Baker Injured
Reader MarkW alerted me to this in the comments, and Joe C confirms: Baker is headed to the DL and won’t make his Opening Day start.
His apparent injury is “right shoulder stiffness,” which sounds like it could either be bad or nothing. The immediate fear here is that he’s following in Crain’s footsteps and getting injured for a year immediately after signing a long term contract. That kind of thing infuriates me.
But the other possibility is that they just don’t think he’s ready for the season (he has a 6.85 ERA this spring), and are giving him a little extra time to get ready down in Ft Myers. More like the Nathan/WBC situation than the Crain/Contract situation.
Of course, ultimately “shoulder stiffness” doesn’t mean anything, and we’re going to have to wait for more information to come out. As MarkW pointed out, we can only hope that this isn’t like the Bonser situation where “soreness” rapidly became “season ending surgery” with nothing in between.
Since Baker hasn’t pitched (in an actual exhibition game) since March 27, he’s eligible to come off the DL on April 12, so he’ll miss a minimum of about a week of the season. 1-2 starts. But he did pitch in a AAA game yesterday, and threw 5 scoreless innings. There is no indication at this time that he hurt himself during that start, though he only threw 58 pitches. (It is also not explained why he was pitching in a AAA game. My assumption is that they knew he was injured … but then why have him pitch at all. Or that they knew he wasn’t ready and wanted to backdate his DL stay.)
Stay tuned for more information, folks.
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It is actually quite common for major leaguers to pitch in minor league games at the end of the season. They just need to get work in. Considering yesterday we only used Dickey and Humber, since they are competing for a spot. Baker needed to get his work in somewhere.
and by season i mean spring training season.
After watching Dickey/Humber do their thing yesterday, I think the Twins will be fine even if Baker does hang out on the DL for just a little while. I REALLY hope this is a precautionary move- we need Baker to compete.
Since Slowey is the most ready to go, he should probably start the Opening Day game, right? Or do you think Liriano will get the start?
It has already been announced that it will be Liriano. So the rotation stays the same, everyone is just pushed up a day. Dickey is scheduled to make the start next weekend in Chicago. The 10th I believe. The wind in chicago can make the knuckleball do tricky things.
Way to read the article, Erica. Sigh.
It’ll be interesting to see Dickey’s start. I have the feeling it will be Livan-esque: either very good or very bad.
but unlike Livan, we know this will be temporary. With Livan, there was a very real chance he could have been on the team all year. Dickey will be back in the pen once baker comes back.
I’m actually glad Livan was on the team last year. He “won” a lot of ballgames (even if he got lucky with lots of run support), and he started out with a few very good outings. The young pitchers talked about how he steadied them and gave them good advice about recovering from a bad inning. I think it was probably helpful to have a veteran around at first to give the young guys confidence. The only mistake was hanging on to him for so long.
I realize my opinion is in the minority.
How exactly does a 22 year old rookie say “Why did the team sign this whale who can’t pitch at all, when my friend who is just as good as I am is stuck in AAA?”
Answer: “Having Livan around is really good for me, because I’m learning a lot.”
We really have no idea if Livan was actually helpful. I’m not going to say he WASN’T. Just that if he hadn’t been on the team last June/July, we probably would have made the playoffs.
Oh, and um, wins? Not exactly important to measuring a pitcher’s success. A pitcher who gives up half as many runs would have won every game Livan won, and probably more.
Right.
I’m going to stop this discussion now. Livan isn’t on our team Nor is Sidney Ponson, so who cares. Lets just laugh at whatever team has them.
Mets and Royals.
“Contenders.”
I WILL laugh, thank you.
I bet that Sir Sidney comes back to bite us this season. It will be painful, but the Twins will lose to that nincompoop. Guaranteed.
Wow, I was mentioned in a blog (and the bloggiest of all blogs at that!) I feel like I could be the next Jim Souhan!! or not… or dont want to be…
Okay, I’m done.
Let’s hope Baker is fine and it really is either “soreness” or the fact he hasn’t pitched all that great to push him starting on opening day. Speaking of, anyone else going to Opening Day!? Liriano v Hernandez should be a good one.
Liriano and Hernandez have faced each other before.
Liriano went 5IP 0R 6K 1BB 4H. Felix went 7IP 3R 3ER 8K 1BB 5H.
The Twins won.
Let’s hope for a similar outcome this time around, but with more innings from Liriano.