Melvin Mora’s earned more than a token All-Star invite. Ron Belliard’s injury couldn’t have come at a worse time. Armando Benitez shows the dangers of jumping to conclusions based on small sample sizes. Plus more news and notes from the Orioles, Rockies, and Mets, BP-style.
On second thought, maybe that is broken. An MRI showed a small fracture and a chip on the pitching hand of Curt Schilling. This isn’t an indictment of Paul Lessard or the D’backs staff–everyone I talked to said this is possible and that the MRI was timely and definitive. Schilling’s biggest problem is not holding the ball, as has been reported, but the extension of the hand as he releases. The timetable for his return will be based almost entirely around how fast he can extend the hand pain-free and symptom-free. Most of the guesses I’m hearing are around a month, which is definitely bad news for the Snakes.
The training room in the BOB is a crowded place these days. Matt Mantei is in there getting a cortisone shot in his pitching shoulder, Mike Koplove is getting treatment, Brandon Webb is working out his tendinitis and should be back in the minimum, David Dellucci is still a bit concussed and cut up after a collision, and Randy Johnson is still a week away from taking the mound. That’s a lot of bodies.
The Dodgers are trying to figure ways around the problem of Darren Dreifort. Talk has backed off from surgery and instead, they’re going to the “Sunday Pitcher” theory. (I’m sure someone will step up and tell me who that theory was named after.) Dreifort would start on a schedule different from the other pitchers, spotting him in on extended rest with the hopes of getting 20 starts from him and having him available in the playoffs, if they make it that far.
Sammy Sosa was ejected from yesterday’s game with the Devil Rays for using a corked bat. The lumber broke on a grounder to second base in the first inning, and after examining the fragment, crew chief Tim McClelland ejected Sosa.
Almost immediately, speculation began that perhaps Sosa was cheating all along, that his 505 career home runs, his MVP award, his All-Star appearances, and his status as a baseball icon were all the result of cork. Like the steroid story that persisted through last summer, it’s just another way for the media to tear down a player, to point and say, “he’s not that good.”