Padres left-hander Robbie Erlin has a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow and will miss the remainder of the season (and, presumably, the beginning of the 2017 campaign) due to Tommy John surgery, tweets Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Erlin had been placed on the 15-day disabled list back in late April with what manager Andy Green described to reporters as forearm tightness.
The 25-year-old Erlin, originally acquired from the Rangers as part of the 2012 Mike Adams trade, has spent parts of the past four seasons with San Diego’s big league affiliate, pitching to a combined 4.54 ERA with 6.6 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9 to go along with a 40.4 percent ground-ball rate in 148 2/3 innings. This season, Erlin had tossed 15 2/3 innings across three appearances (two starts) and allowed seven earned runs with a 13-to-3 K/BB ratio. The loss of Erlin will further thin out the Padres’ pitching depth, as Opening Day starter Tyson Ross remains on the shelf indefinitely due to inflammation in his right shoulder. With Erlin out, the Padres’ rotation currently consists of Andrew Cashner, James Shields, Drew Pomeranz and rookies Colin Rea and Cesar Vargas. Further depth options at the Triple-A level include left-hander Christian Friedrich and veteran right-hander Jeremy Guthrie.
To this point in his career, Erlin has accumulated a year and 78 days of big league service time, and he’ll accrue another full season due to time spent on the disabled list. That’ll push him up to two-plus years of service, but he’ll still fall considerably shy of Super Two status and therefore will not be arbitration eligible next winter.
Love to see Friedrich get an opportunity outside of Coors. He was a first rounder and is still relatively young. Let him do his thing.
Another injury. The pitching is really starting to get thin now. I wonder if this will compel the Padres to really make push to sign Lincecum if he does well in his showcase.
Bummer, really thought he was going to contribute this year. Hopefully will have a quick recovery. Time for AJ to sign The Freak!
Timmy doesn’t want to be with Twins anyway. No good weed in Minnesota.
Oops wrong story.
All these injuries suck. It’s astonishing the rate at which players are dropping.
Mmm… I’m kinda upset about this because I was hoping that Robbie would finally sink or swim this year but I’ve known that this was going to happen sooner or later ever since he went on the DL with elbow soreness 2 years ago. At least they are finally fixing the problem. But knowing the Padres’ track record with Tommy John pitchers I wouldn’t be too optimistic.
I’m guessing we’ve seen the last of Tyson Ross for the season, too. I understand the clamor for Tim Lincecum, but I don’t really think a 90-loss team needs to spend money on a fifth starter.
Ideally, they’d probably only sign him to a one year deal, and even then, it depends on what they see at his showcase. With all the injuries happening right now, they just need guys to go out and eat innings.