In a farm system that is as top-heavy as any in baseball, the Orioles entered the season with three significant prospects, and very little else. Top prospect Dylan Bundy has missed the entire season after having a PRP injection in his elbow in an attempt to avoid Tommy John surgery, and Kevin Gausman appears to be putting his prospect days in his rear-view mirror.
Now Jonathan Schoop, the Orioles only potential impact position prospect anywhere near the majors, will be out for 6-8 weeks with a stress fracture in his back, reports Dan Connolly of The Baltimore Sun. Schoop was placed on the disabled list a week ago while the Orioles attempted to assess the injury.
The setback for Schoop makes it unlikely that he will be able to contribute in the majors this season, although it doesn't rule it out completely. Schoop's injury didn't appear to be affecting his play, as his numbers this season in Triple-A are similar to what he has done throughout his career. I've discussed Schoop's struggles hitting right-handed pitching before, and the biggest impact of this injury is that he'll miss two months worth of at-bats in which to work on solving his issues versus righties.
Assuming he has no setbacks during his recovery, he could return to the field in late-July and could still be ready for a September call-up to help the Orioles off their bench down the stretch.
Schoop has spent the entire 2013 in Triple-A, hitting .268/.331/.368 on the season. I noted before the year that this was a make-or-break year for Schoop to prove that he could hit right-handed pitching more consistently, but even after a strong fall league and a solid World Baseball Classic, he still has yet to prove he can consistently hit same-handed pitching.
So far this season in a limited sample of games, Schoop has kept with his career trends:
The limited sample from this year wouldn't be enough to make the determination on it's own, but when pared with his totals from last year's dramatic splits...
This injury has little to do with his on-field production and shouldn't prohibit the Orioles from calling him up later in the season if they choose to do so, but for now, Schoop will take a week off and rest his ailing back.
Graham left his last start after just two innings, but doctors were unable to identify what in his right shoulder was giving him issues. Due to the ambiguity of his injury, there is no current timetable for his return.
It's logical to question how long Graham has been having issues with his shoulders, given his struggles over his last two starts. Graham hadn't been dominant all year, but prior to his seventh start on the season in May 8th, he had a 3.41 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 29 innings. In his two starts since then, however, he struck out just three batters in seven innings. Obviously the sample size is ridiculously small, but a drop in strikeout rates can sometimes be due to a drop in velocity which could be due to discomfort in his shoulder.
Of course, it could also just be a coincidence.
Either way, Graham is out for the time being until the Braves can get a better grip on what is wrong with his arm. Given that it's a shoulder issue, the Braves will likely handle him conservatively, especially until they can figure out exactly what is causing his discomfort.
Bubba Starling has struggled with his first taste of full-season baseball in 2013, hitting just .213/.286/.384 for the Lexington Legends, showing off the tools that got him drafted fifth overall in 2011, but also giving cause for enough for enough concern to wonder whether he'll ever be able to put them to proper use on a baseball field.
But perhaps the problem is that he can't see the baseball.
Starling has told the Royals that he's having trouble seeing the baseball at night, and the team is having him checked out to see if it is something that LASIK surgery can fix, reports the Kansas City Star. If so, he will have the procedure done immediately and wouldn't miss much more than a few games.
The numbers support Starling's claims. The outfielder has hit .300/.391/.600 with three of his four home runs in just 10 day games, but has hit just .172/.234/.241 with one home run in 25 night games. We're dealing with small sample sizes here and certainly I'm not advocating laser eye surgery based on his strong play during the afternoon this spring, but the dramatic difference in his production during the day and at night certainly gives validity to his comments.
It's important to remember the human element to prospect development, which sometimes includes things like 20-year-old kids not realizing that they can't see properly because they haven't been to an eye doctor recently. It sounds foolish, but sometimes you don't realize what you can't see because you can't see it.
