6:42pm: Skaggs’ MRI revealed no damage to his surgically repaired ulnar collateral ligament, tweets Pedro Moura of the Los Angeles Times. General manager Billy Eppler told reporters that Skaggs has a “mild flexor pronator strain” and will sit out for the next week (also via Moura, on Twitter). The southpaw could still pitch again in 2016, tweets Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register.
7:52am: Angels lefty Tyler Skaggs has been scratched from his outing today with tightness in his forearm, as Pedro Moura of the Los Angeles Times was among those to tweet. Instead, he’ll head in for an MRI on the trouble area.
The organization is surely holding its breath while awaiting the results of the imaging. Skaggs, 25, finally returned recently from his August 2014 Tommy John surgery. After two years of recovery, another scare in the elbow area is the last thing anyone wanted to go through.
Things had been progressing rather well for the talented southpaw before this news. In his nine starts on the year, he logged 48 frames with a 4.13 ERA and excellent 9.4 K/9 against 3.9 BB/9. The hope, surely, is that he will be able to log thirty-plus high-quality starts in 2017.
For the Halos, any questions surrounding Skaggs are yet more concerning given the healthy-related uncertainty of other key arms. Andrew Heaney is already out for all of 2017 after his TJ procedurew, while Garrett Richards remains a question mark as he tries to stave off a UCL replacement. As I just explained in assessing three key needs for the organization, securing pitching depth is essential — but figures to be a challenge with a low-supply free agent market.
It’s certainly too soon to jump to any conclusions about Skaggs, who is obviously and understandably being handled with added care. As MLBTR contributor Bradley Woodrum has written in explaining his statistical assessment of Tommy John likelihood, prior TJ surgery is a significant indicator of future susceptibility, and Skaggs had already been slow to make his way back.
$10 says its the flexor mass strain which seems to be the new favorite injury in the MLB this year
Good call – you $10 is in the mail
And the hits just keep on coming for this bad luck organization ….
Is it just luck? I am curious, not making any assumptions or such.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity… What kind of preparation is going on here that may be the root of these arm issues? Maybe it’s a series of unfortunate events, or maybe it’s not…
Thats called determination not luck. Luck is “success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions.”
The Angels ought to draft “the best available college bat/arm that will sign for $100,000” with picks 11-30 next season. Spend two million, and get twenty healthy guys that can play. See how far up the organizational ladder they can progress.
That just exacerbates the problem. If you’re talking about Juco guys well you have to trust your scouts and they probably won’t sign at that unless they are dead set on playing pro ball and not improving their stock. If they are 4 year guys well the lower you get in the draft the lower the ceiling. Those guys are usually fillers or role players. So now instead of taking the best players or spending on high upside high school kids your taking fliers on guys to see how fast they can climb. The problem is they haven’t hit well on draft picks and the ones they did they’ve traded away.
So now in order to hope to compete in trouts tenure you kind of forced to punt on 2017 and try to collect guys who are close or MLB ready. It’s going to take a couple years. And they probably need to trade guys like Calhoun and Simmons and hope someone sees value and the FA market is so deprived or wants to go all in and overpays.
Obviously you can change the whole franchise by trading trout but they’ll never receive full value for him, because let’s face it he’s the best all around position player. Nor would I even venture to hypothesize a package worthy of him. But devoting a whole section of the draft to just college guys bc they can climb fast is self defeating. It can’t be fixed in one or two drafts. The old draft saying where you’re hoping you can get a star, an everyday player and a couple of role/ org guys in a draft should tell you something.
There are a few ways to improve the draft overall some from the lousy changes made in 2012..
1st is cease giving poor mouthing teams both monetary handouts each year along with those extra draft choices, known as sandwich picks between rounds 1 and 2. Bad enough teams that refused to spend.. Ala Tampa and Miami before still refuse to spend now on both the draft and salaries. Tampa on the draft by signing people who will sign at/below slot and NOBODY potentially overslot later rounds, Miami even worse history..
Owners feel bad enough giving welfare to these owners, much less building the teams via the draft.. Make them do that portion on even footing.
I don’t think they can do that, simply because some smaller market teams would have no chance to compete with the new yorks, los Angeles’ and the Bostons of the league. They can afford to take big risks on spending money through international free agency, and even regular free agency, while small market teams might be crippled by a bad contract. Maybe there is a better way, but eliminating it completely would mean there would be a lot less competitive teams
wait the Angels caught a break?? what’s going on here… based on the season we’ve been having I was prepared to hear some really bad news
you had me worried for a minute there, buddy.
Garbage organization. A smart organization would realize we are garbage and our players could not careless…… over 20 games out. How about you close him down for the rest of the year you dizzy clowns.