SEPT. 15: Gausman’s MRI came back clean and he could start this weekend, Baggarly tweets.
SEPT. 13: The Giants scratched Kevin Gausman from today’s scheduled start against the Padres with elbow tightness, per various reporters (including Andrew Baggarly of the Athletic). He’ll head for an MRI as a precaution, per Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle (Twitter link), but he’s not going on the injured list at this point. Gausman initially felt some discomfort playing catch a few days ago and woke up with some soreness this morning, relays Schulman.
Surely, the hope is that Gausman will avoid a serious problem and return in short order. The stakes are quite high for both player and team, though. At 23-22, San Francisco holds the seventh seed in the National League, with a two-game cushion on the Rockies for the final playoff spot. The Giants’ surprisingly solid performance is to some credit of Gausman, who has turned in 46.2 innings of 4.05 ERA/3.54 FIP ball this year. Quietly, the former Oriole has racked up strikeouts at a 32% clip, the eleventh-highest rate among qualified starters. Certainly, he has more than made good on the club’s buy-low $9MM investment this offseason. A healthy Gausman would be a part of the Giants’ playoff rotation if they hang on to a postseason spot.
It’s also highly important for Gausman personally to finish the season at full strength. He will return to the open market this winter in advance of his age-30 season. Between his strong platform year and youth, he’d be well-positioned in a market thin on high-end starting pitching.
Logan Webb will slide up in the rotation in Gausman’s place this evening. The 23-year-old has a 5.23 ERA/3.68 FIP in nine starts this year.
Hopefully everything is okay. He’s been the most impressive rotation piece for the Giants this year. Been looking forward to his starts every fifth day.
We need him, dudes ERA doesn’t show how good he’s been.
Really disappointed the Reds let him go instead of letting Johnson have some more time with him.
I realize there have been many more injuries for many years as compared to “the good ol’ days”, but this abbreviated season there seems to be a LOT more.
And it’s funny, ever since pitchers have been held to a pitch count, there have been more pitcher injuries. I know correlation doesn’t prove causation, but that leads me to believe that pitch counts alone mean nothing.
Or.. you know… pitchers are throwing harder than ever and also throwing more off speed than ever…
Or because said harder throwing pitchers this year were forced to abruptly stop warming up for spring training, and then not play a real game until the last few weeks of July.
Staying in shape and warming up for a season are two different things entierly, and some think that they can be one and the same. In the event of a lengthy, non-injury related layoff like we saw this year. I’ve seen people say “Well it shouldn’t matter if they had to abrupty stop. They should be ready to go within a week or two”, but pitching to live batters for a month, slowly building up your workload, and staying ready doing drills and such are very different. You can’t just do drills for two months and expect to be ready for a season.
Throwing harder doesn’t cause more injuries.
The throwing off speed, especially slider, definitely takes it toll on arms.
Not necessarily, mostly in kids, especially those pitching year round.
Pitchers are throwing so much harder. In 2007, the average fastball velo was 91.7 MPH. Today, it’s 93.7 MPH. I get that in the past, there have been flamethrowers that have lasted for what seems like forever like Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson, but guys like them are more of an excepction, not the norm.
Anyone care to look up average pitches per inning historically or know where to look it up? I’d bet it’s on the rise the last decade.
Pitches per inning and stressful pitches seem off the charts (maybe it’s skewed because I’m a Braves fan). It seems like it takes more pitches for guys to get through innings and they’re higher stress type pitches. Guys might be only going about five innings, but a lot of times they have 90 or 100 pitch counts. Start noticing how many 18+ pitch innings pitchers have and you might be surprised.
It’s not always about how many innings or how many pitches, it’s the stress level of the pitches, pitches per inning, and if there’s any high pitch (18+) innings. You could average eight pitches per inning and go out there and throw 11 innings easily.
Or pitch counts may mean something: a pitcher who never throws enough pitches is more prone to injury, at least on a per-inning basis if not per-day too. It’s like if marathon runners trained by strictly limiting themselves to a mile a week and just lifting weights the rest of the time to prevent injuries.
Imagine if Nolan Ryan came up today. He’d be yanked in the third inning of every start when he approached a hundred pitches. Teams are losing a lot by not finding out who can throw more.
Nolan Ryan is a terrible example to compare other pitchers to. Your post assumes all pitchers tp be the same. Nolan Ryan was exceptional. For every Nolan Ryan there are dozens of average MLB pitchers for whom a pitch count has aided and extended their careers.
Everybody knows about Ryan, but how many people know about guys like Smoky Joe Wood? A dominant pitcher in the late 1920’s A potential HoFer who was ruined by overuse. Where Ryan was exceptional, the example of Wood was typical before teams started treating their pitchers as assets to be preserved instead of expendable commodities.
Good news. He might be the game 1 starter for the Giants in a wildcard series.
Giants need to sign him to help through the rebuild. Something like Lynn’s, maybe 3/40 with some incentives
back in the day, pitchers didn’t throw with max effort like they do now. looking at old film, they look like they were lobbing the pitches…
It’s crazy to watch. I’d be more prone to throw lower as a starter then ramp up as the game goes along. Maybe help the arms in the long run? Who am I to say, just a 30 year old watching baseball on the couch.