The Washington Nationals won their third-straight game on Tuesday night with young shortstop CJ Abrams continuing his hot start to the season. Unfortunately though, for another member of the Nationals' young core, there was some not-good news on Tuesday as Josiah Gray was placed on the 15-day injured list with a strained flexor muscle around his right forearm, one of the numerous pitchers landing on the IL to start the season with arm issues.
But Nats general manager Mike Rizzo said there was some "good news" from the tests on Gray during his weekly appearance on Wednesday with 106.7 The Fan's The Sports Junkies, which is presented exclusively by our partners at MainStreet Bank — Cheer Local. Bank Local. Put Our Team in Your Office. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender."
On the young right-hander's MRI that revealed no tears to the UCL, Rizzo told the Junkies "I think it's as good a news as you can get when you're talking about a pitcher going on the [injured] list. He had some tenderness in his elbow, I think you could see it the start before, he didn't look himself, in my opinion, and he was pushing the baseball, his [velocity] was down a tick, but didn't feel anything. So good for him, throwing his next bullpen and saying something, we got him checked out.
"The MRI looked as good as you could look. It had some inflammation, but the ligament is really sound, it's thick and it's healthy, so that's a good sign."
The plan now is to give him some rest before the club ramps him up, but the GM said they are "gonna take our time with him and be careful and be patient like we do with all our pitchers."
While MLB and the MLBPA are in a bit of a back-and-forth over whether the pitch clock – instituted last season and sped up for this season – was to blame for a rash of arm injuries to starting pitchers, Rizzo didn't think the pitch clock alone was to blame but said that several factors are contributing, especially the chase to pitch at a higher velocity and with increased spin rate.
"I think all of it has a piece of this puzzle," Rizzo told the Junkies, adding that if it was one thing causing all these injuries we would stop it. "The stickiness of the baseball and the over-gripping it and the pitch clock and the weighted ball workouts for the pitchers, the demand for velocity and stuff and spin rate, and 'every fastball we throw is as hard as we can' and 'every torque on the breaking pitch is as much spin rate as you can' and not only curveballs and sliders, but we also have sweepers and that kinda thing.
"This all takes a toll on the physicality of pitching and I think it has to be a deep dive into how to protect these pitchers a little bit better. I'm certainly not smart enough to fix the problem. I can identify some of the outliers that contribute to it, but this is something that MLB takes very seriously because starting pitchers is key for a lot of teams.
"And when you see these starting pitchers going down at such an astronomical rate then you really have to wonder how you're gonna build these rosters and how you gonna win championships with so many injuries at such a key position."
Listen to the full conversation on the audio player above.