Brandon Woodruff’s Shoulder Injury Is No Shrugging Matter

The Brewers announced on Sunday that pitcher Brandon Woodruff’s shoulder pain has been diagnosed as a mild subscapular strain, meaning a trip to the injured list was in order. But while the word “mild” appears, the result is anything but, as it’s almost certain that he will spend significantly more time on the IL than the minimum 15 days, and a trip to the 60-day IL may be in order.

Craig Counsell on Brandon Woodruff: pic.twitter.com/yg2ipI88pL

— Todd Rosiak (@Todd_Rosiak) April 15, 2023

The good news is that the team doesn’t believe, at this time, that surgery will be required. But in talking about the injury, Woodruff didn’t sound like a player who was particularly optimistic about a quick return.

“If this was something that happened midseason, All-Star break, right before or after that time, I would probably end up being done, to be honest, for the season.”

[…]

“I’m not going to rush this, I’m not going to come back too early just for the sake of coming back early,” Woodruff said. “That’s just not going to do anybody any good. I’m going to take my time, I’m going to listen to my body and trust the rehab process and just go through that, and hopefully come back at whatever point that is throughout the season and then try to finish up strong.”

The subscapularis is one of four muscles that make up the rotator cuff and is a stability muscle that is key to keeping the shoulder from being dislocated. It’s one of the muscles less likely to be injured, but the recovery time for pitchers has been significant. Corey Kluber missed three months in 2021, and Justin Dunn has been shut down since the start of spring training, though his case is complicated by the fact that his shoulder problems are more longstanding. In a small study of eight professional players in Japan with similar injuries, the five pitchers had a mean time of 81.5 days until return to play, with a significance variance among the players that wasn’t based on severity of the injury. Looking back at the players 21 months after their injury, none of the eight suffered a recurrent injury to the muscle.

As noted above, Woodruff is on the 15-day IL for now, as he won’t be examined by team doctors back in Milwaukee, where the Brewers will return this weekend, after which they expect to have a better idea on how long they will be without him. Moving him to the 60-day IL doesn’t restart the injury “clock,” so right now, there’s no cost to having him on the 15-day other than not freeing up a 40-man roster spot for a few days. That’s fine as there’s no emergency addition to make, and it makes sense to be conservative until you’re more sure of the injury.

However the injury shakes out, the Brewers will be out one of their aces for a good chunk of the season. The rotation was already missing Aaron Ashby, who is going to have arthroscopic surgery on Friday and is likely to miss most, if not all, of the rest of 2023 as a result. The good news is that a couple other things have gone more Milwaukee’s way, so the team fortunately isn’t desperate for pitching. Freddy Peralta missed a total of three months of the 2022 season with shoulder problems, but he appears to be healthy now, throwing harder than ever, and was solid in all three of his starts so far this season, all against serious contenders. Adrian Houser is starting a rehab stint, so he should return in the not-too-distant future.

Milwaukee paying attention to its depth is looking extremely smart right now. Wade Miley was signed this winter to a one-year, $10 million contract without even a definite spot in a rotation that was ideally Woodruff, Corbin Burnes, Peralta, Ashby, and Eric Lauer. The Brewers also extended a minor league contract to Colin Rea after a successful season in Japan, a decision that already paid off in his start against the Padres. Starting the season with Plans B, C, and D for the rotation on-hand (Houser was also on the outside looking in), the team insured itself against bad news about its pitchers, which is typically the type of news associated with pitching. Ethan Small and Janson Junk also are realistic options this year.

As a result of the team’s depth, despite losing a Cy Young contender, our projections still have the Brewers as the fourth-ranked rotation in baseball. Even if Woodruff misses more time, making the 116 projected depth chart innings a stretch, only the fifth and sixth-ranked teams (Mets and Braves) would leapfrog them.

Assuming Woodruff misses three months, here are the current ZiPS projected standings for the NL Central.

These projections are more bearish on the Brewers than our projected standings, but that simply reflects the fact that ZiPS was one of, if not the most, optimistic projection system before the season when it came to the Cardinals. Even with Ashby likely out of for the season and a lot of missing time for Woodruff, the teams’ relative starts have been enough to chop off nearly half of the seven-game edge ZiPS gave the Cards in late March. ZiPS only projects the Brewers to lose a single win, on average, without Woodruff, an extremely small number considering how much it liked him coming in the season; among starting pitchers, his projected ERA+ of 139 was behind only Shohei Ohtani (144) and Jacob deGrom (165).

Losing a top starting pitcher for possibly half a season is never good news, but the Brewers minimized the damage to the team with good planning, and Woodruff’s injury doesn’t look like the type to have any long-term consequences to his career. If the Cardinals hope to get a reprieve in the NL Central race, this won’t provide that, and the Brew Crew look to have one of rotations teams ought to be least happy to face in October.