The Yankees announced tonight that they have placed right-hander Masahiro Tanaka on the disabled list after an MRI revealed a “mild right forearm strain” and tendinitis in his right wrist. Jack Curry of the YES Network tweets that GM Brian Cashman told reporters that Tanaka will, conservatively, be sidelined for at least a month (Twitter link). For the time being, Tanaka will be shut down from throwing for the next seven to 10 days.
Tanaka tells reporters, including MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch (Twitter link), that “nothing really big came up from the MRI,” and he feels he can come back strong. However, while there’s been nothing to suggest that he has further torn his ulnar collateral ligament, forearm strains are indeed often a precursor to Tommy John surgery.
Tanaka was sidelined from July 8 through Sept. 21 last season due to a small tear in the UCL of his right elbow. However, he was able to return from the injury without undergoing Tommy John. While his final outing of the season was one he’d like to forget — seven runs in 1 2/3 innings — Tanaka has looked generally excellent to begin the 2015 season, reeling off 22 1/3 innings of a 3.22 ERA with a 24-to-7 K/BB ratio.
The Yankees will once again hope that Tanaka can dodge the Tommy John bullet, but a significant injury to their ace would again overexpose an already thin rotation. Nathan Eovaldi and CC Sabathia have both struggled to varying extents, while Ivan Nova is recovering from his own Tommy John, and Chris Capuano has yet to take the hill after opening the season on the DL.
As it stands, Sabathia, Eovaldi, Michael Pineda and Adam Warren will continue to round out the rotation, as Capuano inches closer to what the team hopes will be a May return. However, it’s not difficult to envision a long-term injury to Tanaka prompting the Yankees to seek a replacement from outside the organization to help steady their rotation in what looks to be a highly competitive American League East.
“Strain”
I guarantee that news will come out within the next few weeks that he needs Tommy John surgery. They should have gotten it over with last year
As if the writing wasn’t all over the wall for this last summer, but the NY front office wanted to see their shiny new toy at the start of the 2015 season at any cost and they did.. All of 4 times.. Now they in all likelihood won’t see him again until the AS break of 2016. Smooth move.
Guy, the four top specialists in the country all advised that surgery was not necessary and that he should rehab. You’re smarter than them? Where did you get your medical degree? How many times does this need to be said?
I could quote several stories out there.. But this one here sums it up the best from Cashman’s own lips and NJ,com:
“But the Yankees want to avoid that, considering it would likely sideline their $175-million investment for a year or more”
Last July 13 to be exact.
I highly doubt the financial implications of one season trumped the advise of four leading experts in a decision that has such a long term investment behind it as this one.
Not so sure. Tnink myself when a team goes out and gives these massive deals for players and they get serious injuries right away that they expect them to attempt to initially play through them for fan impact reasons and it generally doesn’t turn out well. Carl Crawford is another example, John Lackey also, tho he kept his UCL injury to himself.
When they are inured, they are not performing as well as they could, thereby “robbing” the fans of the best performance they can be. I did think last summer he should have had the surgery and see the stories still. Some did recommend the surgery. NY had a choice. He gets it and all should be well.
Dicey situation dealing with fans, especially a relatively new player.
Some as in the fans and the media who know next to nothing, or some orthopedic surgeons? Just curious.
Im sure Schilling and Pedro can diagnose the results of an MRI scan.
Good point. Had forgotten both of them earlier this season had noticed issues with his altered delivery.
I’m rather confident that the information they got from these experts was top notch, and the fact that they got multiple opinions saying the same thing reassures me. While the situation would have been dicey had they been told to get the surgery,I really think Cashman and the FO have a greater goal than getting one good season out of the guy and pushing it until later for immediate satisfaction with all the $ going into him. TJ is a very volatile procedure that’s both invasive and gives no guarantee of success,and should be a worst case scenario option, not one to get over with.
Why is Cashman talking in the third person? “But the Yankees want to avoid that?” Or WE want to avoid that. It doesn’t sound like something Cashman said, rather more like something a reporter editorialized.
Either way, it doesn’t really matter. But just saying, you’re probably wrong.
We can’t link entire articles here as you know ECB. Did the best could posting date and the newspaper/online article it came from.
Linking articles is something wish would change.. In early day’s at MLBTR Tim allowed it…
Its not the Elbow man relax
The forearm strain usually leads to the elbow, which is TJ. That’s what happened to Tyler Skaggs last year with the Angels.
