Baseball Writing

Tummy Trouble

From Anthony McCarron in today's Daily News:

"When I'm watching him pitch and see the heat pad and then see him throwing 88-89 (miles per hour), it's almost like he's protecting something and pitching at 70%," said ex-catcher John Flaherty, who played in the majors for 14 seasons and is now a YES Network analyst. "But everybody says he's feeling fine, so obviously that wasn't the issue."

Still, Flaherty thought it odd "to see a day when (Sabathia) can't control his fastball and his velocity is down. When I've seen guys amped up, they're throwing gas and they're all over the place. But it was like he never really got going."

Television cameras showed him in the dugout with a heating pad on his side while the Yankees were hitting, but he insisted he was using it only to keep warm. The game-time temperature was 56 degrees, and it had rained much of the afternoon leading up to the first pitch.

Sabathia has had two abdominal strains, both serious enough to warrant time on the disabled list, so he was using the heating pad as a preventative measure, Brian Cashman said. With Cleveland, Sabathia was on the disabled list with a right oblique strain from March 25-April 15, 2005 and again from April 3-May 2, 2006 with the same injury.

"I can understand why people would ask the question," Cashman said. "But he has a history of early oblique strains and it (the heating pad) is a preventative thing, nothing more than that. It's a program they developed to combat that.

"I can honestly tell you there is nothing bothering him, other than maybe the way he pitched. There is no health issue that we're hiding. If there was something that was troublesome, we'd do something about it tucked away where no one would see anything. He wouldn't be doing it in the dugout."

Will Carroll, who writes extensively about injuries for Baseball Prospectus, checked the data for Sabathia's start and noted that his release point was consistent early but fluctuated later. Carroll called that a "possible indication" of either fatigue or tightness, although there may be other explanations, as well.

Both Flaherty and Jim Kaat, who pitched in the majors for 25 seasons, said they thought it was unusual for a pitcher to use a heating pad on his side during a start. Flaherty said he'd seen pitchers use them on their arm or elbow, "but never on their midsection."

I agree that the monstrous-heating-pad-on-the-oversized-gut is worthy of attention, not just typical tabloid sensationalism. I have never seen a pitcher use something like that in the dugout, and Sabathia's performance was so cringe-worthy that you wonder if the appearance was more than just a coincidence.

And if the Yankee season wasn't off to a sour-enough note, here's something to go down with Hal & Hank's corn flakes this morning.