MAY 11: Smyly underwent his second MRI yesterday in order to get a second opinion on his injured shoulder, writes Roger Mooney of the Tampa Tribune. Team officials stressed yesterday that no decision has been made in regards to surgery.
MAY 9: Rays starter Drew Smyly has a labrum tear and will probably require season-ending surgery, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports. Topkin also notes it’s possible the Rays could try to address the injury through rehab before resorting to surgery. Smyly will have an MRI on Monday. The Rays had already placed him on the disabled list on Friday with shoulder tightness. Erasmo Ramirez will likely take Smyly’s spot in the rotation.
Losing Smyly would be another wound for a Rays rotation that has also lost Alex Cobb and Burch Smith to Tommy John surgery. The team is also still waiting on the return of Matt Moore, who had Tommy John surgery last year.
Smyly, 25, was one of the keys to the Rays’ end of last summer’s David Price trade. He was off to a good start this season, posting a 2.70 ERA with 11.3 K/9 and 1.6 BB/9 in 16 1/3 innings. He also pitched very well in down the stretch for the Rays in 2014, posting a 1.70 ERA while striking out four times as many batters as he walked.
I hate this. It will be amazing if the Rays finish this season good considering all the injuries to the pitching staff. Hopefully some guys will step up.
No omg Cobb and now smyly.
As a Red Sox fan it amazes me how the Rays still have a winning record even though they were expected to be the worst team in the AL EAST
because we have a good balanced team, and our hitting is better then last year
Their offense still isn’t good though. Fewest runs scored in ALE and only the Angels, White Sox and Mariners have scored fewer runs per game in the AL. I suppose you can say it’s better than last year since they were the worst in the AL, but it’s like going from an F to a D. Even Sir Charles would say Turrrrrible.
But as a team, ya gotta tip your cap to them thusfar. They’ve done well, but it’s because of pitching.
not reallly i think we went from an F to a C
A C would be average or middle of the pack, which isn’t where they rank. But we got awhile to go and good luck and hopefully they can still compete with the injuries.
Using common statistics to try to explain how a team is playing on the field is a nice exercise, but it’s almost always wrong.
Cash has those players doing fundamental baseball. Making plays on D. Moving runners around the bases when making outs – to start.
The teams that emphasize strong fundamental baseball always outperform the PERCOTA projections.
Because even with all these pitching injuries they still have a much better staff than the Red Sox. With their payroll, I could not believe the Red Sox went into this year with that starting staff. BTW, only a few experts predicted the Rays to be bad.
Projections picked them to be the second worse team in the East, right ahead of the Orioles.
Whose projections? I never saw a projection that featured last years division winner in last place. That’s like expecting last years cellar dweller to end up in first. Could happen, but the odds are not likely, and you look foolish making that prediction.
System projections, such as the one used at FanGraphs, projected them to finish in 4th place in the division. Do you think I make this stuff up? Seriously….
4th isn’t last. That’s only one projection. You mentioned multiple sources.
I didn’t say last. I said “second last”, or fourth place.
Yet they predicted the Red Sox… last year’s last place team to win the division. I laughed at that, and I still do.
As I noted above……
The statistical projections are almost always wrong. They never factor in teams that play, or don’t play, good fundamental baseball. And they almost always overestimate the teams that put a big emphasis on statistics, and almost always underestimate teams that use statistics but are not driven by them.
I am aware. I’d rather use projection systems over people’s opinion though. Of course there will always be discrepancy. Personally, I feel as though the Rays’ season can go either way. I’m not a fan of their offence, and losing both Smyly and Cobb is a big blow to their team. It all will depend on how Moore can perform when he gets back, and whether or not their offence is good enough to get the job done. Of course, every team in the AL East has an issue or two that will determine how their season turns out.
There’s no statistical projection system that would predict season-ending injuries to key players, which at least happens every year a few times to every rotation. Since health often ends up deciding so much of these projections, which rely on objective numbers in a vacuum, they are often wrong.