Matt Cain is recovering well from a forearm strain which had him sidelined to start the season. No TJS (yet) for him
Again, best thing to do…..is listen to the doctors. No elbow/UCL damage as of now.
It’s cascade injuries that would be the concern; because the elbow isn’t 100%, Tanaka is probably pitching a bit differently, which is going to cause strain on other parts of his arm. It’s pretty common to see players get hurt favoring an injured part of the body.
Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler’s pain started with forearm strain…. Then they got Tommy John. I have a feeling Cole Hamels will be a Yankee soon
It’s his wrist, not his elbow.
You should be ashamed of yourself. No matter what team the guy pitches for, being happy a player is hurt is horrible.
Well said.
Agreed–About as tasteless a post as possible. You never root for or exult in a player’s injury.
That comment will be gone soon I’m sure.
There are allot of classless yo yo’s out there.
While I’m glad this is a minor thing, it’s not exactly reassuring Cashman has been flip-floppy in his answering on it’s possible implications in regards to it being a TJ pre-cursor. That being said, people who blindly say he should have just got the TJ in the first place to get it over with obviously don’t understand the nature of the surgery and the expertise the organization went to for advise. He’s been healthy this season so far, he wouldn’t be throwing so much breaking stuff if he wasn’t, so hopefully this is just an isolated injury.
I think they’ll be fine if he misses just a month. Hopefully it’s nothing more than that and he doesn’t have another DL stint this season.
“He should have had the surgery last year!!!”
Show me your medical degrees and licenses that show you are an orthopedic surgeon, and I’m sure Dr James Andrews will be informed he had no idea what he was talking about or doing
He was never healthy. Yanks were fooling themselves.
Says the Braves fan. How many injuries has your team had this year? Have they fooled themselves too?
Showboating a fan over his team’s injuries is classless, dude.
What’s classless about what I said? For him to say the Yankees were foolish is ironic being that his team has had many injuries too for pitchers. He might as well call the Braves foolish
You can’t predict injuries and surgeons know more about torn ligaments than anybody. All the Yankees did was listen to world class surgeons, so what is foolish about that?
What does the Braves’ injuries this year have to do with the way the Yankees handled Tanaka’s arm the past 12 months, though?
It doesn’t. But at the same time I can post in the Crawford thread and say the Red Sox and/or Dodgers were foolish to pay him all that $, and I’m sure a Red Sox/Dodger fan would argue back saying the Yankees were foolish for giving A-Rod, Beltran, etc all that money, and I wouldn’t disagree at all
It’s the pot calling the kettle black is all it is.
Well, speaking about last year with the Medlen/Beachy fiasco, yes, that was colossally stupid to depend on Beachy’s tissue paper elbow to be a starter when he’d barely pitched at all the previous year. Chill out.
I wonder if the Carl Pavano Memorial MRI Tube is going to be renamed for Tanaka..
Carl Pavano’s dead?
I guess you have never heard the story of how the tube was named. I would recommend doing an internet search.
These Yankees fans make me chuckle. No, these other commenters aren’t surgeons (they may very well might be) however we’ve all heard the same song and dance from every TJ victim. It all starts with the forearm stiffness. Don’t be bitter just because Tanaka’s arm is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. It’s not just the commenters saying it, but the announcers and analysts across the MLB.
Speaking from people that I’ve talked to on the matter, nobody is mad that Tanaka has had health issues, you can’t predict that in baseball today. People become bitter, however, when people with less knowledge on the matter, be it color commentators, journalists, or general commentators, feel they know more than the experts about his condition and hang this cloud of negativity over his head.
It’s the fact that everyone is in denial that chances are Tanaka will need TJ. It really is only a matter of time. The Yankee fans just can’t accept it. When Harvey got his surgery I was happy that they handled it right away and got him extra time to get him where he is now. I’m also thankful they did the same with Wheeler. It’s time to just accept that Tanaka needs his arm repaired by going under the knife.
While it’s a likelihood, it’s not an immediate certainty, and you can’t blame fans of their team and of the pitcher for looking for that ray of hope in a bad scenario, and being aggravated by people trying to take that ray away just to have something to talk about. There is no indication yet that he definitely needs the surgery now, and there wasn’t when he was diagnosed,despite this setback. Like I’ve said, the experts they’ve consulted are world class, so it’s hard to argue they made the wrong call. If you think getting TJ is light hearted and an easy decision, look at the actual dirty work of how the procedure is done and the stories of failed results after the procedures.
