152 replies to this topic

[Jon Shepherd]

Name a draft expert that sort of predicted this.

 

About 20 of them after it was announced retropredicted it.

[Stotle]

I'm good.

Guys... try googling "moving on".

The answer is none.  Anyone who predicted potential injuries resulting from HS workload would have no business putting Bundy in the top 5 overall of a stacked draft class, and I can tell you I know of no expert who had Bundy outside of the top 5...

[Stotle]

About 20 of them after it was announced retropredicted it.

Ha; exactly. And probably 18 of those 20s are "experts" who rely on Baseball America to give them info on the vast majority of draft prospects.

[Matt]

Oh well, he should at least be ready for the 2015 season and he'll still only be 22 right? Things could be worse.

[Pedro Cerrano]

I can't imagine the Orioles intentionally holding Bundy back from having surgery if they knew he needed to go under the knife in March.

 

What could possibly be gained from it?  "Oh, it looks bad there, he will definitely need it eventually but let's hope that rest can magically fix it so that he can face big league hitters in the 2nd half of the season. And if he does end up needing surgery (which is likely) we'll just shoot ourselves in the foot and lose about 5 months of his career."

 

That just seems completely absurd to me. 

 

I think James Andrews saw the arm, said surgery wasn't needed and to rest it, the condition got worse, and now they're having surgery.

[Pedro Cerrano]

And I'm absolutely still pissed about this.

 

This organization's luck with developing young pitching is something that you couldn't make up.

[You Play to Win the Game]

I think James Andrews saw the arm, said surgery wasn't needed and to rest it, the condition got worse, and now they're having surgery.

 

So PRP, a ton of rest, and long tossing means the MRI is now definitive, as to where it wasn't before all the rest and treatment?

 

And what they had to gain was a long shot in him helping the Birds in October.

[You Play to Win the Game]

The answer is none.  Anyone who predicted potential injuries resulting from HS workload would have no business putting Bundy in the top 5 overall of a stacked draft class, and I can tell you I know of no expert who had Bundy outside of the top 5...

 

I didn't mean to suggest they'd predicted TJS or that he should be outside the top 5, just that some mentioned his workload in HS and a potential for health issues at some point. Is that inaccurate? 

[Stotle]

I didn't mean to suggest they'd predicted TJS or that he should be outside the top 5, just that some mentioned his workload in HS and a potential for health issues at some point. Is that inaccurate? 

Yes. The only thing ever mentioned regarding overuse of Bundy was one weekend at the end of his junior year. And I don't recall any of the usual suspects in draft coverage mentioning it outside of that summer. Further, no one knocked Bundy for it in any of their rankings. 

 

I know this because I regularly cross-checked my rankings with the rankings provided by the big names and I was continually shocked that no one seemed to be even considering ill effects of the previous summer. Further, Bundy lightened his pitching load that prior summer after his "long weekend" and skipped events on the scouting circuit, which further raised red flags for me. But, like everyone else who was evaluating and speaking with industry evaluators, I ultimately came down on the side of the fence that said nothing in Bundy's past was concerning enough to likely have any lasting effects.

 

And no one has any clue if this injury is even related. There could have been any number of events between 2010 and 2013 that could have themselves, or in the aggregate, led to this ultimate conclusion.

[You Play to Win the Game]

I will retract that part of my argument then. Fair enough. 

[Stotle]

I will retract that part of my argument then. Fair enough. 

To be clear, I was not calling you out at all. I just don't want a narrative to start that there were actually folks who saw this coming. The folks claiming that made isolated comments three years ago, ignored those comments and ranked Bundy as a top draft prospect, and are now trying to say "I told you so."

 

There were definitely people in the scouting industry that were not as high on Bundy as the media portrayed -- and a number who had Archie Bradley as the better draft prospect in Oklahoma (I was right there with them right up until the end of May). Bundy's senior year was really impressive, so I can't blame anyone for assuming the overuse that junior year weekend was nothing to be concerned with -- heck, I was one of those people. 

[You Play to Win the Game]

Well the folks who are pulling the "I told you so" there certainly are at fault. I can't disagree with anything you're saying here.

[BobPhelan]

Could it have been a borderline undetectable tear and when he came back he tore it more? No matter what this sucks but its not a death sentence.

