Michael Pineda Having Surgery For Torn Labrum

Two years ago, Michael Pineda was one of the best young starters in the world, and Jesus Montero was one of the best prospects in the world. If we look at pictures of ourselves back then, will we all be wearing butterfly collars and bell-bottoms? Seems like another world.

Pineda’s back making rehab starts, though. The first two went well, and in his third one on Tuesday night, he’s hitting 94 with his fastball. Here’s a video taken by Trenton Thunder beat writer Mike Ashmore:

Brian Cashman is one hell of an honest, candid general manager, and he’s at it once again in the wake of this week’s disastrous Michael Pineda news. Via Wallace Matthews at ESPN New York:

There’s really not any other way to put it. Trading Jesus Montero (and a guy) for Michael Pineda (and a guy) was a massive decision. For Michael Pineda to develop a tear in his shoulder labrum is for something to go wrong. Ergo, this is a massive decision gone wrong. But not every general manager would put it that way.

Unfortunately, a lot of the analysis implicitly assumes that all labrum injuries are the same. They’re not. The reports suggest that Schilling’s injury was not the same as Pineda’s.

Fortunately, Baseball Prospectus’s Jay Jaffe has done the grunt work, identifying 67 pitchers with labrum injuries, then distilling all the details until he found those with injuries that seem truly similar to Pineda’s.

Michael Pineda’s torn labrum is a pretty important baseball story, and here’s how you know it’s a pretty important baseball story: Curt Schilling has weighed in on it. Schilling, you see, had surgery on his labrum nearly two decades ago, recovered quickly, and went on to have an outstanding career. What does he think about Pineda’s situation? Let’s ask him, because he’s only too willing to tell.

Michael Pineda was given an approximate 12-month timetable, and Schilling thinks he can be back much sooner than that. In fact, Schilling seems to think he should be back much sooner than that, provided he’s disciplined in his rehab. Schilling believes Pineda can recover quickly because Schilling recovered quickly.

Pineda’s out, and 19-year-old Campos is pitching in Class A (and pitching exceptionally well, for what that’s worth). Montero’s playing regularly for the Mariners, and Noesi’s in the Mariners’ pitching rotation.

Which seems like a big win for the Mariners, even with both Montero and Noesi off to slow starts.

This article from Larry Stone was actually written more than two years ago, and was written because of Erik Bedard’s labrum tear, and not Michael Pineda’s labrum tear. At the time, Michael Pineda didn’t have a labrum tear. At the time, Michael Pineda was barely a thing. I mean, he was a pitcher, and a very big pitcher, but he wasn’t yet a can’t-miss pitcher, and, er, you know what I mean. Bedard, Pineda, it doesn’t matter. Stone’s information is still valid.

Stone looks at five pitchers who underwent labrum surgery and tracks their recoveries. This is some ground that Grant already covered in the update below, but also some new ground. An (extended) excerpt:

There are injuries that take time to heal. There are injuries that take a lot of time to heal. And then there are torn labrums, which take a lot of time and even more luck.

But if pitchers with torn labrums were horses, they’d be destroyed. Of the 36 major-league hurlers diagnosed with labrum tears in the last five years, only midlevel reliever Rocky Biddle has returned to his previous level. Think about that when your favorite pitcher comes down with labrum trouble: He has a 3 percent chance of becoming Rocky Biddle.Even more ominous: Biddle’s career ended a few months after that article was published. The article goes into great detail about the perils of shoulder injuries for pitchers.

Michael Pineda has a torn labrum. That’s a thing in his shoulder, and that’s a lousy thing for a pitcher to tear. If there’s any silver lining for the New York Yankees, it’s that the tear is small and should be able to be repaired arthroscopically. But it’s still a torn labrum, and a torn labrum is still one of the worst things that can happen to a pitcher’s body.

So when did this happen? Has this been the problem the whole time, or is this a new thing? Brian Cashman has his suspicions:

When people noticed Michael Pineda’s continued reduced velocity in spring training, this is what they were afraid of.

When people heard Michael Pineda experienced a setback during a minor-league rehab assignment, this is what they were afraid of.

The New York Post’s Joel Sherman, who first reported that Pineda was being shut down, exchanged emails with Yankees’ General Manager Brian Cashman:

Sherman reported that the Yankees will determine how to proceed with the young righty over the next few days. He will be examined by the team doctor to determine if something beyond the originally diagnosed tendinitis is creating the problem.

Good news for the New York Yankees: Michael Pineda is already feeling “much better”, at least according to Michael Pineda. Who is the same guy who repeatedly denied that his shoulder hurt when his shoulder hurt. But anyway.

Neutral news for the New York Yankees: Michael Pineda won’t pitch for the Yankees in April. Don’t take my word for it. Take this guy’s word for it.

The results were not positive:

David Waldstein has additional information:

As part of the offseason trade, Pineda underwent a thorough physical, including a shoulder MRI that he obviously passed. If anything in there is wrong, it’s gone wrong fairly recently. So Yankees fans can’t complain about damaged goods, not that that’s any consolation at all. Like, seriously, that is zero consolation.

This is among the messages we woke up to Friday:

The missed location, the body language, the result ... Pineda retired eight batters. He allowed seven hits, three walks, and six runs, while striking out two. His fastball reportedly topped out at 94, but mostly sat in the same 89-92 range it’s been occupying all month. His changeup and slider were said to be okay, but Pineda works off of his fastball, and his fastball now isn’t what it was.

The Yankees have the starting-pitching depth, and as we’ve written here before, if Pineda hangs out in triple-A for a little while, the Yankees would gain an extra year of team control. You’d think that sort of thing would matter to the Yankees the least, but it still matters.

If Pineda comes out blazing in his final few Grapefruit League outings, everything that’s happened up until now will be forgotten. If his fastball continues to underwhelm, the Yankees will have a very interesting decision to make.

How critical is it that Pineda re-discover his missing miles? Andrew Marchand writes:

We’re dealing with small sample sizes here, so we can’t say anything conclusive. It stands to reason, though, that Pineda would have more success with faster fastballs than with slower fastballs. It’s definitely not good news that his velocity is down.

One more time: it’s early. Pineda could be great in 2012. But the Yankees probably expected a little more in the early going than they’ve seen.

Michael Pineda’s been in the news because his fastball velocity, in his Grapefruit League debut, was down significantly from 2011. There was a wave of concern, followed by a wave of people instructing the concerned people to not be concerned. But here’s Will Carroll, concerned:

Carroll isn’t so concerned with Pineda’s reduced velocity. That doesn’t seem to be the issue. Rather, Carroll uses Pineda’s presence in the news as a jumping-off point to express concern about his new handlers. Carroll talks about the Yankees, and Joe Girardi, and Larry Rothschild, and he notes:

Monday, Michael Pineda made his Yankees debut. The good news was that he didn’t allow a run in two innings, generating a pair of strikeouts. The bad news was this:

Not so, says Dave Cameron at FanGraphs: