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Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Who could have seen this coming? Not the Red Sox doctors, apparently. Boston announced Trevor Story underwent an internal bracing procedure of the right ulnar collateral ligament — which is an alternative to Tommy John surgery. The Red Sox did not list a timetable for recovery, but internet searches say between four and six months.
Story signed a six-year deal with the Red Sox prior to the 2021 Major League Baseball season. Despite being primarily a shortstop with the Colorado Rockies, Story played second base and, when healthy, was one of the best defensively at the position last year.
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1. villageidiom Posted: January 10, 2023 at 03:09 PM (#6112720)Oh well, I wish him the best.
To the same deal they offered X. :-)
Going to miss the season with TJS" trick
Sleep deprivation?
At second base, the depth chart goes something like:
Story
Hernandez (if you take him out of CF)
Arroyo
Niko Goodrum
Enmanuel Valdez
At shortstop, they don't have a guy above AA right now.
There's some value to delaying TJ surgery, as well. IIRC, Greg Holland could have gotten TJ surgery in 2014, but elected to defer until 2016. That meant he got to participate in two World Series runs, establish himself as an elite closer, and get a big contract later. As it worked out, 97% of his career earnings came after 2014, even though he missed 2016 with TJ.
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I don’t know. The team feels like a mess. And not even a particularly interesting mess. And if you’re gonna be a mess then damnit be an interesting one.
This is a pretty good summation of how I (and think much of Red Sox Nation) feels about this emerging 2023 team: We're cool with the team rebuilding...but then rebuild! Playing Hernandez at 2B (or CF, for that matter) has nothing to do with the next time the Red Sox will have their #### together. Neither will Jansen as the closer, for that matter.
Our best prospect is Marcelo Mayer. You know how we got him? We had the #4 pick in the draft, because we sucked in 2020, just sucked. We tanked 2020.
Justin Turner. Kenley Jansen. Enrique Hernandez. Chris Martin. Corey Kluber. These are our biggest acquisitions this winter, and you know what they all have in common?
- Short-term contracts
- They are all pretty old
- None of them will be here in 2025, guaranteed
- Together, they will cost about $50m in 2023
What are we doing? Instead of signing Turner, just let Enmanuel Valdez take a crack at DH against righties, and Dalbec hits against lefties or something. They are taking up two 40-man spots, anyway, so either use their bat-first skills or get rid of them.
This team not only sucks - they are boring and rudderless. How can you spend over $200m on a roster and not have a 2B or SS?
Sure but this is a very different situation that most of us humans. I mean missing a couple of months of baseball for me ... :-) But more relevantly, my profession doesn't have a several month offseason and my job performance doesn't depend on whether my elbow (or hip or whatever) and I don't have a time-limited but guaranteed contract. In general my employer doesn't care when I miss two months ... not that there are really many scenarios where I'd have an injury that cost me even two months.
But it's also true that I've known teaching professors to schedule elective surgery for the summer, female academics who tried to schedule pregnancies around dissertation, tenure, etc. schedules.
so he got a platelet-rich plasma injection and six weeks of rehab instead.
This I get, this is hoping you can swap 6 weeks for 1+ seasons of missed time. This apparrently is more along the lines of swapping missing 4 months instead of missing 6 months. Again, if they said something like "Story is expected to return in mid-April" then I could understand why you'd go this course.
So I probably wasn't clear. (1) Why wasn't this diagnosed and treated earlier but also (2) now that we know, what is the point of a procedure that requires you to miss 2/3 of a season in hopes of avoiding a procedure that requires you to miss a full season. And (2) sorta informs (1) -- if this had been taken care of 4 momths ago, Story might start spring on time, that's a tradeoff worth making maybe. Obviously I'm not a doctor so there might be other facts in play here -- return rate from this procedure is 100% but it's only 80% from TJS or something.
As to early detection, while obviously you can't force unnecessary privately funded healthcare down an empoloyee's throat, why not at least try to send every player under long-term contract for a physical and MRI at season's end? But sure, maybe Story had zero issues with his elbow last year and this only popped up a couple of weeks ago. Obviously nothing could be done. Me, I get suspicious anytime a good defensive SS ends up at 2B in favor of a (seemingly) less good defensive SS. I know there are plenty of other possible explanations but "Story's right arm is f'd" doesn't seem a very surprising headline.
