M.A.S.H. Report

Update on a few injuries

Felix Pie – He has been found to have a torn left latissimus dorsi muscle which will not require surgery. He will though be out 3 months recovering from it.

Mike Wuertz – Should be able to come off the DL any day now. The team is reporting that he should be pitching his 3rd and final rehab outing Wednesday.

Ted Lilly – He is ready to come off the DL and plans on starting on Saturday vs Milwaukee. He went 7 innings in his last rehab start on Tuesday.

Brian Sanches  — He is planning on joining the Marlins on Monday after his required time on the DL is up.

How Sleeping Patterns Affect Players

Sleep is often an overlooked aspect of a player’s health and ability to play. Russell Carleton at BaseballProspectus looks at some general effects of bad sleep habits. The Portland Trail Blazers have decided to address the issue with some positive results.

Differences between X-ray, CT (cat) Scan and a MRI (link to a more in depth article).

X-rays – Useful for only looking at solid body parts (bones). – Machine cost = $6K to $7K

CT (cat or Computerised Tomography) scan – Highly sensitive x-ray that is more detailed than a normal X-ray. It can also pick up soft tissues in the final image that x-rays can’t. Machine cost = $200K

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging ) – Uses 2 oscillation magnetic fields to magnetize hydrogen atoms for detection. Picks up non-bone tissues extremely well, including any non-normal tissues (tumors). Machine cost = $1 to $3 million

Sometimes a player will have an initial x-ray or CT scan and wait until they can get an MRI. The reason is pretty simple in that at around two million dollars a pop, a MRI machine is not always available everywhere.

Pitcher aging curves

MGL at the The Book Blog put out a $100 charity bounty recently for someone to find any kind of aging curve for pitchers. This could be any subset of the overall pitching pool that goes from a lower value and then peaks and finally drops off. All he was been able to find is that pitchers start at their peak at age (study started looking at 21 year olds) and remain at that pitching level until age 28 to 29. At that age, they then begin to show the signs of aging.