Taylor Rogers Injury Status

[jorgenswest]

Any injury to a hand is not trivial for a pitcher. Ervin Santana never recovered from surgery to the middle finger of his throwing hand. Rogers has injured the same finger though I think the injury is different. Anyone know of other pitchers with the same injury and how they recovered? What is the recovery time if surgery is needed?

[Brock Beauchamp]

Looks like Park tweeted this a couple of days ago. When I heard what kind of injury this was, I became a little more concerned. As you said, fingers are kinda important to pitchers.

 

[AceWrigley]

Well, if they amputate he'll never have problems with it again. ?

[wsnydes]

6 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Looks like Park tweeted this a couple of days ago. When I heard what kind of injury this was, I became a little more concerned. As you said, fingers are kinda important to pitchers.

 

That seems kinda ominous.  Hopefully everything works out and he heals up quickly.

[Seth Stohs]

He's likely going to need surgery at some point. Either way, it sounds like he's out for the season. 

[Squirrel]

18 minutes ago, AceWrigley said:

Well, if they amputate he'll never have problems with it again. ?

Okay ... that's not funny ... 

[AceWrigley]

51 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

Okay ... that's not funny ... 

True, true. But think of the weird pitches he could develop and be known as "three finger" Rogers. Nah . . . rehab and recovery is probably better. Get well Lefty.

[In My La Z boy]

No reason to suit him up again this year. Some things just happen for a reason. If he doesn't have the finger injury, he may have been traded. Little chance he gets traded over the winter now, no chance we sell low in my opinion. So, Taylor should be with us for spring training 2022, and I think that is a good thing. Also looking forward to seeing many new faces throwing for us these last 8 weeks. We can now put Taylor on the 60 day - and should be looking to add many upcoming rule 5 kids to the active roster very soon. 

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, AceWrigley said:

True, true. But think of the weird pitches he could develop and be known as "three finger" Rogers. Nah . . . rehab and recovery is probably better. Get well Lefty.

The 3 finger fastball could be filthy. Definitely, he'd have a wicked splitter.

[strumdatjag]

2 hours ago, AceWrigley said:

Well, if they amputate he'll never have problems with it again. ?

An amputation could improve Rogers’ spin rate - just look at the story of Hall of Fame pitcher Mordecai “Three Fingers Brown”.   

[bean5302]

In all seriousness, it's barely been over a week. Also, while it seems like Rogers and Santana injured the same area, that's where the similarity ends.

Rogers has a strained pulley tendon, which is almost exclusively seen in activities like rock climbing. Since Rogers evidently must use one heck of a grip, haha. Visiting a rock climbing site shows the only time surgical treatment is recommended for them is when it's pretty dang bad. Based on what I'm seeing, I can't imagine he'll be back this year, but the good news is return to full sport activities, even in the worst case of injury and surgical repair, shows Rogers would be ready for spring training next year.

https://gripped.com/indoor-climbing/the-dreaded-finger-pulley-injury/

Santana had no tendon damage, but it had built up scar tissue due to a long term chronic stress which resulted in his surgery to perform a capsular debridement on his knuckle. Basically, "trigger finger" surgery. Santana elected to wait until February to have the procedure performed and it generally takes 6 weeks to 3 months (sometimes longer) to heal up from what I've read. It sounded like Santana's surgery recovery wasn't as quick as he was hoping and he lost an entire spring training so his shoulder and arm strength weren't built up for MLB action. He lost 4mph on his fastball as a result. Santana gained 1mph back in 2019, but was a pretty late signing. He's throwing at his pre-surgery speed this year.

[Brock Beauchamp]

22 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

In all seriousness, it's barely been over a week. Also, while it seems like Rogers and Santana injured the same area, that's where the similarity ends.

Rogers has a strained pulley tendon, which is almost exclusively seen in activities like rock climbing. Since Rogers evidently must use one heck of a grip, haha. Visiting a rock climbing site shows the only time surgical treatment is recommended for them is when it's pretty dang bad. Based on what I'm seeing, I can't imagine he'll be back this year, but the good news is return to full sport activities, even in the worst case of injury and surgical repair, shows Rogers would be ready for spring training next year.

https://gripped.com/indoor-climbing/the-dreaded-finger-pulley-injury/

Santana had no tendon damage, but it had built up scar tissue due to a long term chronic stress which resulted in his surgery to perform a capsular debridement on his knuckle. Basically, "trigger finger" surgery. Santana elected to wait until February to have the procedure performed and it generally takes 6 weeks to 3 months (sometimes longer) to heal up from what I've read. It sounded like Santana's surgery recovery wasn't as quick as he was hoping and he lost an entire spring training so his shoulder and arm strength weren't built up for MLB action. He lost 4mph on his fastball as a result. Santana gained 1mph back in 2019, but was a pretty late signing. He's throwing at his pre-surgery speed this year.

Another thing that deters me from any straight-up Santana comparisons is the fact that Ervin was in his age 35 season when he attempted to come back from that injury.

Santana was a decent, but not great, starting pitcher in his age 35 season. While the finger may have played a role in his inability to return to MLB as a productive player, age 35 is exactly the time when you expect a pitcher of Santana's ability and performance to start tailing off in a big hurry. Most pitchers with his profile don't even make it to their late 30s in MLB, seeing Santana tank in his age 35 season was not a surprise, with or without the injury.

In fact, a decent comp to Santana is Happ, who last posted an acceptable season in 2019 with a 92 ERA+ (50 IP in 2020 don't count in my eyes). That was his age 36 season.

So I guess we shouldn't have been surprised when the 38 year old, 2021 version of JA Happ turned out to be a giant dumpster fire.

[Dodecahedron]

This explains why he was not traded.  Potentially or likely being out for the year would not help anybody.

I'm glad he is staying with the Twins.