Actually, if you go back for many years, the major projection systems (ZiPs, Steamer and PECOTA) are really accurate. Remarkably so, actually, both for teams and individual players. You can look it up. There is an occasional outlier but the systems are really good. in 2014, for example, ZiPs got 5 out of the 6 division winners and did it within 5 wins for each (missed on Baltimore).
I saw one projection that had them winning the AL east.
I believe the Pecota projection had them winning the East, but most had them 4th.
Depends on where you looked. The Rays had improved their offense and were the only team in the division with solid starting pitching, going into the season. I saw quite a few predictions that had the Rays contending.
OK, the season-ending pitcher injuries are officially getting ridiculous now.
Woah. Bad news for such a great young arm and the Rays.
The bigger problem is you almost prefer it to be TJ than a labrum tear. Labrums could end up being career-enders, and/or really sap velocity or stuff if they do come back. I hope Smyly really hits a ton of good luck.
It is a very complicated joint, so you can’t really make a blanket statement about severity without a lot more information, but yeah you’d definitely prefer the much easier elbow joint to be an issue.
Yes, it’s a complicated joint and not all labrum tears are alike. I don’t mean to wish bad of Smyly at all. I actually love his arm and talent.
But the fundamental point w all labrum tears is that we don’t really have very consistent or reliable ways of repairing and fixing that particular piece of soft tissue. Most recommendations revolve around increasing blood flow to the area to help healing, which it notoriously lacks. I had my labrum torn before, and it’s never exactly the same.
I tore mine before also. Did the surgery, and rehabbed for about 3 1/2 months and was fine. In total it took about 9-12 months to really feel good but every now and then it acts up. Such an awful injury though, recovery times are all over the place. Could very well be something he never comes back from.
Were you a professional pitcher, though? I assume a labrum tear for somebody who doesn’t throw thousands of pitches a year is a different kind of rehab. It certainly seems like the kind of injury that ends a pitcher’s career – Mark Prior is an example that comes immediately to mind. For whatever reason medical science is much better with elbows than with shoulders.
Mark Prior was definitely flawed physiologically.
He was also worked like a pack mule down the stretch in 2003, averaging 134 pitches per start as the Cubs tried to win the division.
Dusty Baker is legendary….but Prior should never have been taken so high…not with what we now know about his body. He worked hard in college too.
Rob Nen was a elite closer type who I believe suffered a labrum tear, got it repaired, and returned to pitch ok for a spell. Unfortunately he soon retired because he was pitching thru massive pain each outing.
blake snell hopefully will be called up by all-star break maybe pitching really good this year
I do believe the last prominent Rays pitcher to have serious shoulder issues was Jeff Niemann, and he hasn’t thrown a professional pitch at any level in 3 years.. I really hope this turns out differently.
Rice is notorious for abusing their pitchers – Niemann, Humber and Townsend never recovered from their overuse in college.
Rice also gets pitchers who habe thrown a lot as Texas youth. I believe so many of these injuries and Tommy Johns can be traced back to youth and high school ball.
Probably true too – didn’t Kerry Wood start both ends of a high school doubleheader and throw over 200 pitches about a week before he was drafted? Never mind, I looked it up; Wood threw 175 pitches in a high school doubleheader two days before the draft. That’s unconscionable. Dylan Bundy threw 188 pitches in a doubleheader his senior year also. That ended well for him.
I’m not sure, but that happening isn’t a stretch. I do believe that the ever decreasing age that competitive baseball starts with kids is leading to earlier arm trouble. Youth often have no off season either. It’s strange, because pitchers used to go 300 innings and rack up CG’s. But we also don’t hear of the arm blow outs from then either, lack of media then I,suppose. Arms now are fine tuned like race cars…but more goes wrong.
I’m not sure, but some serious reassessment needs to happen in our youth baseball programs.
