Zack Greinke has fractured rib; Latest-- May miss more than 3 starts, possibly all of April

[brewers19]

bucksman4]He should have to forfeit the money he's supposed to be receiving for the time he will miss. To be playing basketball during ST is just dumb. The Brewers should not have to pay someone to sit on the bench because of a non-baseball related injury.

We've missed your cheery disposition around here lately. And you're wrong. The Brewers should have to pay someone to sit on the bench because of a non-baseball related injury, because there's a contract and Grienke did not violate said contract when he injured himself. Much of the reason contracts exist is to prevent what you're advocating. Can't cherry-pick after the fact.

[Principessa21]

Ugh, how obnoxious. I understand he's fit enough to play basketball and could have cracked a ribbed any way, but he needs to make smart decisions. I hope he gets fined.

[berniebrewer4life]

Ugh, how obnoxious. I understand he's fit enough to play basketball and could have cracked a ribbed any way, but he needs to make smart decisions. I hope he gets fined.

Dumb move. Maybe they will Kangaroo Court him and make him pay something that way. I donno, it sucks, but he's only missing 2-3 starts right? Hopefully it won't effect him all year long.

[TooLiveBrew]

Even if he has to miss 5 starts, it would likely be CIN, ATL, PIT, WAS, and HOU. That would take the team through most of April, and it doesn't look like he'll miss many games the team needed him to win

 

I get the point here, the opponents probably aren't very good. But the team needs him to win all the time, not just against good teams. Now someone like Manny Parra, Wily Peralta, or Josh Butler could be making these starts, and that's obviously a huge dropoff. Imo there's no downplaying this injury, it's huge.

[logan82]

Even if he has to miss 5 starts, it would likely be CIN, ATL, PIT, WAS, and HOU. That would take the team through most of April, and it doesn't look like he'll miss many games the team needed him to win

 

I get the point here, the opponents probably aren't very good. But the team needs him to win all the time, not just against good teams. Now someone like Manny Parra, Wily Peralta, or Josh Butler could be making these starts, and that's obviously a huge dropoff. Imo there's no downplaying this injury, it's huge.

I agree this injury may have huge repercussions. I was just telling some friends over the weekend how I thought the division may come down to who gets off to a better start. Advantage Reds.

[PrinceFielderx1]

I agree that this injury is huge also, and so that's why the Brewers number one pitching prospect or the next best available player should replace him. That would be Mark Rogers. No way on Peralta and Rivas. I'd chose Rogers over both of them without question.

[TooLiveBrew]

I would too, but the question is his health. Great, he played long-toss & was pain-free. Chris Carpenter just had a pain-free bullpen session. It's just not the same as being game-ready.

[danzig6767]

Even if he has to miss 5 starts, it would likely be CIN, ATL, PIT, WAS, and HOU. That would take the team through most of April, and it doesn't look like he'll miss many games the team needed him to win

 

I get the point here, the opponents probably aren't very good. But the team needs him to win all the time, not just against good teams. Now someone like Manny Parra, Wily Peralta, or Josh Butler could be making these starts, and that's obviously a huge dropoff. Imo there's no downplaying this injury, it's huge.

I agree this injury may have huge repercussions. I was just telling some friends over the weekend how I thought the division may come down to who gets off to a better start. Advantage Reds.

I would agree with everyone who thinks that the odds are pretty high that the division could come down to 1-3 games and thus even if his injury only cost the Brewers one game, that one game could be significant.

 

That said, why do you think that the division may come down to whoever gets off to a hotter start? A myriad of reasons can play a factor as to why one team has a better first 20-30 games, but baseball is an incredibly long 162 game season. Because of that long grinding schedule, we see on a yearly basis that multiple teams start off good or bad, but come 75-100 games in, things have changed fairly significantly, much less come 162 games in.

 

Obviously i'd prefer the Brewers start off well, but just as easily as a team can start out 20-10, they can go say 10-20 or 12-18 in their next 30 games. Schedules can also play as sizable factor. One team can start out with a significantly tougher schedule early on, but that reverses itself at a different point in the season.

 

One thing about a baseball season compared to a sport like the NFL, teams don't often fluke their way to a playoff berth. That long 162 game schedule tends to award the best and most healthy teams when it comes to who gets into the playoffs. The teams with glaring weaknesses just will struggle badly to avoid having those weaknesses being exposed.

[xisxisxis]

I would agree with everyone who thinks that the odds are pretty high that the division could come down to 1-3 games and thus even if his injury only cost the Brewers one game, that one game could be significant.

