Prized Athletics left-hander Jesus Luzardo had been nearing his major league debut, but that’s now off the table for the time being. Luzardo, out all season with a left rotator cuff strain, suffered a Grade 2 left lat strain in a Triple-A rehab start Tuesday, the team announced. There’s no timetable for Luzardo’s return from his newest injury.
This is a brutal development for the playoff-contending Athletics, who were banking on Luzardo helping to stabilize their rotation down the stretch. Luzardo, widely regarded as an elite pitching prospect, had been expected to slot into their staff after the All-Star break. The 21-year-old’s forthcoming debut would have been all the more timely with the A’s having lost their ace, Frankie Montas, to an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs on June 21.
Oakland will now have to continue waiting for Luzardo, whose ongoing absence could impact its trade deadline plans. Despite Montas’ loss, general manager David Forst suggested last week the A’s would focus more on upgrading their bullpen than their rotation around the deadline. The team may now have to reverse course in the wake of Luzardo’s setback, though. The A’s rode an underwhelming rotation to a playoff berth in 2018, but expecting it to happen again with this year’s mediocre bunch might be unrealistic.
It always makes me wonder why teams hold pitchers back so much at a young age in fear of injury. These pitchers get injured whether they are babied or not. Use them while you can, and while they are young and can recover quicker. Jon Lester, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander weren’t babied – there’s a difference between overusing a pitcher and letting him throw 120 pitches every outing and holding him back to only 70 pitches a start in the minors. Injuries are going to happen to every pitcher including Luzardo, and I hope they don’t baby him too much.
Kerry Wood and Mark Prior are the most obvious examples of people worn out too early, but you can bring up many examples on both sides of the argument. This calls for a stats guy, not guys remembering things…
In 2003 alone, Prior threw 115 or more pitches 15 times.
That same year, Wood threw 115 pitches or more 9 times (had fewer overall starts as well)
Wood had a start where he threw 141 pitches. I understand taking guys out around 100-110 pitches – the human body simply gets worn down after generating that much force 100+ times. History has shown us that once a pitcher gets to 100-110 pitches, things tend to get ugly in a hurry after that.
Restricting young pitchers to save their elbows by shutting them down early, or limiting them to 70 pitches – if a pitcher is in good shape and they are young – they should be treated like they are young. If anything, we should be babying the older pitchers as they are more prone to injury. Makes no sense.
It’s a lat injury, not an arm injury. Can’t do anything but shrug your shoulders and go “it just be like that sometimes” at it.
Pitch counts and limited innings has not solved the problem. The arm injuries will continue because nobody wants to fix the real issues.
Go on, what are the real issues
Real issues? Throwing a baseball is an unnatural motion and players are bound to get hurt eventually… not sure how you can address that unless you want them to throw underhand.
Other than that, guys are throwing harder than ever, which in turn puts more stress on muscle, tendons and ligaments. How should we address that? “Ok, everyone – don’t throw so hard!”
I’m a little curious though — Luis Severino initially dealt with a rotator-cuff issue and then later suffered a set-back due to a lat injury. There must be some correlation, no? Luzardo of course injured his rotator-cuff, and now has this lat strain.. If anyone out there has some knowledge about this, I’d love to know more info!
The A’s pitching staff have had more strains than a weed shop this season, do some yoga.
“Brutal” is a bit of an exaggeration