My opinion is that in part kids don’t build up arm strength naturally. They play too many official games. I rarely see a wiffle ball game going on. Its a different society now and producing different results. We’re seeing arm injuries that used to happen at 30_happen at 20 now.
Pitchers used to throw 300 innings but they didn’t have 98 MPH fastballs; look at video of Christy Mathewson or Walter Johnson – there’s no way they were generating velocity with those windups. Also, the home run changed things significantly; once a pitcher could give up a run at any moment he had to bear down all the time and throw his best stuff. Pitchers in the deadball era rarely had to work their hardest all the time, and even in the ’50s and ’60s most teams had lots of non-threats in their lineups, the light-hitting shortstops and pitchers and catchers that a pitcher could ease up on when pitching. Those dead lineup spots are less frequent now.
Japanese high school baseball, though, is the worst; Daisuke Matsuzaka once threw 250 pitches in a high school tournament game;; then he relieved the next day. Every Japanes pitcher who makes the majors gets injured. American high schools are at least a little more cognizant of pitch counts, but the insistence on high velocity and throwing breaking pitches at too young an age is probably a little to blame for the rash of injuries.
I believe you’re probably wrong on Walter Johnson. There’s a reason they called him the Big Train. He likely got it up there in the 100 mph range..just given reports from reliable sources.
Sure there were less threats in the 60’s lineups…but fewer teams as well. No doubt the game has changed. Its less natural than it once was.
Fact is…any time the arm goes above 45° arm problems will happen… Its an unnatural slot.
Watch Johnson’s delivery sometime. No way he was throwing 100 MPH sidearm with no windup. There are videos on Youtube, I believe. He doesn’t use his lower body at all when he pitches.
Maybe the most natural pitching motion of any. I’ve researched Johnson. It was a day when guys ran it up there into the 90’s….and he was clearly a notch above that velocity wise. Ty Cobb was not given to complimenting pitchers and he raved at Johnson’s fastball. He basically stated the case….He would see guys who were likely throwing into the 90’s….but Johnson had more on it than that….I’m just saying he was separated from the 90-93 guys….likely 97-100 regularly WITH that whip. He threw a lot….just an astronomical amount.
I truly doubt it. It just doesn’t work from any biomechanical analysis. We have no way to prove any of this, of course, so it’s just conjecture, but every other athletic endeavor has improved dramatically since the 1920s (track running, swimming, etc) and it seems a stretch to argue baseball players haven’t also improved also. I don’t doubt Johnson threw “hard” for his era, but generating 100 MPH without using his lower half at all seems completely impossible. Johnson also struck out 5 batters/9 innings in his career; I would assume if he was really throwing 100 MPH, especially in the deadball era, his k rate would be a lot higher than that.
His K rate would be offset by a game that was built on simple contact and not power hitting. Poor record keeping not withstanding.
Also, any video of Johnson might only show a single arm angle. Johnson reportedly changed arm slots by pitch.
What’s the research saying about who the TJs are occurring to? What’s the background of the pitchers? Are we seeing a common theme?
Interestingly, in this day and age that it appears baseball is at an all time peak of athleticism…and it probably is….it’s actually taken a step back in terms of African American involvement. I was watching Dock Ellis’s No No documentary last night. Saw a great reminder when the 1971_Pirates fielded an entire minority nine in a.game
I think baseball is losing out on the great African-American ballplayers simply because it is doing a bad job marketing itself; the RBI program helps, but MLB could be doing a lot more. It might help to have more black managers and GMs, but I think Dave Stewart is the only black GM right now and McClendon is the only black manager. There’s few advocates for minority involvement in the current system, and baseball is losing a lot of the better black athletes to the NFL and NBA. Hopefully Manfred can make that a priority. In 2015 it’s reasonable to think that Dave Winfield would be an NFL player and Tony Gwynn would be a point guard.
