Some worrying pre-game news about Corbin Burnes
A quick blurb today, in part because I’d forgotten Saturday’s game is actually earlier than Friday’s. Maybe the Phillies do the same king of thing as the D-backs, with their 5:10 pm first pitches on Saturdays? But I do want to discuss the news, reported by Nick Piecoro this afternoon, that the owner of the biggest contract in franchise history, Corbin Burnes, will miss time with a shoulder problem. However, manager Torey Lovullo is hopeful that it will be just one start, and he’ll then be able to rejoin the rotation.
“I think it had probably been a start or two that he had been expressing that and feeling (fatigue in his shoulder),” Lovullo said before the second game of a three-game series with the Philadelphia Phillies here May 3. “We were with him. ‘What are you thinking? What do you want to do?’ He’s like, ‘I’m good, let me just keep going.’ At some point, we just all decided the best thing to do, to get ahead of it, is let’s examine it, get some imaging, pull back if we need to and let him potentially skip a start, and he should be good for the rest of the year.”
Burnes didn’t travel with the team to Philadelphia, but went home to Phoenix and had an MRI, which did not show up any obvious problems. “Everything pretty much checked out OK,” Lovullo said. “A little bit of inflammation, all normal stuff for the things he’s been talking about.” His next start would have been in Phoenix on Monday against the Mets. I imagine that will now go to long reliever Ryne Nelson, who threw 68 pitches over four shutout innings in the opening of the series against the same opponents in New York on Tuesday. We’ll see. Fingers crossed it is a glitch and nothing more serious.