Aug. 20: Pearson underwent an MRI, general manager Ross Atkins tells reporters (Twitter link via Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet). The team is “not initially overly concerned,” per Atkins. They’ll get official results and provide additional information later today.
Aug. 19: In an ominous bit of injury news, the Blue Jays have placed top pitching prospect Nate Pearson on the 10-day injured list due to “tightness” in his right elbow, manager Charlie Montoyo tells reporters (Twitter link via Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet). Pearson, who alerted the Jays to some discomfort following last night’s start, is being sent for some testing but did say he’s feeling better this morning.
Lauded as one of the game’s top 10 overall prospects entering the year, Pearson’s debut effort was excellent. The righty flashed a power fastball and hurled five shutout frames against the Nationals, punching out five batters along the way. Things have been rough since that time, though, particularly in his two most recent outings. Pearson has yielded a dozen earned runs with more walks (10) than strikeouts (9) in 11 1/3 frames — all while serving up a whopping five long balls. Pearson seemed to avoid his fastball last night, throwing it just 40 percent of the time after leaning on it at a 53 percent clip through his first three outings.
The hope for both the Jays and baseball fans in general, of course, is that Pearson is dealing with a minor ailment and can quickly bounce back to health. He’s missed time as a prospect, but never due to elbow or shoulder woes. (An intercostal strain and fractured forearm have previously suppressed his workloads.) Scouts seem to agree that the 23-year-old Pearson carries legitimate top-of-the-rotation talent, and he’s viewed as a critical core component for an up-and-coming Jays club.
For the time being, Jacob Waguespack is up from the alternate training site to take Pearson’s spot on the roster. The Jays are will also activate righty Trent Thornton off the injured list to make a start in tomorrow’s doubleheader. That pair gives the team some rotation depth, and the Jays also have Sean Reid-Foley, T.J. Zeuch, Thomas Pannone and Sam Gaviglio at their alternate site.
Seems like a coincidence
How?
Fastball usage was down, Seems more like he was hiding something Not wanting to “max out”
Sliders are harder on the elbow than fastballs. But it’s possible he wasn’t thinking straight and imagined that not throwing fastballs would be easier on his elbow. It’s also possible that throwing all those sliders hurt his elbow.
Most of those fastballs seemed to be around 98 so he didn’t appear to be holding back on them. And he’s been too reluctant to throw fastballs all year, perhaps because they keep getting hit out of the park because he waits to throw them until he’s backed himself into a bad count.
This would fall on the Catcher and/or whoever is calling pitches from the bench. Pearson’s best pitch is his fastball and last night it felt like he went breaking ball-crazy.
Pearson has been 97=100 MPH with fastballs lately BUT he can’t get it near the strike zone.
Hyperbole-much? Yes his fastball command has not been the greatest. But let’s stop pretending he “can’t get near the strike zone”. Over exaggeration.
As in because they wanted him out of the rotation? He’s been hit hard enough that they could have optioned him with no questions and saved service time.
Did you watch the game yesterday? Sure looked like he was throwing heat. I watched his previous starts and I think he may have even touched 98 yesterday. Honestly seems like he may have started overthrowing/overpowering which I could see leading to some discomfort. I agree his fastball usage was down comparatively speaking but his fastball was live yesterday, and I think had his emotions not bubbled after bad call/play he would have had maintained his 94-96 that I had seen more of his previous starts.
last inning he pitched to the #9 hitter and never threw a fastball. His best pitch, against a poor hitter… something wrong. The last inning or two he threw his other pitches-fastballs were rare. Velocity was good but not location
Before anyone comes in spouting nonsense, there is no correlation with Velo and TJ surgery. The TJ monster shows no bias in how hard the pitcher throws. Any pitcher at any time can get bit. All pitchers are ticking time bombs and some are just luckier than others. There are things you can do to hopefully mitigate aganist the odds, but any pitch thrown over ~90 mph puts enough stress on the UCL to tear.
Hopefully, this isn’t the case and it is just some inflammation. Wish this guy the best of luck.
True, but there is a correlation between reduced velo and incidence of TJ.
Hoping this is more of a “clear his head” scenario more than an injury. Noticed way too many breaking balls were called last night, and perhaps this is the reason for that. This is the first time Pearson has faced any lack of success during his pro career.
Yet another example of a “can’t miss” prospect failing his first time in the majors. This is why teams need to bring their prospects up earlier. Give them a taste of how hard the majors are and send them back down with a detailed plan on how to address their weaknesses. While Pearson is only 23, a lot of teams are keeping their prospects down until age 24 or 25 which is not fair to the kids (see Dane Dunning) and doesn’t help their teams either.
Atlanta regularly brings up prospects at age 20-22 and they have been one of the most successful franchises in the league. I’d like to see other teams follow suit.
Also, let’s hope this is a minor injury for Pearson and a quick 10 day IL stint gets him back on track. TJS puts the kid out until age 25 too.
or just wait longer to bring them up. again, i think prospect timelines must be optimal for proper development. keep the player down too long and they languish. bring them up too quickly and it breaks them.
