Jason Marquis is probably going to have surgery?? So says Mark Zuckerman (and others, I'm sure. I only saw Mark's this a.m.).
Show of hands, please. This surprises how many people?
The following is cribbed straight from Mark's post, a comment made by someone with the great name of Natsochist. It isn't me, honest, but ol' Natsochist said it better than I could:
Will someone please fire our entire (expletive-deleted) medical staff? This happens far too frequently, and there were plenty of people in the comments here originally saying avoiding surgery was probably a boneheaded move. Identify problems, FIX them, and get the player ready to play well again ASAP.
This level of amateur-hour crap has to stop. I'm beyond fed-up with it, and I'm just a fan. I can't imagine how the players themselves must feel.
OK, back to me now. What he said. Marquis' elbow locked up because, I suspect without any medical training, one of those loose bodies worked its way into a bad place. That's what they DO. That's why you REMOVE them. Was there some hope they'd dissolve or change location? Maybe slide over to his other arm so there was no trouble with his pitching?
The long, long list of injury missteps makes me want to claw my eyes out. If I did that and I was a Nat, the team would say, "His vision is just a little blurry. He'll be fine in a few days and probably won't miss more than one start."
Jordan Zimmermann's elbow is just a little sore. He'll be back in September. Jesus Flores will play again in Philadelphia. Ryan Zimmerman is day to day to day, well, OK, month-to-month.
Mike Rizzo's hair should be falling out over this kind of thing (oh wait! - and we bald guys can make those kind of cracks). At some point, maybe El Jefe stands up and demands an explanation. Let me ask the question for you, boss: Why does it ALWAYS take this team FOREVER to get a realistic read on injuries? How many days have been wasted with treatment that wasn't really proper?
9 comments:
as for Marquis: it's not uncommon for pitchers to try to pitch thru bone chips. it really isn't. surgery was inevitable, but it's pretty common for teams to let the swelling subside and try it again before cutting them open effectively ending their season.
but i agree with your bigger point about the steady stream of slow diagnosis. just don't think that's what happened here, honestly.
(a) You guys have way too much faith in the medical profession if you seriously believe that the Nats have had any pattern of deficient medical advice. Diagnoses do not happen immediately, even in the case of routine injuries or illness happening to "normal" people. And playing professional baseball does not lead to normal or routine injuries at all. All groin pulls or hammies are not created equal, even though they all get lumped under the same name and thus people think that the healing and recovery process should be cookie-cutter as well. It isn't, by a long shot.
(b) Any delay in the Marquis surgery is 100% Marquis's own doing. Once the floating bodies were found, the doctors most certainly told him he would need surgery. The only question would have been when - and Marquis is the one who has to decide that. Athletes are hard-headed and stubborn folks. Athletes from NYC even more so.
Pudge sat out today. You can send flowers to his widow care of the Washington Nationals.
If you want to get all up-in-arms (pun intended) the better question is whether the medical staff do a thorough work-up before signing Marquis. Rizzo says they did, but given his weak second half of 2009 and being left off the Rockies playoff roster, I wonder.
If he did get the 60-point inspection and this really is a new problem I have no issue with Marquis or the Nats trying to play through it before settling on season ending surgery. As for minor cases like Zimmerman, do you really want him completely unavailable for two weeks because of a tight hamstring?
It's been reported that Marquis had an MRI prior to being signed. What more would you have had them do to provide a complete workup? Cut him open?
First anon - I admit I go over the top on all injuries now but with the history, I figure that's understandable. Dave made a good point, too, though the loose bodies thing is a red flag to me. Soreness? Swelling? Yeah, let it rest. Stuff floating around in there! To paraphrase Eddie Murphy in his haunted house routine: GET OUT. GETTTTT OUTTTTTTTTT.
Happy Birthday Mike!
Sorry, but I think this one is on Marquis. The phrase "foreign bodies in the elbow" was in the news after that last disastrous start he made against Milwaukee.
That was your diagnosis right there. It was then up to Marquis to decide to get surgery or "pitch through bone chips,"as Dave Nichols put it.
If Marquis had really taken care of the bone chips back when he knew he had bone chips, he'd be about halfway through his recovery period right now, and might even have been back in the rotation at about the time of the coming of Jeeezus to DC.
Although I erroneously made a comment on Zuckerman's blog yesterday that seemed to blame the Nats, I now get that it's totally on Marquis.
The NaTS sure have had their problems with pitching injuries but, as Boz wrote yesterday (today?), when a team has "too much" pitching that is when it has enough. Marquis cost us a few games and leaves a hole but so far the hole has been plugged. Let's hope Lannan holds up.
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