[McNulty]

I can't move on.  There is just no rational reason to think the Orioles knew that surgery was required and instead chose to hope the tendon magically re-attached itself.

 

Look, I'm all for calling out the organization for being stupid when they are being stupid, but this is so obviously not that situation.  They were crazy cautious with Bundy since the moment they drafted him.  Why would they all of a sudden change that and try to get him to pitch with an elbow that they knew required surgery?

 

Also, why are we even assuming that it is the Orioles making the final decisions about whether he goes under the knife or if he tries rehab?  It's Bundy's arm.  He and his family has been heavily involved with his training and health since HS.  They aren't going to agree to a recovery plan that obviously had no hope of success.

 

IIRC, they usually replace the UCL when its more than 30-40 percent torn.  Complete tears are rare.  Its a judgment call.

[JeremyStrain]

Are people seriously pulling the "I told you so" card? No one was telling anyone so 2 years ago. There was a bunch of concern over Strasburg and his mechanics, and even he still went #1 overall.

 

I felt like a dummy cause I came down on the side of not worrying much about DB because of his freakish workout ethic and good mechanics.

 

I've been out and about all day so I haven't really kept up with the dialogue since this came out. It sucks, no question there, but it happens. I think I remember reading there is an average of like 30 TJ surgeries on pro baseball players per year since the early 2000's. I know BP was working on some data on this, but I can't remember where I saw it.

[McNulty]

http://www.baseballp...#commentMessage

 

Really good stuff here.  In the comments too.

[You Play to Win the Game]

The crux:

 

The results were encouraging. After an average follow-up time of 70 weeks, 30 of the 34—88 percent—“had returned to the same level of play without any complaints.” On average, it took them 12 weeks to get back into games, and the same tests they’d taken prior to PRP confirmed their improvement. Only one of the 34 had ligament reconstruction surgery in the period spanned by the study. It’s important to note that there was no control group, so we don’t know how many of the 34 might have made it back with rest and rehab but without PRP. But we do know that with PRP, almost all of them avoided going under the knife. Based on those results, the paper concludes that “PRP is an effective option to successfully treat partial UCL tears of the elbow in athletes.”

 

Team doctors and trainers aren’t stupid, and they probably wouldn’t continue to waste time (and many millions of dollars) and stake their reputations on an experimental procedure with no history of success. The instances when the rest-and-rehab approach didn’t pan out tend to stick in our minds more easily than the successes, and since players’ PRP use isn’t always public knowledge, we don’t necessarily know when it works out. But what data we do have suggests that PRP is often worth the wait.

 

The next time I hear that someone is experiencing elbow soreness, I’ll probably still catch myself assuming a season-ending injury. But there is some reason to hold out hope. And if rest, rehab, and PRP don’t pay off, we can’t conclude that they weren’t worth trying.

 

I rescind my criticism of the Orioles. Great read.

[Jon Shepherd]

The crux:

 

 

I rescind my criticism of the Orioles. Great read.

 

Mind you almost all of that is conjecture.  PRP, what it does, how much time it needs, etc. is largely an unknown.  All the BP guys, including Nick, are great at what they do in terms of bringing a level head to the discussion and providing great information.  However, remember that much of this is ongoing research.  We simply don't know a lot and that can manifest in a large variety of different approach to apply what is thought as well as known.

 

This is not a volley against the passage...just an overly stressed acknowledgement that there is a lot of well informed hand waving.

[McNulty]

Mind you almost all of that is conjecture.  PRP, what it does, how much time it needs, etc. is largely an unknown.  All the BP guys, including Nick, are great at what they do in terms of bringing a level head to the discussion and providing great information.  However, remember that much of this is ongoing research.  We simply don't know a lot and that can manifest in a large variety of different approach to apply what is thought as well as known.

 

This is not a volley against the passage...just an overly stressed acknowledgement that there is a lot of well informed hand waving.

 

The point is, the O's were justified in trying PRP instead of going directly to the TJ surgery.

[Jon Shepherd]

The point is, the O's were justified in trying PRP instead of going directly to the TJ surgery.

 

Sure.  They would have been justified not doing it either if they saw damage there.