 

 

 

There's a lot of variables that ultimately will play a role in what team takes the division. Unlike football, you can't simply slot a baseball player in for another and expect them to contribute at the same level. So the team that has fewer starts lost by the top players is going to have an advantage. Right now the cards have taken the biggest hit with the loss of wainwright, but at present the brewers are running second with our starting RF likely not ready to start the season, our starting/main catcher will be delayed, our number one pitcher will miss 2-3 starts, and Rogers, Gamel, and Parra are delayed with injuries that could easily delay/impact the first few weeks to over a month of the start of the season. While it isn't the end of the world, even brewer fans with LASIK brewer goggles have to admit it isn't a good start to the season.

[logan82]

Any really good stretch by either team would put them ahead. Look what our good start in 2008 did for us. It allowed us to hang on the rest of the season and get the wild card. The margin of error is already so small getting behind could hurt us.

 

The best teams don't always make the playoffs. Teams can under or over perform their talent and do so every year. Seattle is a pretty recent example of that.

[danzig6767]

No question xisxisxis that health is a major factor in baseball and in most sports really. That's why at the end of my post i said, "that long 162 game schedule tends to award the best and most healthy teams when it comes to who gets into the playoffs."

 

It's tough enough to try and replace slightly above average starting players, but when it comes to the best players on your team, particularly high quality starting pitchers, it's nearly impossible.

 

The only positive from this early rash of injuries that you pointed out is that none look to be overly serious and thus it should limit the amount of games lost. Also, thankfully they aren't happening only a few days before breaking camp.

 

Going forward all we can do as fans is hope the injury gods treat to Brewers decently this year because on paper at least, it looks to be the best team Milwaukee has had in awhile to start a season. Bad luck with injuries though can derail most teams chances of reaching the playoffs, particularly when injuries hit the better pitchers in a starting rotation.

[PrinceFielderx1]

I would too, but the question is his health. Great, he played long-toss & was pain-free. Chris Carpenter just had a pain-free bullpen session. It's just not the same as being game-ready.

I suspect that we will find out the status of Mark Rogers here very soon. I heard that Rogers was supposed to throw BP (Tuesday) which was today and hopes to start later in the week if all goes well. Here is the quote,

 

Top Brewers pitching prospect Mark Rogers, whose progress has been slow

this spring by a stiff shoulder, is scheduled to throw live batting

practice on Tuesday and hopes to pitch in a game before the end of the

week.

link

[dlk9s]

I think it's hilarious that people think Grienke was stupid for playing basketball.

[danzig6767]

Any really good stretch by either team would put them ahead. Look what our good start in 2008 did for us. It allowed us to hang on the rest of the season and get the wild card. The margin of error is already so small getting behind could hurt us.

 

The best teams don't always make the playoffs. Teams can under or over perform their talent and do so every year. Seattle is a pretty recent example of that.

Saying a team under or over performed their talent can sometimes be subjective though.

 

What i was more trying to say is that in a sport like the NFL which only has a 16 game season, a handful of fluky type of plays can influence more whether a team makes the playoffs or not. Say a missed last second field goal in a 17-16 that bounces off the uprights causing a loss and a deflected pass just off the finger tips of a defender on a late game winning or losing drive resulting in another loss, that can literally dictate that team missing the playoffs. On the flip side, another team in your NFL division can catch a few more late game changing plays to win the division.

 

Granted, some bad luck can influence a playoff berth in baseball also, but the 162 game schedule doesn't make each individual fluky bad break as devastating as a sport with a much shorter schedule. Sure, some guys on your team may over/under perform what you'd have hoped for, but in the end over the course of that season, how they actually performed will have had more impact in whether your team made the playoffs vs an abnormal amount of bad breaks on the field doing your team in. Football on the other hand with it's short 16 game schedule can allow for a pretty average team who caught a lot of breaks on the field to sneak into the playoffs.

[logan82]

You mean like giving up a walkoff home run to the team you lose the division to by 2 games? Football is obviously more random but baseball is random as well. It can easily swing 6 games either way.

 

Saying a team under or over performed their talent can sometimes be subjective though.

 

You see teams have a good year one year and completely fall off the next year with virtually the same team. Seattle did it and Arizona did it as well.

[Ennder]

Saying a team under or over performed their talent can sometimes be subjective though.

 

I'm not sure it is subjective as much as it is impossible to prove one way or another. Sometimes a team wins more games than it seems they should and it is because of little things like their bullpen, small ball , good baserunning etc, sometimes it is just dumb luck with run distribution. It is really hard to prove which it was even with all of the stats in front of you.

