Friday Bantering: The death of arms

The term ‘dead arm’ has never been used so much in a one day period.

Some statements stand out. Gibby saying ‘dead not injured’. That’s a line that doesn’t tend to make you feel better.

Dead arm is something that pitchers talk about. You hear about it mid-spring or sometimes mid-April. Normally a pitcher will go from throwing mid-90s (or whatever) and for a start he’ll be throwing 80s. I’d guess that Josh Donaldson’s throws to first went from mid-80s to 40s-50s. That seems a little more serious.

Josh came into camp with an arm problem. Gibby said it was ‘hanging’, another term that would be hard to define. It does worry me that he had this hard to define thing at the start of camp and a hard to define thing at the end of camp.

Now, we did see him throw, in some spring games, and I don’t remember thinking something was off. He didn’t play a lot of third, but we did see him there.

On the flip side, I didn’t see him hit a ball hard all spring. His spring training numbers were .148/.303/.148. No extra base hits in 33 PA. We don’t get to see batting practice. I wish we did, I’d like to know if he’s making hard contact in BP.

We are told there is no injury. I’d like to know if they’ve actually checked. I’d like to know there if there has been an MRI or anything, or if a doctor has checked him out.

They are talking about DHing Josh, but....he isn’t hitting the ball hard. I’m not a big fan of Morales, but he hit one to the track yesterday. And he had 5 extra base hits this spring.

The team knows more about it than I do, they know if he looks good in batting practice. They also know how hard it would be to talk Josh into going onto the DL.

I thought the ‘three keys’ to the season were a healthy Aaron Sanchez, a healthy Devon Travis and the team getting off to a decent start. Now I’m thinking that the key to the season is Josh being healthy. Nothing should be as important as getting Josh healthy as quickly as possible.

I’m very curious to see tonight’s lineup.

Not so much about last night’s game, but my two least favorite themes that sports writers use are:

Player X is soft

Calling injuries players soft gets us players like Josh playing through something he, perhaps shouldn’t.

The team has leadership issues

When you hear this, it often means that a player who didn’t make the team, or feels he should be playing more, or someone in that players group of friends or family, complained. It might not surprise you, but baseball players are just like you and me, they take demotions personally. They can be unhappy. And their family and friends can be unhappy for them. Sometimes they say something unfortunate.

Claiming the Jays, with Donaldson, Martin, Granderson and several other veterans, has a leadership problem is one of those things that irritates me. It’s so easy, you can say it and you don’t have to back it up. If they win, you can say they fixed the issue. If they lose, you can say ‘see’.

I hate overplaying one start, but I’m really interested in how Aaron Sanchez pitches tonight. Win/lose means less to me than how he pitches. I’m sure we are all going to be very carefully watching each one of his starts.

I’d really love a great season from Sanchez and Stroman.

I hate Derek Jeter.

I hated him as a player and I hate him more as an owner or whatever he’s calling himself.