Scott Kazmir left today’s Cactus League start in the second after a mound visit from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and the team’s trainer, Doug Padilla of ESPN.com was among those to report. Kazmir’s departure, which came just one pitch into his second inning of work, was the result of tightness in his left hip, per Sportsnet LA’s Alanna Rizzo (Twitter link). The southpaw is headed for an MRI that the team is terming “precautionary” at this point, per Rizzo, though certainly given Kazmir’s extensive injury history, the situation is worth keeping an eye on. Kazmir is slated to slot into the fourth or fifth spot in the Los Angeles rotation this season and has a guaranteed $32MM remaining on his contract over the next two seasons (though $8MM of that sum is deferred to 2019-21).
Some more injury updates from around the league…
- With Opening Day just four weeks away, Rangers right-hander Andrew Cashner has not yet progressed to throwing off a mound, tweets Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Cashner is currently playing catch from 85 to 90 feet, but he’s been slowed this spring by tendinitis in his right biceps. The 30-year-old inked a one-year, $10MM contract with Texas this offseason and had been penciled into the back of the team’s rotation, but if he’s delayed much further, Opening Day could certainly be a question mark for Cashner. A.J. Griffin, Chi Chi Gonzalez, Nick Martinez, Eddie Gamboa and Dillon Gee are among the Rangers’ candidates to round out the rotation; Yohander Mendez and Connor Sadzeck were both optioned to Triple-A today, per a club announcement.
- Trevor Rosenthal was scratched from today’s start due to a tight right lat muscle, per MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch. Cardinals manager Mike Matheny tells Langosch that Rosenthal will need a bit of extra rest but didn’t consider the injury to be serious in nature. Brian Stull of WGNU 920AM in St. Louis tweets that an MRI performed on Rosenthal came back clean, and the closer-turned-starter is now targeting Friday of this week for his first start of the spring.
- The Indians breathed a collective sigh of relief today as x-rays on Tyler Naquin’s foot came back negative, per Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (on Twitter). The 25-year-old former first-round pick exited yesterday’s spring contest after fouling a ball off his foot. Naquin surprised many with a breakout rookie season and an excellent .296/.372/.514 batting line with 14 homers in 365 plate appearances last year. With Michael Brantley’s health an ongoing question mark and Rajai Davis now in Oakland, a significant absence for Naquin would been a highly unfortunate hurdle for the reigning AL Champs to face early in the year.
- J.P. Hoornstra of the Southern California News Group provides a couple of health updates on some mending Angels (Twitter links). Albert Pujols is set to run the bases today for the first time since undergoing surgery to repair his plantar fascia, while right-hander Cam Bedrosian will face hitters for the first time this spring as he throws to minor leaguers on a back field at the Halos’ complex. Pujols underwent surgery in early December and was given a rough four-month timeline for his return to the playing field. Bedrosian, meanwhile, was slowed a bit by a groin strain earlier in camp but looks to be getting back up to speed. The ninth-inning hopeful hit the DL last season due to a finger injury and ultimately required surgery to repair a blood clot in his right arm. With Huston Street going down for the next three to four weeks, Bedrosian’s main competition for the closer’s gig looks to be veteran Andrew Bailey.
Kazmir…what a joke. Another wasted 18 million.
Totally agree, who would sign this bum for such an outrageous contract? Almost as bad as the McCarthy contract!
I like how a few days ago they were saying this could be a comeback year for Dre and Kaz. Kazmir is just another Crawford. A player with a lot of potential but spends his talent on the DL. Come on man!
You’re wasting your tremendous insight and writing talent whining about Kazmir. What’s the difference?
Well it still could be a bounce-back for both of them, and you can’t realistically blame Ethier’s lost season on him, but Kazmir’s contract did smell like a sopping wet dog from day one.
The difference is, if he’s healthy we have another veteran arm in the bullpen. He can be our 5th starter or deepen our bullpen.
The same guys that have signed some 50 guys in 2 years and what do they have to show? Kike, Woods, McCarthy, 1/2 of Cuba, Thompson,
Yep, not as bad as McCarthy but almost
Oh boy you said it! When the Angels traded for him, he was already having lots of issues! Then the Dodgers got him! I remember I got the alert on my phone! I still cringe! The good news however is he prob was never in serious contention to be in the rotation along with another big mistake, McCarthy! Just hoping they stay heathy to dump there contracts to pitching desperate teams!
Kazmir should have stayed with the Indians after Mickey Callaway fixed him. He might have been a bit better off.
Who can say…
Fantasy Question!
Is there a way to calculate your projected team WHIP with total innings pitched and individual WHIP? Do you need the walk/hit distribution as well?
I didn’t say I was the brightest.
So you’re wanting to take each individual players projected WHIP to come up with your teams projected WHIP for the full season?
That is correct, sir.
All these fantasy projections offer WHIP and Innings Pitched, but never a full hit/walk ratio. I’m laying out my team projections now and am aiming to stay below a certain WHIP ceiling.