Harvey got surgery because doctors suggested it.
Wheeler got surgery because doctors suggested it.
Nova got surgery because doctors suggested it.
Tanaka rehabbed because doctors suggested it.
See a pattern?
If Tanaka got the surgery last year he would’ve never had these reoccurring problems.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he would have had more severe problems, post surgery. We don’t know. All we know is that the doctors said surgery was not needed.
They said it’s not needed but look how it turned out. Lost velocity, a notch down from dominance, and now comes the arm trouble.
A notch down in dominance based off of 4 starts, and for the most part he’s looked excellent? Also, the velocity dip has been highly overblown, if anything it’s helped him be a better pitcher using all of his stuff than power thrower,having to reach back to get the extra MPH on the FB to get guys out, which has better long term implications for him.
You do know he averaged around 91-92 mph last season right
” If Tanaka got the surgery last year he would’ve never had these reoccurring problems.”
This couldn’t be any further from the truth
1 – We won’t know it until if/when it happens
2 – As has been said today and in the past, many pitchers have tried to come back from TJS and have had No success at all.
Except Harvey needed it because his was fully torn. Tanaka had a partial tear. You are comparing apples and oranges there.
Idk Harvey was hitting 98 mph on the gun last Saturday.I think the key to it is give the guy a year and a couple months off if you can with TJS and age plays a factor. Wainwright came back from it great and personally I think Tanaka could as well because he is a top talent and has his whole prime ahead of him. This may sound messed up but if he will eventually have TJS I wish he had a full tear last year so he can get back on the field 100% quicker as now the Yanks have wasted almost a whole season recovery. I hope he doesn’t need TJS but it seems like he will at some point. I love his competitor nature and hope to see him on the field some point this season. Let’s go Rangers we want the Cup.
Yes he may need TJS eventually. But he will get it when he Needs it. I’m not sure if you are aware or not, but there have been pitchers who got TJS and never returned to form after it, so getting TJS is a risk as well. Obviously the success/fail ratio isn’t 50/50, but the risk is still there and if a Professional Surgeon said rehab is the best thing for him (referring to last year here of course), then rehab was the right thing to do
Yes, let’s go Rangers!
yes because announcers and analysts know more than orthopedic surgeons.
Clearly, there’s nothing wrong with Tanaka.
no one said that. But the idea that the Yankees were wrong about following the advise of orthopedic surgeons is ridiculous. Surgery is always the last option. There are plenty of guys that have never fully recovered from it.
It’s not so much that surgery is the last option, it’s that surgery is inevitable. That partial tear isn’t going to heal or get better without the surgery. Pitching through it will just continue to make it worse. The decision is, how long do you try to keep putting the surgery off before you can no longer put it off. At some point, it will happen.
To say the Yankees were right for postponing the inevitable is debatable. I think it would have been wiser to get it out of the way earlier and get past it, rather than this pitch for a month/rest for a month plan they seem to be going for.
TJS doesn’t guarantee anything though. Plenty of pitchers have gotten it and never returned to form. David Cone himself said you should run away from it, not to it
Why don’t you explain your medical expertise to 4 of the top surgeons in the country.
LOL! I could cut my finger off and a doctor would tell me that I wouldn’t necessarily NEED surgery. I could just do my job with 9 fingers instead. Doesn’t mean it would be a smart decision. Yet all you seem to hear is what you want to hear – and coming from a doctor makes it extra special important.
This discussion requires a small amount of common sense and rational thought, not a medical degree.
LOL. Because cutting your finger is the same as tearing a ligament.
“This discussion requires a small amount of common sense and rational thought, not a medical degree.”
Paging Dr. Andrews, there’s a Todd Smith here. He would like to speak with you about your procedures.
Hey, maybe you’re right. Maybe Tanaka doesn’t need surgery on his arm and the partial tear in his UCL will magically heal itself and my finger will magically grow back. Then you can run to the Internet as fast as you can, tell all the random internet strangers that you were right and you knew it all along and virtually beat your chest. It will be a glorious moment.
…but instead, Tanaka just went on the DL indefinitely with pain and soreness in the same arm that you don’t think needs to be fixed.
