PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – As Pirates GM Ben Cherington stated the headline from Sunday was Carmen Mlodzinski told the Pirates he was not ready to pitch (Sunday) morning. What else Cherington said about the situation as the Pirates put Mlodzinski on the restricted list.
“We made that decision (Wednesday), had the conversation with Carmen, which would knew would be challenging and in the days since then, I think we’ve had very consistent communication with Carmen, even right up to (Sunday) morning and I believe we’ve made a lot of progress with him, what his role is going to be and how we can work with him in that role to help the team win,” Cherington said Sunday afternoon.
“Confident that we’re going to see him pitch again for this team very soon, but he wasn’t ready to do that (Sunday) and going into the weekend we understood and communicated with Carmen that at some point this weekend, we were going to need him to be ready or we were going to have to replace him on the team, in fairness to the team. So that’s what happened to him.”
Cherington said Mlodzinski has not requested a trade and said he didn’t have information as to the reaction from the team. Then he re-worded the earlier response.
“Believe in Carmen, believe in his ability to help this team win games, believe that’s going to happen, based on what I know, believe that’ll happen soon and we can move past this and this is just what’s happening today,” Cherington said.
There has been ‘good progress’ in communication with Mlodzinski, but felt like they had to protect the team and put him on the restricted list. Cherington believes he will pitch for the Pirates on the upcoming road trip which starts Tuesday in Houston.
Konnor injury
Also on Sunday the Pirates put 20-year-old shortstop Konnor Griffin on the Injured List. Cherington said he doesn’t have enough information yet as to when he might return, but said he’s already improved from the early reports of what was diagnosed as the forearm flexor strain.
“We remain optimistic that he’ll be back playing for us before too long, but obviously we’ll be careful with it, need to listen to him and we’ll put him out there when he’s ready to go out there,” Cherington said. “He threw (Sunday), he felt a lot better throwing today than he had a few days ago, so there’s a lot of progress being made, just wasn’t quite there yet.”
LISTEN to what Pirates GM Ben Cherington said about the situation
LISTEN to what Pirates GM Ben Cherington said about the situation
