I was driving home and heard Jason Smith with Jayson Stark and the report went something like this.... Santana to miss next start; teammates feel elbow surgery will be necessary. The speculated on the radio that it might be major although they are hoping something minor like chips that can be cleaned with a scope. I didn't believe it until I saw it on the bottom line... here is the article from ESPN...... http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4420095 Oh the humanity.....
He's been "pitching with the problem" since before the All-Star break? Stand clear of the rolling heads.
Remember that whole "there's an issue with his elbow" thing that turned the Yankees off to Santana? Looks like, unfortunately for Mets fans, it was true. I'm actually disheartened to hear it though. I like Santana.
Sources: Elbow won't need major repair The New York Mets won't know for sure about the status of star pitcher Johan Santana until sometime after he undergoes tests on Tuesday afternoon, but the expectation within the organization, sources say, is that Santana's injury is not so serious that he will require reconstructive elbow surgery. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4421253
That's good news for the Mets. Now they just need to hope that this isn't something that will haunt him.
Bone chips as thought..nothing serious. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/08/25/mets.santana/index.html
Obviously it's not entirely their fault, but at some point here the Mets have to fire the entire training staff.
Injuries probably earned Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel another year of salary. The Mets aren't a great team as constructed--the injuries are killer for sure but the lack of depth was going to hamper them either way (it just wouldn't have killed them by the All-Star break.) It's time for Wilpon to blow this mess up and start over. 2006 was the Mets best chance, now they are getting farther and farther away from the pennant every year.
While at least one issue isn't the fault of any conditioning coaches (Wright's concussion) most have to be. A couple years ago (or was it last year, I can't remember) the Yankees fired their conditioning coach after a rash of injuries. The situation got a lot better. It's those coaches' responsibility to assure that these players' bodies are in the physical condition to stand up to the physical rigors of a 162 game schedule. If a large number of those bodies aren't staying healthy, then yeah, someone isn't doing their job. In fairness, Church's concussion was this year as well, wasn't it? And Santana's elbow isn't the conditioning coach's fault. But overall, yes, this has to make a head roll.
That the situation improved after the coach left means relatively little in terms of causality. Any time you're dealing with an extremely unlikely confluence of events, it's almost assuredly going to "get better" even if no action is taken. You can't necessarily blame that (or the Mets this season) on the conditioning coach. Injuries happen. Sometimes, they'll happen in bunches. Sometimes they'll happen in bunches to players on the same team.