Yeah if your looking to do that it’s just adding all up all the hits and walks divided by innings. Fangraphs will have their projections for all.
I guess the most simple way would be to take each individual players projected WHIP × projected innings pitched
Add up the total you get there for each player and divide that by the total innings projected for each player.
So player A is projected for 1.23 WHIP in 185 innings. Plater B is projected for 1.29 in 210 innings.
1.23×185 =227.55
1.29×210 =270.9
227.55+270.9=498.45
185+210=395
498.45÷395=1.26 projected whip for those 2 hypothetical players for the season.
Does this help? Or create mass confusion?
The way I understand him, he has each pitchers projected WHIP. So he doesn’t need hits and walks separately since they’re weighted equally in WHIP.
I think he’s just trying to find a way to get his teams projected WHIP since each players projected WHIP needs weighted differently since they obviously won’t all throw the same amount of innings. Which is really easy to do, just a little difficult to explain via text.
Now that I’m reading this I suppose I don’t need the ratio, just the totals. I can then get a walks hits total depending on projected IP and give it a weight just as if you are calculating a team ERA.
Appreciate the help. Nice to know we have some mathematicians around here on MLBTR!
I like fantasy baseball and we don’t get much talk of it here. Maybe Tim could let me have a fantasy portion of his site. Haha
Good luck this season
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh ok I must have just misread that.
I can’t help but feel like the Rangers will somehow decide that Cashner’s injury is Preller’s fault.
It probably is?
A GM hurt a player?
He’s talking about how Preller withheld medicals on the players he traded last summer. The comment may or may not have been facetious.
Hard to believe, but Scott Kazmir will have made over $100 million playing baseball in his career when he retires.
His career WAR is 25.1 or 23.1, so over 12 seasons he’s been a perennial 2.1- 1.9 WAR guy. That gets you $100 million. Legit superstars in the NFL and NBA don’t make that much.
Legit superstars in the NBA are making 25 million a year and with the new NBA CBA some legit superstars will be making 30 million a year.
A win on the open market is worth roughly 7-8 million dollars, so Kazmir, at 25 wins and 100 million, has actually provided surplus value to his teams.
The NFL’s contract structures are a joke; they have by far the weakest player’s union, and it shows. Tyrod Taylor, for example, signed a 92 million dollar contract this season.. About 8 million of it is guaranteed.
The NBA theoretically has a salary cap but some players make 30 million dollars a year.
And remember, it takes two parties to sign a contract. Kazmir didn’t make that money in a vacuum.
2 WAR=$16,000,000 on Open Market according to fangraphs standards. He’s being paid market value. (Crazy right)
Well sure if he spent his entire career signing free agent contracts, but you’re not taking into consideration the years he should have made the ML minimum or arbitration. a 2 fWAR player is by definition an average major leaguer. If your argument is an average major leaguer should make 100 million dollars over their career, then there’s a basic flaw there. He would be overpaid on the whole as averaging his career earnings per year eliminate the “bargain” team control years.
That’s the wrong argument entirely. He was providing massive surplus value during all those pre-arb years. When he hit free agency the money caught up with his value. Free agents aren’t really being paid for future value – they’re being paid for what they’ve already done while being grossly underpaid. Teams know that’s part of the deal – they’re paying in FA for a player’s decline (generally) while the player is finally getting paid for the 6 years his salary was artificially limited.
And an “average” major league player is worth a lot less than 24 WAR over a career. Kazmir has provided more WAR than Tim Lincecum in his career, for example, and although Lincecum’s career was short, I don’t think you’d call him an average player.
This whole discussion goes to show why players need to be paid based on their production. Every player would be paid the league minimum, then $X per single, $Y per RBI, $Z per strikeout, etc., while time on the DL would be paid at the minimum too. That way, a player would never be underpaid OR overpaid. Makes too much sense to be implemented, imho.
Yesterday they showed Cashner throwing long toss from 120 feet on MLB Network. Now, this guy from the Morning News is claiming he is only throwing 85-90 feet? I will believe my eyes. Still not a good sign that he is not throwing off a mound, but its March 6th, not April 4th.
KLAC is saying that Kazmir has avascular necrosis, the same condition Mike Napoli has in his hip.
I’m a word nerd, and don’t approve of precautionary, there, for Kazmir. Cautionary would be fine, but if he’s clearly “not right”, the “pre” in precautionary doesn’t seem to apply.
I know that’s a standard usage, but I consider it inaccurate.
Postcautionary would seem more applicable. Cautionary would also work.
Precautionary would seem best used when a team pulls a player before anything goes wrong.
Just a nit of mine with current usage.
Have a great day.
Before anyone chimes in on “Grammar Nazi” comments, I’ll say I completely get what you wrote and have felt the same way.
“Precautionary” is never running across a busy highway. “Cautionary” is figuring out how to minimize further damage after a car has already hit you.
I can get behind this reasoning, but you ought to direct the message to the Dodgers, because it’s their choice of word.
Not picking on you, Jeff, just the rich history of language abuse in team press releases.