LASIK, of course, isn't magic surgery and won't instantly solve Starling's contact issues or make him a more patient hitter. He's always going to be aggressive at the plate and he'll come back from the eye doctor with the same holes and hitch in his swing that he has now. But the ability to recognize pitches and their spin earlier and more accurately could give him a chance to make enough contact to use his power more often and could help him get better jumps on balls in center field.
Update: Wheeler has inflammation in his shoulder, got a cortisone shot, and will miss one start, says MetsBlog.com, but there is no structural damage. Deep breath, Mets fans. No need to worry unless pain persists.
Original Post: News came forth today that Zack Wheeler will miss his next start due to soreness in his clavicle, causing the Mets fanbase to generally react like this. After all, Wheeler is one of the primary cornerstones of the Mets rebuilding project and the organization is betting a large portion of their future on Wheeler's right arm, and the clavicle that supports it.
But what amount of concern is appropriate? Should this news be merely a blip on the radar of perturbment or a cause for all-out panic?
Any time a pitching prospect is missing a start, it's worth keeping an eye on. The fact that it's arm-related makes it worth a small bit of concern. The fact that it's shoulder-related is even more worrisome, although in this case, Wheeler's discomfort isn't exactly in his shoulder, but slightly closer to the neck in his collarbone. Still, it's not an area where you want pain.
But the Mets are saying that they are erring on the side of caution with Wheeler, points out Michael Baron of MetsBlog.com, and they're wise in doing so. The Mets don't want to take any chances with their future, so whether it's pain, soreness, discomfort or a discolored skintag on his clavicle, they're going to get it checked out before letting Wheeler pitch again.
Concern would be greater if Wheeler hadn't turned things around in his last few starts. Wheeler's first five starts looked like this:
The command in the first five starts was a concern, and if he had been complaining of discomfort at that point, it would have been reasonable to think that whatever was wrong with his clavicle was affecting his mechanics and thus his command. Any time an injury affects mechanics, it's bad.
But Wheeler's last three starts were about as well as you can pitch in the Pacific Coast League, and with just one walk in each, clearly Wheeler straightened out whatever mechanical flaw he had before his discomfort set in. The end result is a relatively comfortable determination that his injury and his early season struggles are unrelated. That's good news for the Mets.
The silver lining here is that skipping a start will limit Wheeler's innings total for the season, something the Mets were likely going to do anyway. It should also push his arrival to the majors back, even if he misses just the one start, and with the Mets and their fan base getting more and more eager to promote Wheeler with every strong start, slowing them down may not be the worst thing in the world.
Of course, no one knows exactly how concerned to be until we hear from Wheeler's doctors. We'll be able to gauge this much better by tomorrow, but for now, the need for outright panic is unnecessary. If he goes on to miss more than just the one start, however, the concern will become apropos.
Roberto Osuna, a right-handed pitching prospect who signed with the Toronto Blue Jays out of Mexico for $1.5 million in 2011, has been shut down due to a torn UCL and may ultimately need to have Tommy John surgery, reports Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com. He will rest the elbow for an undisclosed period of time before attempting to throw again in hopes of avoiding surgery.
The career strikeout numbers also include a stint in the Mexican professional league from when he was 16-years-old and actually skew the overall totals a bit, but his strikeout numbers as an affiliated professional the past two seasons demonstrate the power stuff that Osuna has to offer, although they were also the product of having an advanced change-up in leagues were hitters see them infrequently. His drop in walks from last year to this year was significant, however, and was an exciting improvement to see and the future is bright for Osuna as a potential starter in the Blue Jays rotation.
Osuna is still just 18, so there's plenty of time for him to recover, even if his rehab only delays surgery. But it's never a good thing to have to cut open a pitcher's elbow, and Tommy John surgery gets too easily dismissed as having an automatic recovery when it's not nearly as much of a sure thing. Even if he ends up having surgery in a few months, however, he could easily make it back on the mound and return to Lansing before his 20th birthday, which would hardly put him on a slow schedule to the majors.