 

I'm going to disagree with Melvin on how to handle it as well. We should be signing some fringe starter to take the starts and if we reach the point where we have 5 healthy starters we stick them in AAA for depth or we release them if need be. I'm already completely uncomfortable with our depth at SP and this just makes things worse. We cannot absorb an injury or two in any way right now and we have to assume we will need to.

[danzig6767]

Saying a team under or over performed their talent can sometimes be subjective though.

 

I'm not sure it is subjective as much as it is impossible to prove one way or another.

That's pretty much the definition of subjective. An opinion that really can't be consistently proven factually while it's not subjective to say that any team who finishes last in runs scored had a bad offense assuming they weren't devastated by injuries.

 

I'm not saying that there never are certain situations where a team really and clearly seems to have over or under performed expectations, but more often than not i don't buy blanket observations that a team over/under performed just because preseason number analysts say team A, B, C, and D should win close to X number of games. Besides the obvious major factor of health on teams, players aren't and have never been robots. Some are quite consistent and some are often more erratic. Some perform better or worse in a given season for a variety of potential reasons.

 

So yea, if say the Phillies stay relatively healthy and yet only wins 80 games, i'll agree they clearly under performed realistic expectations. If though any number of teams win or lose around 10-13 more games than their supposed projections say they should have, assuming reasonably neutral health issues, i'm just generally not quick to chalk it up to those teams supposedly under or over performing to finish with the record they did.

[Invader3K]

I feel a bit better after sleeping on this. It was like a gut punch to me reading about this on Twitter yesterday afternoon. I was fearing the worse, but now it sounds like it's not too bad. It's still disappointing news, but not the end of the world.

[davemakovec]

I think it's hilarious that people think Grienke was stupid for playing basketball.

I whole-heartedly agree. Seriously, pickup basketball? That's a completely random injury, and if he replayed that game one hundred times, he probably wouldn't get hurt in any of them. He could've injured himself fallling out of bed.

 

Here's a hilarious (and stupid) take from SI's resident genius Jon Heyman. Linky

[And That]

The difference between Greinke and a replacement level player over 3 starts isn't that great, probably less than a win. It is certainly not insurmountable. If it goes much beyond 3 missed, the much steeper the impact.

 

The Reds haven't had a major injury yet, but chances are they will. What worries me about the Reds is that they have the minor league depth to cover a few major injuries, especially in the rotation. The Brewers, well, have Mark Kotsay and Amaury Rivas to fill their holes.

 

I find it hard to believe that Rogers or Parra will be close to stretched out enough to take the 5th starter role. If only even for a few starts. If they only go 3-5 innings a start, that's an awful lot of pressure early on the bullpen.

[JohnBriggs12]

If he's indeed back by April 16th, all but one of the starts leading up to that can be filled by the other 4. Since the season is still 3 weeks away, they still have time to either get Rogers ready, or as I would do, to stretch out Kameron Loe, so he could make a start. They have enough bullpen arms to cover Loe's spot for 2 weeks. He's started before too.

 

Loe then can easily be slipped back into a reliever roll.

[And That]

If you believe Haudricourt, the Brewers have "no intention" of moving Loe from the bullpen.

 

http://www.jsonline.com/s...s/brewers/117557743.html

[CheezWizHed]

I think it's hilarious that people think Grienke was stupid for playing basketball.

I whole-heartedly agree. Seriously, pickup basketball? That's a completely random injury, and if he replayed that game one hundred times, he probably wouldn't get hurt in any of them. He could've injured himself fallling out of bed.

Agreed. Seems like we should be wrapping these guys up in bubble wrap and hiding the salad tongs!

 

When I heard him say that he hurt himself doing something foolish, playing a game of BB wasn't among the things that came to mind.

[And That]

When I heard him say that he hurt himself doing something foolish, playing a game of BB wasn't among the things that came to mind.

Me too - the first thing that came to mind for me is that he was hanging out with Dave Krynzel. Zack Greinke is no Dave Krynzel.

[RobDeer 45]

I admidt I was fired up last night when I first read this. Like what the heck is he thinking. But then I thought, if this is something he likes to do to stay in shape I guess we can't blame him. He's not doing anything that's super crazy. I'm just a little worried right now that he will have some lingering going on that could effect him longer. I really hope this is as minor as they say.

 

I think the whole argument of this race could come down to 2 games is kind of bogus. It's all about where you are at in the last two months and how you play then. Yes I know every game counts but you have to play well down the stretch no matter what. That is the key.