March 24: Cederlind underwent Tommy John surgery last night, the Pirates announced to reporters (Twitter link via Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). He’ll miss all of the 2021 season and a portion of the 2022 campaign as well.
March 12: The Pirates announced Friday that they’ve placed right-hander Blake Cederlind on the 60-day injured list due to a strained ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Cederlind sustained the injury in Wednesday night’s game, per the team. At this time, he and the Pirates “are discussing what the best recommended intervention is to treat the injury.” Cederlind’s spot on the 40-man roster will be filled by righty Trevor Cahill, whose previously reported one-year deal is now official.
Cederlind, 25, was in the mix for a bullpen spot with the Pirates after making his big league debut with four innings last year. The 2016 fifth-rounder has spent the past few seasons ranked among the organization’s more promising pitching prospects, but today’s announcement means he’ll miss at least the first two months of the season — quite possibly even more than that. The Pirates didn’t reference the possibility of Tommy John surgery, but that’s of course the concern anytime a player experiences a UCL injury.
While Cederlind tossed only four innings last year, he showed plenty of reason for excitement, including a sinker that averaged 98.7 mph out of the bullpen. His last full season of work came in 2019, when he pitched to a combined 2.28 across three levels: Class-A Advanced, Double-A and Triple-A. Control has been an issue through his pro career, as he’s walked 11.3 percent of the opponents he’s faced, but he’s also posted above-average ground-ball rates.
If Cederlind can avoid surgery, it’s possible he’ll emerge as a bullpen option for the Pirates this summer, but it seems the Bucs will take their time in determining the best course of action for the promising young righty.
damn
Another possible job opening. No slowing down the mound injury train.
BIG SEXY!!!!!
I was looking ahead to see him pitch and establish himself as a bullpen arm this year. Hopefully he will not turn out into a Nick Burdi 2.0
I was holding my breath he wouldn’t have arm issues, but you can only last so long without a strain when you hit 100 MPH on the gun quite often.
Joel Hanrahan, Adonis Chapman, Billy Wagner, and others would like to weigh in on your observation.
And they all, execpt for Wagner, have had a lot of arm issues(?) I’m not sure what you’re saying.
Joel straight up had two straight Tommy John surgeries and never returned, but okay
Why would they weigh in? To agree?
Why do so many guys get hurt ? I swear it wasn’t like this decades ago. Somthing is wrong with how they are pitching.
I’ve always had the opinion that just as many guys got hurt years ago, but their injuries either didn’t get diagnosed as quickly or even diagnosed at all. In other words, guys were pitching through this kind of stuff until it hurt so bad that it ended their careers in the pre-TJ surgery days.
I agree it’s not talked about enough. I think a big problem this year, especially for guys who didn’t pitch in MLB last year, will be how quickly they gear up. They may want to go normal ST speed, but if they just played sim games last year, or they didn’t do all their throwing on side thinking they could not play, the quick restart could be a partial reason for this rash of TJS
In reality, most ST have this type of early wave of injury. Sad but true. Will be interesting to see if there are more TJS in 2021 vs 2019 let’s say
That and the amount of imediate information that we had avaiable to us. If this were 1990, how many people outside of Pittsburgh/fans of the Pirates would have known that one of their minor league relievers was having a UCL problem within an hour of the info being released?
Guys were not throwing years ago so maybe not as many arms hurt this young. Think about it. When I was a kid and the speed gun was new to the game, if you had a gujy thowing 90, he was bringing serious heat. About the only guy hitting 100 was Nolan Ryan. You did not have guys throwing upper 90s fastballs,and low to mid 90s sliders pitch after pitch. Also, just as @connfyoozed said, pitchers who wanted to keep getting paid to play pitched through the pain until they could not anymore and then quit with a “dead arm” I do believe it is happening more with younger guys simply because how hard they are throwing just about every pitch. Used to be the injur4ies happed after several years of pitching and their arms would just wear out and they would quit because they could not throw effectively any more. No TJ surgery to save the careers yet.
These amount of injuries did exist prior to tommyjohn surgery, they just never stopped pitching. They changed their arm slot and kept pitching. That was the reason behind the submarine delivery. It took the pressure off the ucl and transferred the strain to a different part the elbow which allowed for the player to keep pitching.The strained ucl and the surgery that went along with it was 2 years recovery time if the surgery even took. In the infancy of tj surgery a lot of pitchers chose to continue pitching with the submarine delivery instead of opting for a risky surgery at best. A lot of pitchers continued pitching for many years after tearing their ucl and some even did it a very high level. The advancements that have been made in tj surgery has eliminated the need for the submarine pitching style.
Starting younger, throwing harder with more break and doing it all year around. Today, a kid might start pitching to other kids competitvely when they’re 8-10 years old (at least that’s around the age when little leagues around my area started to let kids pitch to kids), then during the fall and winter, they’re likely going to baseball camps and clinics. By the time a kid is in his early 20’s, he probably has a dozen+ years of mileage on his arm already. Now factor in velocity and use of breaking balls. Average fastball/slider velo in 2008 was 91.7/83.2 MPH. Last season, that was up to 93.7/84.4 MPH. Sliders are also being used a lot more often going from 13% in ’08 to 19% last year.
It’s begins as a kid in little league. Today’s parents want little tommy at age 11 to throw curve balls. Kids arms at that age are not quite ready for the strain. Parents see gold in Tommy. That’s why you see so many arm injuries today. Instead of letting Tommy enjoy growing up, they make Tommy start to hate baseball. Youth league coaches are also to blame. They think they are big league coaches. It’s a shame, but that’s todays sports.
Most of the problems are due to MLB repeatedly protecting hitters statistics at the pitcher’s expense. That and the over abundant stress on velocity as a measurable statistic compared to location and movement. I believe robot umpires would help. A strike is a strike is a strike. Working on location and movement would be given their proper due. Take the fake ball out of the equation. Same ball every year. Work on stitching preventing blisters and the surface having some tackiness for gripping. Just a start.
Thought he could be our closer in the near future if he got his control under control. No pun intended!
It’s truly astounding how routine this procedure has become. Not only does every other MLBTR seem to be about a new person getting it, but the success rate these days seems very high.