Bedard to have “exploratory” surgery
So they gave him the MRI, rested him, had him go through physical therapy (training, yes) and now he’s going under the knife.
Now technically, that is what it sounds like… something’s wrong, unclear what, you open them up and take a look around. In sports, though, it’s often a lot more like “something’s wrong with the rotator cuff and we’re going to take a look and if we’re there and we see something, we’ll fix it since we’re in the neighborhood and have the surgeon already prepped.”
They know what the range of injury they might find before they start cutting, and whether or not they would fix it on discovery. And sometimes it’s the team being tight-lipped and they know what they’ll see but they don’t want to say (and certainly not before they’ve verified it).
Exploratory surgery that sounds investigative and turns corrective happens all the time — you can go search for “exploratory arthroscopic surgery” and “pitcher” and you turn up Mark Prior in April of 2007 and a host of others. And they don’t always admit it.
We saw this with Gil Meche, where the M’s couldn’t figure out his dead arm, did “exploratory” surgery, said everything was cool, then much later the story changed and they had fixed something during the surgery — which had to be retouched later.
But there’s nothing we can do about it. Hopefully this turns out to be something minor and correctable, and the team can get him back before next year.
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(sorry for the repetition; I just added this as a crabby response in the game thread)
Bedard has an internal shoulder impingement.
That is a pinching of the rotator cuff tendons between the humeral head (top of the upper arm bone) and the shoulder socket.
If it goes on long enough, it reduces the internal rotation of the shoulder, which causes stiffness & pain. It also increases the risk of developing injuries to the under surface of the rotator cuff, or the labrum.
The primary treatment is PT over several months; if the treatment doesn’t reduce the impingement, then the next step is usually arthroscopy, which allows the doc an evaluation of the shoulder joint to see if any thing else is injured (please, no) and also lets them smooth down the rotator, release the arm capsule, reattach/suture anything.
it is a common injury in athletes that perform repetitive “overhead activities”, i.e. throwers & swimmers.
The Adam Jones trade. The gift that keeps on giving.
and over on KJR, Woodward & Kelley feel Bedard needs heart.
Because apparently the need for surgery is just another failure to ‘fight through it’.
So, just to confirm what msb is saying, this is a repetitive motion injury? Is this something that could have been foreseen prior to the trade? Can a guy pass a physical in the spring and then develop a season-ending repetitive motion injury 12 weeks later?
Bizarre.
OMG, I haven’t listened to Elise & Kelley on baseball before.
per Steve, Bedard doesn’t want to pitch for the Mariners next year, “he’s a classic example of a guy who is good at something he doesn’t like to do” (I guess Steve never saw Bedard pitch last year)
Steve also wants to trade JJ Putz (pronounced Putts) ’cause you might get a 4th starter for him, Ichiro has to be traded now, and Felix has to grow up, and Morrow has to be good enough to be a no. 2, RRS is good enough to be a no. 3, Washburn doesn’t want to be here, and they couldn’t even get rid of him at the trade deadline, but “he should close, I think he’d be a really good closer.”
They are both stunned that Josh Fields isn’t signed yet, because ‘hello, you knew what he wanted when you drafted him’
yes. because the repetition has gone on for a very long time, but the tightness may come on during his time here,
Gotta love these media guys who can read minds and expose hidden motivations and character flaws! Such a valuable service.
This is all further proof that god hates us.
I was trying to remember if Mulder got the same “he’s dogging it .. he got no heart” crap during the season when he had what was eventually diagnosed as the same kind of impingement
*sigh*
This season has no bottom, just when I think it can’t get worse . . .
I wonder if this season would qualify as the Mariners’ Worst Season Evah. It certainly should be in the Top 5, no?
