Monday, May 14, 2007

Injury Updates: Mauer, Kendrick, Felix, and Beckett

Joe Mauer: Mauer is still experiencing some discomfort in his hamstring, so while he's eligible to come off the DL on Sunday, that looks unlikely at this point. I'm not sure how much extra time he'll need, but it hopefully won't be too much longer until the best catcher in fantasy returns to the lineup. They might activate him at DH to start, but that's of little interest to us fantasy leaguers as long as he's able to hit effectively and stays in the lineup.

Howie Kendrick: Kendrick has been out since April 17th with a broken finger suffered on a hit-by-pitch, but it seems possible that he'll return next week. He'll be going on a minor league rehab assignment soon, and as long as he doesn't feel any pain in his finger, he'll likely rejoin the team next week.

Felix Hernandez: King Felix will return tomorrow evening to face the Anaheim Angels. Like I said before, I advise against starting pitchers in their first game back. Felix hasn't thrown in a game since feeling pain in his elbow on April 18th, and he'll likely be limited to 75-80 pitches. Even though he's facing a weaker offense, it was an elbow injury and I'm still worried this will mirror the Fracisco Liriano situation from last season. Liriano left a start with an elbow injury, missed a start, said he was fine. He tried pitching through it, but re-injured himself his first start back and needed Tommy John surgery. This situation is different, however, with Seattle being very cautious that he was 100% before activating him. Keep a close eye on his start tomorrow night and see how he throws, and most importantly what he says about his arm the following day.

Josh Beckett: Beckett left his start yesterday with torn skin on the middle finger of his pitching hand...the same injury that has plagued him his entire career. Sure enough, in my last post about him, I stated how he didn't have any blister problems last year, and then his next start it happens for the first time in over a year. Odds are he'll miss a start, or perhaps the Red Sox will play it safe and DL him for 15 days to make sure it fully heals. If you can get ace value for him, deal him. Considering this injury tends to linger and/or re-occur with him, see what his value is like on the trade market so you don't have to worry about it again. I know this will probably raise a red flag with potential trading partners, but see if someone will take the risk with him having such a fine start to the season. In hindsight, I should have recommended this given his past, but I thought after a full year without problems, he might have figured out how to deal with the issue.

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