Cory Wade’s Tragic Shoulder

April 18, 2009 at 11:50 am | Posted in Cory Wade, Scott Elbert | 7 Comments

Tony Jackson’s right – I hadn’t really noticed he hadn’t pitched in nearly a week. So off to the DL he goes, with Scott Elbert coming up to take his place:

It’s a recurrence of the same shoulder issue he dealt with last season and in spring training, nothing major. He says it went away completely for a while, but it flared up again after his most recent outing last Saturday night at Arizona, and it has been so crazy this week that no one seemed to have noticed that he hadn’t pitched since then. Cory said it just kept getting worse after that, but that he is optimistic that a little rest will be sufficient to get rid of the issue. The move is backdated to Sunday, which means he is eligible to return on April 27 and stands a good chance of doing so. He’ll go to Camelback Ranch on Monday, when the team leaves for Houston, and pitch in a couple of extended spring training games there to get himself right.

Wade’s pitched in four games this season, and has been great in three of them (three scoreless outings of an inning apiece, allowing two hits) and awful in one (three hits and two runs in 1/3 of an inning). The poor outing was the only one that came on a back-to-back appearance, and since this is apparently the same shoulder issue that bothered him last season and in spring, you have to wonder: should we be treating him as the right-handed Hong-Chih Kuo? I’d rather live with an effective Wade who’s not available as often as everyone else than no Wade at all. Some guys just aren’t built for the constant workload, and you have to wonder if Wade falls under that category.

The good news is that when Wade missed time in August last season with the same problem, he was fantastic when he returned: 1.45 ERA and a .382 OPS (!!) in 18.2 innings over 15 appearances. So let’s hope we see the same thing this time.

Oh, and today’s game, as you likely know, is on FOX, but it’s hardly a case of putting our best foot forward; we already knew Furcal and Martin were sitting, but now Casey Blake is too. So the end of the lineup is DeWitt (6th/3B), Ausmus (7th/C), and Castro (8th/SS), leading into Billingsley at 9. Not exactly Ethier/Kemp/Blake, is it? That said, if they can still pull this one out with that bottom of the lineup, you know we’ve really got something good going.

7 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

We have something good going.

Comment by LAFord— April 18, 2009 #

Reply
Belisario has lights-out stuff. Let’s hope his arm doesn’t become Joe’s ProctorWade III arm.

Comment by The Dude Abides— April 18, 2009 #

Reply
2: Forget about Belisario blowing out his arm. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. When’s this guy going to turn back into a pumpkin?

Comment by TheSleaze— April 18, 2009 #

Reply
I don’t think he’s going to lose that five MPH and six inches of late movement overnight.

Comment by The Dude Abides— April 18, 2009 #

Reply
Remember that Wade’s pedigree is as a starter. It may be that he can easily go multiple innings, but can’t go back to back.

Comment by Alireza— April 18, 2009 #

Reply
I know this is probably a cliche to anyone who has an HDTV set, but a couple weeks ago I purchased my first one, a 47-inch 1080 made by LG, and you can really see the movement on fastballs. Belisario’s looks absolutely unhittable. He can move it in either direction, but his tailing fastball moving away from lefties is just filthy. Also, when Ox spots his fastball, LOOK OUT. Tulowitzki looked completely overmatched against him the other night with the bases loaded. Then when Ox threw that slider to strike out the next guy after throwing about ten or twelve consecutive fastballs that inning, it was simply unfair.

Comment by The Dude Abides— April 19, 2009 #

Reply
[...] how much Wade was worked in 2008. Even in April, Kensai and I were both ringing the bell on this, as I said at the time… Wade’s pitched in four games this season, and has been great in three of them (three [...]

Pingback by MSTI’s 2009 in Review: Relievers, Part 3 « Mike Scioscia’s tragic illness— November 18, 2009 #

Reply