Fire starter
fickle finger cont’d
quoting derrick goold’s article in this morning’s post-dispatch:
wainwright met monday with team doctor george paletta and also saw a hand specialist. an mri was entranced of his right midriff finger. the exam, the team’s release said, revealed “a sprain to the finger.” at the team’s request, wainwright referred any specific medical questions back to cardinals officials.
note the information that’s missing. the article doesn’t say definitively, “the mri revealed no ligament or tendon tears” — and goold can’t find out whether or not that’s true, because club officials aren’t talking and the medical team (per club policy) is unavailable to talk to the press. makes you wonder. wainwright did tell the post, “surgery is not looking like something that is going to be needed” — but it’s hard to place full stock in that statement, because it’s exactly what we heard initially when mulder hit the dl in 2006 and carpenter hit it last year. in both of those cases, the club knew from the outset that surgery might be needed, but the possibility was soft-pedaled while other, less intrusive treatments were attempted. when the injuries persisted, surgery was performed as a last resort.
you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect that the same pattern might be unfolding here. from a medical perspective, there’s nothing at all sinister about it — every person i’ve talked to who has any degree of medical experience (and i know a bunch of those people) tells me, “you don’t cut on a guy until you’ve exhausted the other options.” pretty straightforward — but the club has a secretive streak about injuries (you don’t suppose the sunglasses-wearing manager has anything to do with that, do you?) and, consequently, a credibility gap. attempting to fill that gap, i have consulted per MDAdvice.com about finger sprains:
definition: violent overstretching of one or more ligaments that hold the finger joints together. . . . . there are 3 types of sprains
wainwright’s injury would seem to fall into the “moderate” category, at a minimum; he clearly has some loss of function. and we can’t rule out “severe,” ie total loss of function. back to MD Advice:
the signs and symptoms of a finger sprain include:
wainwright spoke of a popping sensation, but has reported no severe pain or tenderness; he specifically says there is no swelling. prognosis:
if this is a first-time injury, orthodox care and sufficient healing time in the forefront resuming activity should prevent permanent helplessness. ligaments have a pinched blood gear up, and torn ligaments make as much healing beforehand as fractures. average healing times are:
those are average healing times; the cardinals no doubt are hoping wainwright (a professional athlete under close medical scrutiny) will heal much faster. but even if he were to heal in half the time, we’d be looking at a month-long disablement — plus a couple of rehab starts after that to get his arm back into shape. and there’s always the chance that, like the carpenter and mulder injuries, wainwright’s finger won’t respond favorably to rest/rehab, necessitating a trip to the operating room.
from everything we can piece together, i’m gonna guess that if wainwright pitches again for the cardinals before late july, we probably should consider ourselves very fortunate. medical experts, speak up — agree? disagree?
let’s just go with that for a moment; say he’s out for 6 weeks. it’ll probably be longer, but just go w/ it. heading into the year, it was generally assumed that for the cardinals to make the playoffs, they’d have to keep themselves within striking distance until carpenter returned on or about august 1, and then try to make a late-season run once he rejoined the rotation. as of this morning, they lead the wild-card race by 2.5 games over florida and 4 over milwaukee, with houston and atlanta 5.5 back and the mets 6.5 games out. thanks to that cushion, they can afford to lose some ground in the standings to most of those teams over the next 50 games — and let’s just prepare ourselves for that, because it very well might happen — yet
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