{"id":4420,"date":"2012-08-24T10:41:07","date_gmt":"2012-08-24T14:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4420"},"modified":"2013-08-29T13:49:54","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T17:49:54","slug":"giolito-to-have-tj-surgery-not-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4420","title":{"rendered":"Giolito to have TJ surgery; Not good"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Giolito scheduled for TJ surgery, to the surprise of few apparently. Photo Eric Dearborn via win for teddy blog<\/p><\/div>\n

Frequent readers of this blog have told me lately that i’m too pessimistic, that I’m “not having fun” with the team and its best record in baseball. \u00a0Fair enough; its kind of difficult to write opinion pieces on a team in first place. \u00a0But even given that, i’ve tried to write some more positive stuff lately.<\/p>\n

However, beware; this is going to be another negative post. \u00a0Because we just learned that our 2012 #1 draft pick Lucas Giolito<\/strong> needs to have Tommy John surgery<\/a> after just TWO professional innings.<\/p>\n

I made my point<\/a> the day we drafted Giolito; you can read this June 5th post or read this executive summary; Giolito by himself wasn’t a bad risk, but combining him with Matthew\u00a0Purke<\/strong> (on the DL all year) and Anthony Rendon<\/strong> (who has had significant injuries in 3 out of the last 4 seasons) puts all of this team’s proverbial eggs into one dangerous basket. \u00a0I thought it was negligent to draft an injury risk, given the major injury risk drafted just the previous year in Purke and the ongoing injury issues of Rendon.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake; the Nats essentially sacrificed most of this draft for the express purpose of freeing up enough money to sign Giolito out of his UCLA committment. \u00a0Check out the known bonuses<\/a> paid in the top 10 rounds; most of them were below-slot and a number of college seniors (with no leverage) were picked. \u00a0Now, every team in the majors was also doing this (an unanticipated side effect of the new CBA draft rules that are not are good for the game, at all, as with most of the new CBA when it comes to amateur players), but the consensus in the industry was that the Nats essentially “punted” the 2012 draft in the hopes of signing Giolito.<\/p>\n

Which would be great, if Giolito was healthy. \u00a0But he wasn’t. \u00a0Here’s a tidbit that I didn’t know: I listened to a Baseball Prospectus podcast two weeks ago and one of Kevin Goldstein<\/strong>‘s guests was none other than Lucas Giolito’s father. \u00a0The conversation\/intervew was great; Giolito talked about what it was like having a superstar baseball kid growing up, what it was like having a little leaguer who could throw 78mph as a 12yr old, and what it was like having a 16-yr old rising HS junior at the Area Code games. \u00a0He also talked through their whole spring of 2012, from the injury to getting drafted to the decision to sign. \u00a0All interesting stuff.<\/p>\n

One tidbit I learned though, having not heard it anywhere else previously, was this: Lucas didn’t have a “sprained UCL” as was widely mentioned at the time. \u00a0According to his father, he had a PARTIAL TEAR of the UCL, NOT a sprain. \u00a0And the Nats drafted him anyway. \u00a0Knowing this, is it ANY surprise whatsoever that the kid blows out the elbow 2 innings into his pro career?? \u00a0 Lets get this straight; a kid who throws 100mph has a partial tear of the main tendon that allows him to throw 100mph, and we think this tendon is just going to magically heal itself? \u00a0A normal person may heal that tendon to the point where you can live your life and not be bothered. \u00a0A professional pitcher, upon tearing that tendon, is always going to have a weakness that eventually will require surgical repair.<\/p>\n

Lets face it; the Nats have had some good fortune with their pitchers having TJ surgery lately and coming back. \u00a0Zimmermann<\/strong> and Strasburg<\/strong> examples 1A and 1B. \u00a0Former top prospect Jack\u00a0McGeary<\/strong> had it and is still in the low minors, struggling to regain his form, an example of a guy who didn’t exactly come back roses from the surgery. \u00a0Taylor Jordan<\/strong> and Sammy Solis<\/strong> both had it earlier this year, one representing a promising underrated arm and the other representing a significant blow to the farm system depth, and they’ll be more test cases. \u00a0And now we have Giolito.<\/p>\n

I read another nats blog this morning who cheerily said something along the lines of, “Well, he’ll get the surgery and we’ll have a 20-yr old in 2014 who can throw 100mph.” \u00a0That statement represents the absolutely 100% best case scenario here. \u00a0Tommy John recoveries are pretty high percentage wise, but they’re not 100%. \u00a018yr olds pitchers who get cut aren’t exactly 100% to return to their prior form either. \u00a0He may never come back from this surgery, he may never regain his velocity.<\/p>\n

Prospect development in baseball is already risky enough; a huge percentage of first rounders never even make the majors. \u00a0But that being said … first rounders who DO make the majors are the core of the stars in this league (don’t believe me? \u00a0Get a list of the 20 best pitchers and look at their draft position; more than half of the “Aces” in this league were first round picks). \u00a0My point is (and was in June) that we should have drafted a safer guy, a known quantity, so that we actually have something to show for the 2012 draft in a few years time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frequent readers of this blog have told me lately that i’m too pessimistic, that I’m “not having fun” with the team and its best record in baseball. \u00a0Fair enough; its kind of difficult to write opinion pieces on a team in first place. \u00a0But even given that, i’ve tried to write some more positive stuff […]<\/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":[185,206,43,731,852,166,19,38,24,853],"class_list":["post-4420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minorspitching","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-jack-mcgeary","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-kevin-goldstein","tag-lucas-giolito","tag-matthew-purke","tag-sammy-solis","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-taylor-jordan","tag-tommy-john"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420","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=4420"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7549,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420\/revisions\/7549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}