Baseball has gotten so much more competitive at a younger age that it gets expensive VERY early. It’s become a suburban youth sport much like soccer. Same thing that has happened to the mlb attendance demographic has happened to who is playing it as a youth sport.
I’m not sure he rode his fastball as much as we see pitchers today…he was a true pitcher. I agree with you though….just trying to present a rounded statement. Always good conversation
I just think the fastball wasn’t as necessary back then, especially in the deadball era before the home run became a thing. As Bill James points out in “The Politics of Glory,” pitchers from that era only really had to bear down a handful of at-bats a game. The rest of the time they were trying to put the ball in play to let their defenders make the outs. Just a cursory glance at assists/putouts from the deadball era give credence to that. I think as teams have become more aware of the importance of keeping the ball out of play, strikeouts have become more important.
We’ve undeniably lost good “baseball instinct” in the modern game. Its a trait I’ve heard lamented by more than a few scouts. Baseball is just something that boys DID at one point…. Baseball wasn’t just played on manicured fields, but sandlots and back yards. I grew up around Kansas and Oklahoma… And to this day I can be sitting behind the screen at a minor league game and almost play a game with guessing if a player is one of my own….I can almost tell the guys that come from hunger and have that drive I saw so many times…the Mickey Mantle country.
The one thing we really lack on Walter Johnson is verifable info on his younger seasons. He threw for a long time. When we start getting back to the early 20th century things get sketchy. And the more I’ve thought about it this morning, the more I realize it’s not fair to compare across generations.
I think it’s far more likely that Walter Johnson threw harder than almost all of the P of his time and topped out around 90-93mph…the combo of velocity and abuse as youngsters is a recipe for the rash of TJ we’ve seen lately. Elbows simply cannot handle the strain.
As for Smyly, and this coming from a Yankees fan, I am disappointed for the Rays. I really liked the deal for the Rays and was worried about that rotation for many years to come. Cobb, Archer, Smyly, Odirizzi and Moore wudda been one hell of a ro!
While a labrum is frequently a death knell for P, I really hope Smyly comes back full strength.
Another thing yu mentioned, though, about pitchers in the past – they got hurt all the time, and usually had their careers ended, simply because medicine wasn’t as advanced as it is now. Look up Sandy Koufax or Dizzy Dean sometime; there were lots of guys like that.
Sandy Koufax had arthritis, and Dizzy Dean took a liner to the foot…but he had been around a long time and kept going. But I do agree with you. They didn’t have these prospects with so much invested….today we talk about the minors as much as the big league teams. Way more visible when a player is hurt now.
Agreed, although Jane Leavy’s bio of Koufax posits – and Koufax himself agrees – that his arthritis was caused by pitching, especially as much as he pitched. He was done at 30. Satchel Paige, another guy with a supposed blazing fastball, hurt his arm very early in his career and became a trick pitcher for the next 20 years, according to his autobiography. The funny thing about Dean is that his career was basically only 7 seasons, but he pitched in one game three separate years, which made him eligible for the HOF. When pitchers got hurt then, especially at a young age, they just disappeared. When a guy like Mark Prior or Brandon Webb gets hurt now, we read about them for years trying to come back.
I’m surprised that Koufax has much to say about Levy’s book, considering the implications it makes about his private life.
In the actual book he is quoted as saying his elbow was just a mess but he tried to pitch through it. He took an old car tire, cut it in half and put straps on it, filled it with ice, and would wear that over his elbow for two hours after every start. He said the pain was excruciating.
Koufax was something else. That curve was something special.
It wrecked him, but man, that was probably the best stretch of pitching ever, except for Pedro’s ’97-2003.
I was thinking the same thing… The Pedro example. For my money though, the greatest of all time is Greg Maddux. I know it’s subjective, but if you consider what he accomplished over what we know about the era….just amazing. 1988 on..
Agreed; Pedro’s peak was better but Maddux did it for so much longer. Both during the steroid era.
Both truly elite. History is going to love Maddux. We’re still close in time. He was a master. Its very few in a generation that could pitch I’m any other.
