CHICAGO -- Derek Shelton came into summer camp in late June telling players to be honest about their bodies. While that obviously applies to share and follow protocols if they are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, he also meant for their arms, legs, muscles and other parts of the body, too.
While spring training is usually at least six weeks, the summer camp to prepare for the season was going to be only half as long, three weeks. Because of that, the Pirates -- and players and teams across the league -- were concerned about keeping players, particularly pitchers, in good baseball shape.
Those concerns were justified. During the first week of the season, the Pirates had to place two pitchers on the injured list for baseball-related injuries: Clay Holmes with a forearm strain, and Kyle Crick with a lat muscle strain.
Both players were placed on the 10-day injured list on Tuesday, with Holmes' stint retroactive to July 25. There is no timetable for either player to return yet.
What the Pirates have experienced is not out of the ordinary. Since opening day, 14 pitchers league-wide have been placed on the injured list for reasons other than "illness" or "undisclosed." That doesn't account for those who started the season on the IL for injuries that occurred during summer camp, including Marcus Stroman, who tore a calf muscle, Clayton Kershaw, who has a back injury, and Justin Verlander, whose season is in jeopardy because of his forearm.
In total, more than half of the teams in the league (17) have placed a pitcher on the injured list with an arm or muscle injury. The short summer camp and long layoff could be partially to blame.
And the injuries may not be just confined to 2020, Trevor Williams opined recently.
"It's gonna be interesting — this season, next season and the season after — what injuries will look like," Williams said. "I think there's going to be an uptick in soft tissue injuries — obliques, groins, just weird soft tissue injuries. I think there's going to be a rise in arm injuries for pitchers over the next couple of years because of the lack of innings this year, carrying into 2021, especially in a full season, and then carrying over to the next season.
"I know we're not going to know for sure if one thing led to another, but we just have to take our body of work as much as we can for this season. It's going to be interesting to see what guys do this offseason — if they change their offseason routine, their offseason workout program, their throwing program — to try and get ready for a full season next year with only a limited amount of innings under their belt."
While pitching coach Oscar Marin kept in constant communication with his pitchers during the shutdown and the Pirates never stopped throwing, that is not the same as being around the organization. Some players didn't have access to a gym, and in Williams case, he went over a month and a half without getting his shoulder stretched or his hips adjusted. Normally, that would be part of his routine between starts.
So while he kept pitching during the shutdown, it wasn't the same for his body, so he and Marin will have to adapt.
"We'll reassess at the end of the season where my body's at and where my inning count is to go into an offseason [after] an abbreviated season, meaning not 150-plus innings," Williams said. "People have rehabbed a 60-game season going into a full season the next year. So I think staff and players league-wide are going to be talking to each other: ‘What are you going to do this offseason? How are you going to prepare?’ There's going to be a lot of information shared between the players in the Pirates and our union, just trying to figure out what we what we need to do."
So is Williams concerned that something could happen to him in a year or two?
"Absolutely not. I’m more concerned about getting guys out every five days."
