Pedro Martinez left his Saturday start due to right shoulder tightness and a slightly strained right groin. After the game, Pedro said that his shoulder became tight as a result of compensating for the groin injury. With the altered delivery secondary to the groin pull, he was likely throwing with more emphasis/force with the shoulder. The Doctor’s examination following the game apparently came back clean.
Said Pedro, "The doctor already checked my shoulder; the flexibility is there, the strength is there. There is nothing bothering me. I was fine, except my groin is a little sore."
The Mets did the correct thing here by not allowing him to return to the mound, and with the All-Star break nearly upon us, this should be a situation where he will be good to go his next scheduled time out.
What this injury tells us, however, is just how sensitive this shoulder will be going forward. A small groin pull was enough to cause his shoulder to tighten up and become guarded. If anything, this demonstrates just how tough it is to come back from rotator cuff surgery without ups and downs along the way.
It is doubtful that Jonathan Broxton is available in leagues that count holds, but you should check nonetheless and snag him without hesitation.
The right elbow injury of Takashi Saito seems likely to be of a serious nature. He will be having an MRI tomorrow to determine the tissue or structures involved, as well as the severity of the injury. The foremost concern here is to rule out an injury to the Ulnar Collateral Ligament. After that, they will check to make sure the Ulnar nerve is not irritated. The best case scenario here is a muscular strain, but given his comments after the game, this does not seem likely. Saito mentioned how he felt the tightness in his elbow was not quite normal.
"The kind of tightness that you feel on the mound isn’t a normal tightness," he said. "It became gradually worse and I thought, ‘This isn’t tightness,’ " Saito said.
Saito was obviously in pain, as he was shaking his right arm after throwing his fastballs. He does have a history of right elbow problems, as he had some loose cartilage removed from the elbow joint back in 1997 while pitching in Japan.
Kelvim Escobar will miss the rest of the season, and his 2009 campaign may be in question as well, following the announcement that he is going to have surgery to repair a torn labrum in his pitching shoulder . The surgery will be performed by Dr. David Altchek. The recovery will require "…a significant amount of time," General Manager Tony Reagins said. He went on to say that the expected recovery would be between 9 and 12 months. Typically, a recovery for a starting pitcher to return from a labrum repair is 12-18 months. Relief pitchers tend to take less time to return successfully, somewhere between 9-12 months, with an average of just over 11 months.
Given the fact that he has not been able to shoulder a heavy workload in his career without some form of pain, I would not be surprised if they ultimately decide to bring Escobar back as a reliever.
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