I went through exactly what they’re describing here (although instead of athletics it was 58 years of dissolute living). The MRI was inconclusive but the symptoms were relatively clear — doctor said he’d find out exactly what was wrong when he could see it…ranging from impingement to an outright separation of the cuff. There is a large difference in the rehabilitation time between correcting impingement and repairing a badly frayed or torn rotator cuff (and probably a lot of other things as well but as a civilian that was my primary concern). So, while they may be chuffing us it’s also quite possible they really don’t know what’s going on inside the joint. My repair went swimmingly but of course I threw like a girl before the surgery and after so no help for Bedard there.
I think that is the trouble with the shoulder — you really don’t know what may be hidden from view until you go in, and then still not everything may be found/fixed the first time.
I think Bedard should give back his salary for this year, at least compensate the club for all that free medical care and rehab.
Quite the opposite. The pendulum swung the other way as he and LaRussa were dogged for pitching through what was an OB-VI-OUS injury (7.14 ERA anyone?). It was maddening and as melodramatic as it is, sad how they trotted him out there when he had absolutely no hope for success.
Well, unless they finish 10-2 over the last 12 games, they will end up with > 95 losses, which only 6 Mariner teams have ever done before this year, so I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that they will be up there.
Who?
Considering the compounding factors of our payroll, expectations for the season (however misplaced they may have been) and the number of franchise crippling contracts, trades, and developments that this year has had, I don’t think there has ever been a worse M’s season. Compound in the loss of the Sonics, the Seahawk MASH units, and we have the worst year in Seattle sports history by a pretty wide margin.
But at least we have one good team, the Storm!!!!!!! Oh, they are missing one of their best players to a broken foot? Nevermind then…
I hope that Bedard pitches next year, but I don’t expect him to do so. This sounds like really bad news.
I’m not really sure how Bavasi even has a job in baseball at this point- at least in a FO (and yes, I think Cincy’s FO rises above the minimum required threshold needed to be qualified as a FO-barely).
Kelley is a classic example of a guy who is bad at something he likes to do.
Over on ESPN, Buster Olney wonders if the M’s might be better off non-tendering Bedard if the damage is bad. Thoughts?
what is his reasoning? you have to pay him to rehab, you’d have to pay him to stay home. Just getting him off the 40 man?
sort of in reverse, though. Gil complained things weren’t right, they did an MRI, sent him to Pedegana and then to Andrews, neither of whom found structural damage; Meche requested to have exploratory surgery. Andrews went in, and found a ‘minor’ fraying of the labrum, which pretty much every pitcher has. Meche still didn’t feel quite right, and so some 6 months later Pedegana went in, found & loosened an impingement.
it sounds as though (like most shoulder problems) an impingement is hard to diagnose, hard to treat, and hard to deal with if any major work needs to be done
Well, I for one am certainly glad Adam Jones flew back from Winter Ball to have a physical. Got to make sure there aren’t any hidden injuries before a trade.
BTW, I nominate smb for comment of the month.
Re Bedard: Gee, we couldn’t see that one coming now, could we? (Although, to be fair, we’ve at least gotten a little more out of him this season than the Blue Jays did from Mike Sirotka in the infamous “damaged goods” trade they made with the White Sox back in ’01.)
Re Kelley: Though I missed his radio tirade last night, it sounds as if the “haze” in that studio was about as thick as it was in that scene from The Breakfast Club.
I’m not a surgeon but I’ve had about a dozen done to me and “exploratory surgery” is a misnomer. You don’t want to open someone up and go poking around unless you really have to and unless you know what you want to do once you get there. This idea of surgeons “just taking a look” or flying by the seat of their pants with someone’s well-being (sometimes life) at stake is ludicrous. That is why you get an endless streams of medical tests prior to surgeries, that’s the exploration. The team is trying to sugar coat things. We traded the farm (and our first and second born, Jones and Sherrill) for damaged goods and now the team is trying to prevent a siege of Safeco Field by angry fans.
The real shame is that the angry fan siege of Safeco Field would probably be to tar and feather Bedard for not “gutting it out.”
oh, that’s already happening — just read the Times blog comments …
Maybe Silva has a similar issue… perhaps he too has a ‘suck’ build-up in his arm that needs removing? I couldn’t agree more though… call it what it is.