When I was growing up in the 50’s, throwing breaking pitches was literally not allowed. One guy I grew up with did it – struck me out on a curve in 12 year-old play. I’d never seen a pitch like that. He went on to win a Cy Young award, but had few good seasons and was always having arm problems.
I went to see some of my grandson’s high school games a few years ago. All the pitchers were trying to throw sliders, sinkers, curve balls and who knows what else. As for the position players – other then catching the ball, few had any idea how to play their positions. Baserunning was station-to-station at best.
I understand why the percentage of players in MLB from other countries keeps going up every year.
When I was 12 I played in a little league travel team – basically the best players from my little league division would go all over central Indiana and play other “all-star” teams. This would have been in 1986. Even then, you would run into one or two pitchers throwing curveballs and sliders and stuff. Nowhere near as prevalent as today. Little league instruction is pretty spotty at best, I’d agree, so having a pitcher throw breaking pitches with no instruction or oversight is just a terrible idea for a young arm.
I was a high level pitcher from the late 80’s through mid 90’s and curve balls were faux pau. But I truthfully didn’t need much more than my various fastballs, a cutter, and a change.
Can you believe that Dylan Bundy is still ROY eligible?
Yeah, and still in AA ball. I hope he gets to have a career, but his arm was abused badly in high school
Dillon Gee for DeJesus…
Why on Earth would the Mets want DeJesus?
Have you watched kirkkkkkkk at all
Not really; feels like an oveepay for DeJesus though. There are a dozen 4th-outfielder types that could be had for a lot less than a reasonably decent 5th or 6th starter. If the Mets really hate their fourth outfielder so much they could just dumpster-dive in the AAA ranks for an option.
It may be an overpay, but a pro hitter on the bench is a valuable piece for a team with playoff aspirations. Toss in a prospect somewhere and call it even.
Gee’s value is not much more than a B prospect, maybe a 4A OF in the Kirk mold and a project-able but distant prospect
Yeah; the big problem with DeJesus is that if you keep him on the bench anytime he comes up in a high-leverage situation the opposing team is just going to go to a lefty, because DeJesus just can’t hit LHP anymore. Plus, the Mets are pretty cheap right now and DeJesus is making 5M this season, with a 1M option buyout for next season.
It’s a decent trade proposal, but I don’t see where the Rays need Gee, they have plenty of 4/5 starters. They lost all of their 1/2 starters ( cobb, moore, smyly) and they need hitting more than pitching.
He’s only had 23 AB. Not a great sample.
I wonder if the Rays insistence on raising Smyly’s arm slot factored into this injury.
That actually is a very good observation
Let’s remember this next time we deem this or that rotation an ‘injury risk’. Every single rotation is an injury risk.
Another MLB pitcher bites the dust. This is a daily occurrence now. Quite sad. Pitchers drop like flies.
Terrible news for the Rays this year, but even worse going forward. If Smyly comes back it probably won’t be until 2017. That means the Rays lose out on two years of control of the main piece in the Price deal, which is a huge loss for the Rays.
smyly was not even the main piece of the deal it was willy adames
Smyly was a major part of that deal. He is a very good pitcher.
he was not the main piece though
I agree that Adames is strong prospect, but a major league deal involving a player like Price is not done for a 19 yo ‘A’ league prospect.
The 84th ranked prospect in baseball was the main piece in the trade for one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball? No he was not.
Adames was a big part of the deal and I’m sure the trade wouldn’t have happened without including him. However, the main piece was Smyly. He was a 3 win MLB pitcher with 4+ years of control left. That is much more valuable than an 18 yo in A ball
We are just having the worst luck
Terrible news. Smyly was close to becoming a real star.
As a baseball fan it makes me sad
If Pineda can come back and dominate… you can too, Smyly.
See you in a couple years, Drew!
Bad luck for the Rays. Sucks to see pitchers go down like this.