thurdl sports

NIH: Pitcher roundup

I believe this is what they call a good news/bad news situation. Burried at the bottom of the most recent Notes article at the Nationals home page were some updates.

The good: Pedro Astacio had a bullpen session without any pain. Of course, they're still not giving any kind of timeline for him. On the other hand, they are giving a timeline for John Patterson, and that just keeps sliding further and further back. It does look like he'll return to the major league club. Hopefully by the All Star Break at this point.

The bad: There's been a new diagnosis of pitcher Ryan Drese. What had originally been called flexor tendon sprain was revealed, after an MRI, to be something called a partial tear of his ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Which...is a long stream of words that adds up to "it's a heck of a lot worse than we thought". Plus, I think I have my next injury to research, but not tonight. Anyway, it's going to be 2-4 weeks of rest, followed by a re-evaluation, followed by potential surgery, which would likely be season ending.

Pitcher injury woes, the theme of the 2006 season, look like they're not going to be ending anytime soon. Oh joy. At least they'll keep me busy on this blog.

Except... Except your humble blogger is going to be taking a vacation, and the NIH will thus be going dark starting Thursday night and continuing until probably the last day in May. I'm off to New England, where I will be taking in a game at Fenway, assuming it hasn't been completely washed away by then. This won't be my last post before the vacation (I've already got that one planned), and when I get back, there might be some changes in the way I conduct the Nationals Institute of Health. Stay tuned, and good health.

posted by thurdl @ 10:58 PM