Except I never said any of that. Thanks. But you just refuse to listen to facts (and your doctors too).
Let me guess, announcers and analysts may very well be surgeons too, right?
You make us chuckle too.
I think the guys who lived through it all know a thing or two.
Even I know “a thing or two” but that doesn’t mean they should heed my advice. The doctors go through years and years of schooling for a reason. They get paid top dollar for a reason.
Not to mention medicine has evolved more than they can imagine since their playing days. And yet, you think we should listen to them over the experts.
Brilliant.
First of all when did any doctor say he wasn’t hurt? They’re the ones who said he should go for an MRI. They’re the ones who found the tear in the UCL. I don’t understand how these guys saying Tanaka will be injured is wrong. They’ve been on the dot so far.
No. First of all, when is anyone talking about being hurt?
Tanaka has a partial tear in the UCL. It is not a full tear which requires surgery. You don’t even know the facts.
Yes, doctors said go for an MRI, doctors said he has a partial tear in the UCL, doctors said he doesn’t need the surgery. Why do you only believe the doctors up until a certain point?
The facts are that he has a tear in the UCL. Whether it be partial, full, 1/4, 1/16 whatever. How long do you think a guy can go around hurling his arm around in an unnatural motion with part of it’s structure being loose? I feel bad for any guy who gets this injury, I just think it’d be smarter to accept it sooner and get it done. The reoccurring problems just show that it’s going to be an issue unless it’s approached differently.
Do you think that partial tear is going to just heal itself and go away without surgery?
I think the guys who perform surgery and discover tears know a thing or two too, maybe more.
And there have been guys who have lived through it and came back strong As Well As guys who couldn’t return to form at all. TJS is no guarantee to make a pitcher return to form.
That’s why when there’s a medical emergency, people often yell out:
“Is there a doctor, or baseball announcer/analyst, in the house?”
If he does indeed get TJ. 2015 and 2016 are gone. He pitched half of 2014 and should pitch all of 2017. If he opts out after 2017… that’s $100M+ for 40-50 starts. Yikes.
Hard to understand some people’s reasoning, the doctors said he shouldn’t get surgery so he didn’t get surgery. The same case is applied here and until it is recommended that he should get TJS than I’m not sure what the argument is about.
If he won’t get surgery then he’ll be in and out of the DL for the rest of his Yankee career.
Teams and players are always so secretive and evasive about injuries we as fans have no choice but to try and read between the lines, Given his history of UCL issues, and the vague nature of his symptoms coupled with the rather conservative time table for his return, this makes me think the Yankees are at least worried it might be the UCL. MRI’s miss about 40% of tears, so one can’t say the MRI results are conclusive (it also did not pick up the tendonitis in the wrist so it may be referred pain that radiates from the elbow).
I do think if it turns out to be a UCL issue they won’t try conservative treatment again. This was the right call to not do TJS last year, but if its still not resolved they should get it done.
Tanaka was an opt out that can be exercised after the 2017 season. For him to be fully healthy in 2017, which is a defacto contract year, he would need to have TJS this year, or not at all. Not sure how much this will factor into Tanakas decision, and it is his decision.
Never gonna be healthy
I knew the Yankees were stupid to not have him get TJ surgery last summer… He’d be back at the end of this year if he had. Now, they will wait a month, find out he needs the surgery and he will miss all this year and most of next year…
Listening to your doctor is stupid?
If the Yankees had, say, a couple front rotation starters, a few legit mid rotation guys, and a few pitching prospects and depth arms vying for 4th and 5th spots last year, I wonder if they would have gone the same route w Tanaka?
Not sure about what they would have done, but just suggesting that context creates a kind of pressure. And of all teams, the Yankees can make doctors lean a certain way if it’s a judgment call.
But he went to Four doctors. Not just one. And all four recommended rehab.
Take Edwin Jackson. Please.
This sounds eerily similar to exactly what happened with our much heralded prospect, Dylan Bundy.
Not suggesting Tanaka is a prospect at all. Just mentioning that it was a series of downplayed injuries in the news, which then became a forearm strain, which eventually became a UCL tear leading to TJ. I feel like, when it comes to Ace or top prospect pitchers, you can’t fully trust what’s literally stated publicly. There’s just constant spin going on, to manage PR panic, until it’s just completely undeniable.