6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Today's Birthday

Dallas McPherson's Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Back And Other Roster Notes

• As promised, Dallas McPherson's going under the knife to remove a herniated disk.

  "I've been in limbo for six months, having good days and bad days, wondering if I should have surgery or not, whether I would make it through spring training," said McPherson, who was limited to 101 games the last two seasons because of back problems and has been in pain — often excruciating — all winter.

  "But I get a good feeling from the doctors that this is going to work. Yeah, I'm going to miss the first half of the season, but my back has been a problem for four or five years, and I've missed a lot of time because of it. To get it fixed and to be able to move on is a sense of relief."

  During the operation, known as spinal fusion, the defective disk will be removed, and pins and screws will be inserted to hold the vertebrae in place. Scar tissue will be cleaned out, and a substance known as bone protein will be injected.

  Ooh, lovely. I would draw your attention to the part above, because it's rather important. Back injuries tend to be chronic, and the Angels knew about his condition as early as 2003 ($), when he lost time at AA Arkansas due to a bulging disk in April.

  There was a long, ugly thread on this topic at BTF in which some brat with the nick pkb33 used the disingenuous pissing that so many grade-school-level "fans" often do once they discover that some player or other isn't going to work out (and at this point, I've given up on Dallas), namely misrepresenting the value of rookies under the rubric (as quoted by Softball-Playing Human)

  Again I say: PBK, you're making the argument that McPherson would've failed if he'd played, and now that he's out for the season due to injuries, you're saying, "See, he failed! I was right!"

  This line of reasoning, of course, is the purest crap. If you were going to argue that Dallas's back problems were going to resurface and that was an issue, fine, but to complain that he was an ex ante bust generally (or specifically, because of his stupefying strikeout rate) and then cackle afterwards because his health kept him off the field, well, that's just triumphalism in action. I have no doubt but that the Glaus-loving crowd will adopt the same sort of "logic".

  Finally, our voice of Reason (well, not so much anymore):

  One issue raised way back when was dead right -- the team may be good at hoarding young talent, but its record in figuring out how/when to deploy it on the MLB level is ... spotty. There is a Stoneman/Scioscia disconnect that bugs. Also, why the hell didn't McPherson have surgery at least two years ago, if not four? Sure, it's no fun to open up on the spinal cord, but it's also not much fun to miss parts of four of the past five seasons (or whatever) with back-related injuries. I think the team's medical staff royally effed up.

  Whether they did or not is a good question for Will Carroll.
• Kendry Morales' knee has scar tissue from an earlier injury, but no new damage.
• The A's have come to terms with reliever Justin Duchscherer, for one year and $1,187,500. Duchscherer really needs to clean up those redundant letters from his last name; I propose Justin Duck, just like they did back in the good old days of Ellis Island, where ignoramus immigration clerks dropped polysyllabic and hard-to-Anglicize names into the sea, along with the rest of the baggage.
• The Marlins and White Sox are likely "winners" in the Darin Erstad sweepstakes. Erstad might still return to the Halos, but either of the above teams are said to offer more playing time. He needs as little as he can get.

Tech: Thank You, Brother!

Labels: angels, dodgers, tech

// posted by Rob @ 7:55 AM link  //  2 comments