{"id":16992,"date":"2021-04-08T16:00:32","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T20:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16992"},"modified":"2021-04-08T16:01:18","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T20:01:18","slug":"denaburg-to-have-tj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16992","title":{"rendered":"Denaburg to have TJ&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/DenaburgMason-via-usatodayhss.com_.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15027\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/DenaburgMason-via-usatodayhss.com_.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/DenaburgMason-via-usatodayhss.com_-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/DenaburgMason-via-usatodayhss.com_-768x461.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption>Mason Denaburg &#8230; in high school, the last time he was apparently healthy.  Photo via usatodayhss.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Tucked into this past weekend&#8217;s worth of crummy news for our team was this little gem: 2018 1st rounder <strong>Mason Denaburg<\/strong> is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.masnsports.com\/nationals-pastime\/2021\/04\/pitching-prospect-denaburg-has-tommy-john-surgery.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+masnsportsNationals+%28Nationals+on+MASNsports.com%29\">going to have Tommy John<\/a> surgery, which will cost him the whole of 2021 and the early part of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a summary of Denaburg&#8217;s &#8220;career&#8221; with Washington:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>2018: Nats 1st round pick, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/draft\/?year_ID=2018&amp;draft_type=junreg&amp;query_type=year_round&amp;from_type_jc=0&amp;from_type_hs=0&amp;from_type_4y=0&amp;from_type_unk=0\">selected 27th overall<\/a> and given a signing bonus of $3M out of high school, more than $500k above slot.<\/li><li>Denaburg fell to #27 because he had &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/nationals-sign-first-round-pick-mason-denaburg-c284060848\">biceps tendinitis<\/a>&#8221; in high school, which meant he missed &#8220;more than a month&#8221; of his HS season.  Nonetheless he was a high projection pre-draft\/pre-injury and needed to be bought out of his commitment to Florida.<\/li><li>He did not appear in 2018, presumably because his &#8220;biceps tendinitis&#8221; never abated and the team didn&#8217;t want to push him.  Fair enough; sitting them after a busy senior year of pitching and showcases happens all the time with prep kids.<\/li><li>In 2019, he finally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=denabu000mas&amp;type=pgl&amp;year=2019\">debuted professionally on June 24th<\/a>, throwing 4 innings and giving up 0 runs.  It remains the *highlight* of his professional pitching career.<\/li><li>He started another 6 games for the GCL Nats, throwing a combined 20.1 innings with a 7.52 ERA before he was shut down with a &#8220;sore shoulder.&#8221;<\/li><li>In the 2019 off-season, he had arthroscopic shoulder surgery to alleviate whatever started bugging him in July of 2019.  I&#8217;m not sure it was ever disclosed precisely what he had done, but suffice it to say &#8220;shoulder&#8221; and &#8220;surgery&#8221; is never a good sentence with a pitcher.<\/li><li>2020 hits, and he suffers a setback with the shoulder in Viera.  He never gets a chance to take the mound after rehabbing the shoulder thanks to Covid cancelling all but &#8220;extended spring training&#8221; camp, which the Nats populated with closer-to-the-majors players who might actually help if need be.  <\/li><li>Now he&#8217;ll miss all of 2021 and probably doesn&#8217;t even project to appear until May of 2022, and if he does he&#8217;ll be on a pretty severe innings limit.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the next time we&#8217;ll see Denaburg he&#8217;ll be in his age 22 season, his 4th full pro season for us, with a grand total of 20.1 innings and having already had injury issues with his upper arm, his shoulder and his elbow.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I thought <strong>Seth Romero<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;career&#8221; with us was bad&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Look, hindsight is 20\/20 I get it.  It is foolish to look at draft picks and play back seat driver (<strong>Albert Pujols<\/strong> was a 13th rounder).  And, yes any pitcher can pick up an injury at any moment.  I get that too.  &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseballprospectus.com\/news\/article\/2197\/prospectus-today-no-such-thing\/\">There&#8217;s no such thing as a pitching prospect<\/a>,&#8221; written by Baseball Prospectus founder <strong>Joe Sheehan<\/strong> in 2003, to stop people from dreaming on young arms until they matriculate.  But man, Denaburg is looking like a waste of a 1st rounder.  Its almost like the baseball gods have gotten the team back for being gifted three no-doubter 1st rounders in <strong>Strasburg, Harper<\/strong> and <strong>Rendon<\/strong> by giving us the likes of Denaburg, <strong>Fedde<\/strong> and <strong>Romero<\/strong>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All we can ask as fans is &#8230; stop drafting HS kids, stop drafting players with known issues (injury or character), and just stick to the script.  College players.  Top programs.  Solid pedigrees.  No injury history.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure what we can expect of Denaburg going forward.  I can&#8217;t imagine any legitimate prospect ranking service putting him anywhere in our top prospects lists going forward.  I suppose he could immediately be routed to the bullpen and, if he can regain some velocity, maybe he moves forward as a reliever?  Does anyone want to bet money on whether he ever pitches in a MLB game?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tucked into this past weekend&#8217;s worth of crummy news for our team was this little gem: 2018 1st rounder Mason Denaburg is going to have Tommy John surgery, which will cost him the whole of 2021 and the early part of 2022. Here&#8217;s a summary of Denaburg&#8217;s &#8220;career&#8221; with Washington: 2018: Nats 1st round pick, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[185,164,2425,373,3788,3565,38],"class_list":["post-16992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minorspitching","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-bryce-harper","tag-erick-fedde","tag-joe-sheehan","tag-mason-denaburg","tag-seth-romero","tag-stephen-strasburg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16992"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17011,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992\/revisions\/17011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}