Story's elbow injury happened in May of 2021. Story talking about his elbow. Maybe, just maybe, the Sox could have suggested surgery in Sept of '22 so he'd be completely ready for '23. Maybe they did and this is on Story, I figure we'll know that in about 48 hours or so by a random leak or two.
Seems like we're talking about different things. I'm saying that people often avoid surgery if possible, because surgery is not fun and presents dangers. They will often put it off until they're certain it's necessary.
Maybe they did suggest it. And maybe he didn't want to do it until it was clearly his only option.
Not saying they shouldn't do this (they should!), but does that mean Hernandez will stay in CF? If he moves to 2B or SS they'll need something better than Duran at CF, right?
Sorry--it's just a complete mess (and was before this happened too). Not a 100-loss season mess, but given the rest of division, I'm just coming around to the idea that tanking is the way to go here. God forbid they do something like trade Casas for a Marlins starting P. Just play the kids. Do goofy things to try to take advantage of the new rules. Again--fans will forgive a mess if it's an interesting mess and they see where the path is going.
They could have chosen not to spend $50M on mediocrities and still kept Devers.
Maybe they did suggest it. And maybe he didn't want to do it until it was clearly his only option.
Yes, that's literally what my 2nd sentence started with -
Yoshida wasn't who I really had in mind. He should be useful for a while.
Jasen, Martin, and to a lesser extent Turner seem pointless. They don't make the team much better, and they'll all be gone in a year or two. In the bullpen especially, if you're not going to contend, try out a bunch of live arms and see if you can find some guys who might contribute for the next 5 years. For DH, run a few AAAA sluggers out there and see if you can find someone. Save the money for the next really good player you want to sign.
Neither the Devers extension nor the Yoshida signing were mentioned in the tanking strategy. Specifically - Justin Turner. Kenley Jansen. Enrique Hernandez. Chris Martin. Corey Kluber. - are the signings that point to a "well we should sign *somebody* right?" thinking. I've defended the Martin signing as a risk that the Sox should take, pay money and hope he's good enough to trade for a prospect or two, but I can't imagine the Sox get anything from any of the other guys. Even if Kluber does well, he's going to be 38 in '24, would anyone pay more than $11M for the year?
I'm saying that people often avoid surgery if possible, because surgery is not fun and presents dangers.
Sure but he underwent an "internal bracing procedure" which sounds a lot like surgery to me. Again it's not just "why wasn't this done 4 months ago?" it's "if you've decided that an 'internal procedure' is necessary and your choice is between the one that might fix the problem and will take 2-4 months to recover and the one that will fix the problem (to the extent it will be fixed) and will take 6 months to recover, why not go with the one more likely to fix the problem?"
I totally understand doing everything short of surgery before going to surgery. I totally understand trying something "scopic" before going under the knife. And maybe there is something much simpler, safer, more certain about this surgery that would tilt a patient heavily in its favor. But this sounds like under the knife and 2/3 of a season with a substantial risk of still needing TJS later vs under the knife and an entire season. Now if "internal bracing procedure" is non-invasive or far less invasive then great. It would be nice if somebody had explained some of the differences between the procedures.
Maybe he'd stay for that, if he has a good 2023 and likes it here.
The best thing I can say for his 2022 season was that he K'd 139 and walked 21, in 165 innings.
It's a team option, so Kluber will be for it if he's good enough. It can actually go up to $13M for the option based on '23 performance.
I think its reasonable to think that the player and the team knew at an early stage that surgery was always on the table. BUt probably a lot of times, the player nurses it along during the off season hoping everything will be fine. Then they get a setback close to the season start and the options are 1) fix for real and miss the entire season, 2) try something halfway and maybe get to play later.
As Walt points out, lots of times it seems we end up with a half measure that doesnt work and logically it made no sense.
But given where we are at this point in time, perhaps it makes sense from the player stand point to take a chance and maybe get to play this year vs not playing at all.
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