn't talk about this one. Sorry to go off book, but seth Rnandez the single a pitcher. We saw him shocking Max Clark in the spring breakout. But single a pitcher for the Pirates. Imagine that throwing one hundred and one miles an hour. I think he's gone fifteen innings like one run, just tons of strikeouts, obviously because he's pitching his single eye. And I look at this as why are all the scouts looking for velocity? Because A it's easy to see and it succeeds. Why do we see so many arms that go out there. I was at the Mets game on Wednesday and boom, here's a reliever for the Diamondbacks. I forget who it was, but I was like, I don't think I've ever heard of this guy. I don't know anything about him. I bet he's gonna throw ninety six pop first pitch, fourteen fastball, ninety six on the corner. And I was like, see this is every guy now, every single unknown reliever throws ninety six. And when I was growing up, if somebody threw ninety six and they weren't named Nolan Ryan, you learned who they were, you started buying rookie cards, you got excited about it. Now it's random Wednesday reliever for the Diamondbacks. So with Hernandez, I'm very curious about this one because as a prospect, what does he need to learn? They're gonna say, oh, he needs a season, Oh he needs secondary pitches. And I realized pitchers have more pitchers pitches than anybody today. And he's young, but my god, they've got Skeens. They're not gonna have Skiens forever. Even with the signing a Connor Griffin to the all time record. This is a team that's on the up with a window. They've got Chandler, they've got Skeens, they'll get Jones back. Why not push a kid like this? Obviously, Griffin came through the system very very quickly. Obviously schemes came through, but he was kind of fully formed at that. But when Seth Hernandez is pumping like this, please tell me what he's going to learn against these single A hitters.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: That's fair and I think specifically when we're talking about like Wheeler here, you know someone who's thirty five years of age, six different pitch types for him. The question then is, Okay, you lose three miles per hour and you're down to a ninety three inventory. Then are you going to go to your other pitchers a great deal more. Are you going to emphasize sequencing a little bit more? Or are you at a certain stage in your career where it's what you see is what you get. And now what we're seeing is significantly less than what we saw before, which was greatness.
00:28:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I think all those guys had to adjust. Either you get it back or you have to adjust. I think the all time great for that was Roger Clemens. You know, he learned a new pitch when he left Boston and basically that carried him through the rest of his career. You know, we should we should all be so lucky to have one great pitch. He also threw really hard. Let's burn through some good news. We don't often get good news here, but I've got three guys who are coming back, and I'm excited about this now. I didn't get to see Juan Soto in New York because he's got the calf strain. But all indications are that he didn't really need to go on the IL, but it made sense they were gonna hold him out. It was freaking freezing in New York this week. You know, it was like forty at game time. It was a little windy. The minute the the uh shade came over the stadium, it was second jacket time. It was bundle up, think about heading back to the club time. So it was one of those days where you would not have played him. I don't know if he would have played if it was a standard day without an injury. But the calf is doing fine. It's a fairly insignificant strain. It's a mild strain. So is he going to be out significantly past the minimum? I don't think so. Is he going to need a rehab start, I don't think so. So it's very good news for the Mets. The faster they can get one Soto back, the better. Jacob de Gram he felt a pop in his knee. They had the MRI. They say no structural damage. This is one of those statements that I hate because, Okay, you're telling me what it's not We can argue about the definition of structure, but what was it? There are a lot of things. I went over this and under the knife on Thursday. It's often a synovial plika. It can be just something moving. The kneecap can pop a little out of place and go right back in. That's worrisome, but not problematic, especially if he remains asymptomatic and free. So de Gram he's had a couple starts, and he's had a couple of problems. He had that neck issue that vanished. We hope. He's had this knee issue that really isn't so it's a maintenance issue. It's something they're gonna have to keep him ready to go and healthy. Last one for today is Andrew Volpi. Hasn't made his start yet this season, hasn't made his debut, but he is about to go out on rehab. He had the labor surgery. How much did that hold him back last year? He was not good at all. Jose Cavaliero has been quite good, certainly good enough to hold the position. Is Anthony Volpe gonna have to earn that position back? How are they going to figure it out? Are they gonna need to see something from him in triple A. I don't know if he has options left. I can't remember. He seems like he just debuted yesterday, but he didn't. And then on top of that, George Lombard is right there and he is going to push for that job or third base at some point very soon, so we'll at least get a look at Volpi here. I think that he's going to start hit that rehab assignment. We don't know where yet. It'll start next week, which puts him on track for that first week of May, maybe even into April. They're twenty days for position players is the max. There are ways to extend it. You can stop it and start it again in the twenty day clock starts going. But I do think we'll be seeing Anthony Volpe on some level at some place with some stat cast data real soon, which is going to give us an idea on both his throwing and how it's going to affect his hitting. Edward, It's been a quick show, but good tons of information.
00:32:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's Master's week exactly right, and hopefully Scotty Scheffler can put it all together and put that bad Friday behind him, and then that matters to.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: We'll have to see if anybody can catch Rory McElroy or if he goes back. Luckily, no injuries to talk of on the golf front, so we'll sign off. Let everybody get back to golf or get back to baseball, and we'll see here next time on injury territory.