It really depends how they frame it. If they tell them they want to give them some experience at the major league level to see what they need to work on, they shouldn’t ruin the prospect as it is a learning experience. AAA experience is vastly overrated. The best prospects come directly from AA to the majors. For some reason, teams like Boston are fearful of bringing their kids up (especially pitchers) until they’ve had a full year at AAA. IMO, that can actually hurt more than it can help. Let them get walloped a bit in the majors so they know exactly what they need to work on vs. following their development plans which never seem to work as intended. It’s harder to do this when you are in a pennant race, but there’s no excuse for Boston this year not to give Houck, Mata and maybe even Groome a look in the majors. It can only help at this point.
That just sounds like Boston has a poor pitching development system, not a league-wise issue
Why don’t we just judge each prospect in a vacuum? When they are ready, they are ready. You can’t put a universal rule on development.
also Dunning would have been up already most likely if not for TJS. that’s a terrible example.
and also the Braves just move their prospects quick, but they dont usually jump them past AAA. skipping A- or A-full is not the same as skipping a stop in the high minors.
If they only had September call ups.
There’s a difference between “can’t miss” and succeeding out of the gate. Lots of HOF pitchers have started not just with a bad few games, but with a terrible first year. Provided this injury doesn’t require TJS, I still believe he’ll become the ace of that staff. It just takes most guys more than three games to figure stuff out.
Giolito sucked when he came up. Last year, he figured stuff out and became one of the better pitchers in the AL. He went from can’t miss, to poster child for busts, to a budding star. Pearson just needs time to adjust.
Dunning was kept down until 25 because he missed half his age-23 season with an elbow injury which ultimately led to Tommy John and wiped out his age-24 season.
Nate had 123 innings in the minor leagues. That’s like half a year as a pro. I hardly think he was brought up too slowly.
I think the problem Nate Pearson illustrates is teams babying pitchers, giving them strict innings limits and preventing them from getting enough experience. I think it makes them more prone to injury, not less, because their bodies aren’t used to pitching regularly and then you ask them to do it in the majors. His broken arm was a fluke, but limiting him to 100 innings the year after when he was healthy wasn’t good for him.
In other words, you can’t build up endurance by NOT pitching.
I think the argument with pitching being so volatile is you end up similar to how the cardinals have been with Some of the young staff. You bring them up early start there clock and lose time to either injury or just not being ready, but you are already losing your control of the player. It’s a tough thing to predict timing for I don’t think any club has the answer.
Then you have Harper who has potential but rarely plays to his potential. I think it depends on the guy whether to send up early or later.
This is a bad take. You can’t treat development with a one-size fits all blanket. Not all prospects develop the same. This isn’t a “prospect fail” situation. He’s pitched 3 games. Roy Halladay had an ERA over 10 when he was 23. You want to talk about the Braves calling guys up young? How did that work with Kolby Allard, Huascar Ynoa, Toukki Toussaint, Bryse Wilson? Pump the breaks and let the kids develop without added pressure.
Yikes
Bummer
Sooooo many injuries this year. I get that there was a shortened “spring” training, but were guys really not keeping stretched out and in-shape from April to June? They can all afford some decent home gym equipment and doing yoga or stretches just takes a mat.
If this is eventually a TJ situation, that just sucks and it happens, but I wonder how many of these injuries are related to the shortened ramp-up time.
A few years back, the Jays lost 60% of their starting rotation to Tommy John surgeries in a single week. You’d have to crunch the actual numbers to find out if there’s more injuries than usual this year because there’s usually a ton of them.
Ruh-roh, as Scoobie would say.
Hyrax: Good point. Tom Glavine had a 9-21 record in his 1st 43 starts. Mad dog Maddux was 8-18 in his 1st 30+ games w an ERA over 5.50
Good on Nate for saying something instead of keeping quiet. It is mature and unselfish to put the team ahead of himself. Hope it’s nothing. Good luck Nate!
If the prognosis is bad, and I’m hoping it’s not, we can’t blame overuse. Pearson has/was closely monitored from the day he was drafted. Never had a high pitch count and innings were always limited.
Hopefully it’s nothing serious. I brought up before his lack of going deep into games in the minors (if I remember right, they started letting him go deeper in his last season) and the negative affect it could have on him when he was called up and expected to go deeper into games while at the same time he’s facing better hitter, so the intensity and the stress of pitches is greater on his body.
I think we were discussing the aspect of lengthening pitchers and the harm it could do when putting limits on a young arm. Pearson is playing with the big boys and they know how to hit balls thrown very fast.
Throws hard, somewhat odd motion, coupled with a few injuries already and it doesn’t look good for Mr. Pearson.
Hopefully he can go the Borucki route but in a shorter time frame.
Remember when people thought blue jays had a chance? Vlad jr looks pretty overhyped same with biggio. Ryu has been a flop we all anticipated due to horrible splits and moving to al and to top it off there top pitching prospect goes down yikes.
Biggio is underrated IMO. FYI, he’s got an 872 Ops right now. Unless people expected him to have a 950 OPS not sure how he’s overrated.
I do remember. As a Jays fan I thought it was insane. Right now they’re sitting just behind the 8-seed, and well behind the 5-seed they would have needed.
Biggio can play about 6 positions so I’m not going to call him overhyped nor has Ryu been a flop. Vlad is fat and needs to learn how to run the bases. Put the fork down and hit the Peloton.