Injury News and Analysis August 13
Evan Longoria
An amazing first year might come to a close a little early due to a wrist fracture he suffered on last Thursday night when he was hit by a pitch. Bones usually take between 4-8 weeks to heal depending on the location, severity, and type of break. The fact that it is in his wrist makes it a little more complicated due to the nature of the sport. This is not an automatic death sentence for him since long term there shouldn’t be any problems unless there was ligament damage at the same time. This is unlikely though and there still remains a good possibility that he will return for the stretch run if the Rays are still in it. That remains to be seen though because they are now without 2 of their top hitters with Crawford also out.
Chris Carpenter
To me Carpenter was rushed a little but that’s pure speculation on my part. I wasn’t there evaluating him and seeing how he responded to treatment and exercises. With that being said, he’s going to have to be cautious returning from a right posterior shoulder strain. It’s being reported as not involving the rotator cuff, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the rotator cuff is at least inflamed. Expect him to miss at least a start or two but he’s going to be walking on eggshells the rest of the year.
Joba Chamberlain
Joba is to play catch on Friday although by then the Yankees may reconsider how quickly they’ll push him back. While all sports medicine personnel admire the fact that a player is willing to return ASAP, often it would be the worst thing for him. This is one of those cases. If all he has is tendinitis and he is allowed to return to pitching, he could easily damage his labrum as he adjusts for the pain. Because of this, most likely the Yankees are going to be very cautious with him and if they are out of it late in the season, I wouldn’t doubt that they would pull him altogether. If he is set to play catch on Friday then I don’t imagine he would be starting in the majors until the last week of August at the absolute earliest.
Carlos Lee
According to Fox Sports, Lee had surgery to repair multiple fractures in his broken left little finger on Monday and is expected to miss 6-8 weeks. The surgery involved placing pins in his finger which would help to stabilize the fragment. Most likely this will come close to ending his season since I highly doubt the Astros will be alive for the post-season.
Mike Lowell
Mike’s reportedly had trouble walking around the clubhouse after injuring his oblique. Combining this with the hip flexor problem and you can see that he’ll likely take a little more than the minimum to come back. As long as Mike’s injury isn’t in the moderate to severe range, he should be back fairly quickly. This will be good for him as when he’ll come back he’ll be refreshed for September.
C.J. Wilson
Wilson decided to have the spurs and chips removed from his elbow ending his season. Both are extremely painful and if the chips were not stable they could have damaged any number of other tissues in the surrounding areas, including the Ulnar Collateral Ligament. For this surgery they go in and cut out any of the chips and basically grind/shave down the spurs and usually some scar/frayed tissue in the area of the spur. This frayed tissue is normal but it could cause pain if left in the area.
Ryan Braun
Braun has been out for several days and some have speculated that the injury really involves his spinal columns first and the muscles second. By the sounds of his symptoms I would have to agree. Whenever you have pain/discomfort on both sides of the body, the first thing that pops into my head as a medical professional is to examine the spine very carefully and thoroughly for any injuries/pathologies. Usually with a muscle injury, the person remembers doing something to aggravate it. Low back and spinal issues often don’t have that luxury. They could be sitting down for a while or they could wake up the next day and have shooting pain down their legs.
Tim Lincecum
As weird as it sounds, seeing the ball bounce off that far actually made me relax a little bit. When they ball bounces off that far, the body absorbs less energy than if the ball simply hit and fell down. That’s not to say that the ball still can’t do damage, it just means it’s less likely to produce severe damage. I imagine they’ll take some precautionary x-rays and maybe even a CT scan to make sure there’s not a compression style fracture, but i don’t think there will be one. He might miss a start or two depending on how sore and swollen he is.
Carl Crawford
As I thought and mentioned in the posts here and here, Crawford has chosen to have surgery. What they will do is to reconstruct the top of the tunnel for the tendon to pass through and he will likely miss the remainder of the regular season games.
Tidbits
Pedro Feliz is at least a week away. Jason Bartlett won’t be ready until this weekend at the earliest. Jerry Hairston still isn’t ready to play because of his hamstring. Hamstrings are tricky, they can feel great and then all of a sudden it’s crap again. Adam LaRoche is due to come off the DL tonight. Freddy Sanchez is fighting inflammation in his shoulder which has caused him to miss the last several days. Adam Wainwright is now back to being groomed as a starter. Kerry Wood will be used one more time in a non-save situation before returning to the closers role according to Baker. Joel Zumaya has been shutdown because of upper arm problems. I expect this to last at least a week. Ryan Sweeney injured his thumb on his glove hand and will see a hand specialist today. Most likely this means they suspect he may have torn a ligament. Andruw Jones is on the DL again because of soreness in his knee. Tom Gordon is done for the year with multiple injuries to his elbow.
Evan Longoria with Low back pain is a quite common phenomenon in the humans and is generally experienced by all at some or the other point in their lives. The severity of the pain is often unrelated to the injury that has caused it. While a simple strain in the back can cause unbearable pain, a displaced disk may turn out to be quite painless.
I apologize for the suggestion that all of the symptoms are a result of a spinal issue. I meant that a spinal issue could be an underlyimng factor in this case. A similar example is wheb a pitcher has looseness in his shoulder and he strains his shoulder. The looseness isn’t what’s causing the pain directly but indirecty it may be a factor.
I definitely agree that low back pain can manifest itself in any multitude of ways and often the symptoms do not match the underlyong injury. Personally, I’ve seen cases where bulging disks have compressed the spin canal by more the 50% and the patient didn’t know it.
However, the reports that I was seeing at the time reported continued pain in his low back with some pain radiating into his extremeties. The first thing I would examine is disk, followed by bony issues, then I worry about SI issues followed by muscular injury/spasm until lastly I worry about a neurological disorder.
These aren’t necessarily the most likely to happen in that order, but it should be the first things to cross people’s minds.
This case among many others involving LBP is why you always need to monitor the situation. For every Braun, there will be a Trot Nixon who was worse off than originally thought.
One final thought is that until I get the opportunity to actually examine these players, I’m going off what I read. Sometimes the news is represented wrong or flat out reported wrong from the club itself.