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August 25, 2003

Under The Knife

Bad News in Oakland

by Will Carroll

Mark the scoresheet as Neyer: HBP. In his recent chat on ESPN.com, Rob was blindsided by the "gyroball." Like many baseball fans, he'd never heard of the pitch, despite a great Japanese pitcher, Daisuke Matsusaka, making a living off the pitch. Here's a video of the pitch so that you know this isn't a hoax.

I'm unsure of Matsusaka's contract status, but I'd love to see the gyroball make it over here since it's so well documented in Japanese biomechanical texts. (Which are worth a read if you can find them, just for the diagrams. They're obsessed with spirals.) I have an admitted love for knuckleballs so finding another oddball pitch is just a way of finding an advantage--something pitchers have much less of these days. Add in the decline of knucklers--the Tigers, of all teams, released Steve Sparks recently, a move that they'll come to regret--and I know of only one knuckler in the minors. Some organization is going to get smart and find their "failed prospects" and send them back to A-ball and say: "Look, you're either going to get cut or learn one of these pitches." Give an organization a bullpen with a couple knucklers, a guy with a mean scroogie, and a gyroball specialist, and there's a pen no one would want to face. Heck, let's toss in one of the sidewinders, even if they're not so odd these days.

Powered by Grolsch in the fliptop bottles, onto the injuries...

• The strained hip should have been a signal. People came out of the woodwork, claiming that Mark Mulder had been experiencing pain for weeks, but again, the leakproof A's kept the information out of the hands of everyone who follows injury information. Mulder's injury, as you know, is a stress fracture, not a muscle strain--but what does that mean? The definition of stress fracture is clear cut, but the specifics of Mulder's acetabular fracture are much less clear. First, we have no clear cut facts from media reports or sources. Second, the information is a bit unclear. Most reports have the fracture in the femoral head, or acetabulum. Most stress fractures of this type happen at the femoral neck. Add in the note from Susan Slusser that Mulder cannot golf and could have "broken his leg," and the signs point to the neck again.

  Bottom line: Mulder is, for all intents and purposes, done for 2003, both regular and post-season. But what does this injury mean to Mulder's future? Hip injuries are notoriously slow to heal due to poor blood flow in the area, but I haven't heard anyone trotting out the Bo Jackson comparisons yet, and hopefully they won't. With proper healing on a normal timeframe, there's little to indicate that Mulder couldn't return for 2004 fully healthy.

• The A's certainly didn't make it hard on Tim Hudson in his return. Hudson was never tested, kept on a low pitch count, but looked solid in his first game back from being hit on the hand. Hudson didn't appear to have any problems with grip--the major concern--and was throwing all his pitches with only slightly less velocity than normal. As bad as the news is on Mulder, the immediate future looks bright for Hudson. (And let me be the first to publicly lobby for Keith Foulke as Mulder's replacement.)

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