I was reading Will Carroll’s Under the Knife article over at Baseball Prospectus during lunch and read two bits of info that may or may not be publicized:
Fantasy Baseball: Injury Updates From Will Carroll
Carroll on Jayson Werth, PHI:
The situation is a bit less clear for Werth: he has what the team is saying is a mild hip flexor strain, but there are whispers that there's something more serious. The team did hide the severity of Chase Utley's hip injury, but remember that he also played through it. There's no reason to believe the rumors, but it's worth keeping in the back of your head in case we get more info or if Werth stays out more than a couple days.
Should Werth hit the DL, Ben Francisco or John Mayberry would be the players to fill in for him.
Carroll on Wandy Rodriguez, HOU:
After an outing that lasted only 65 pitches and included no strikeouts (but throwing with normal velocity), Rodriguez admitted to the media that he had some shoulder stiffness. Reports from sources close to the team think it may be a bit more than that, with scouts noting that his spring stats were similarly off. While Rodriguez blamed his spring struggles on work he was doing to change his stride and landing, that’s a bit too fine an adjustment to see this kind of negative shift. If Rodriguez was losing velocity or movement due to a change in arm slot or shoulder strength, that’s a bit more understandable. Think of it as a medhead version of the lex parsimoniae. This one is going to bear watching closely, to see if Rodriguez does his normal side work and how he does in his next start.I speculated that he was injured in a recent Roto Roundup post here. I traded Wandy in the UBA league this past offseason as I saw he had a huge increase in innings pitched from 2008 to 2009. He threw 137 innings in 2008 and 205 innings in 2009, so there was some concern for a drop in performance in 2010.
These two situations bear watching for fantasy owners.
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