LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – First, Mike Minor says his sore shoulder isn’t as bad this spring as it was a year ago, when the Braves pitcher was shut down early in camp for several weeks and started the season on the 15-day disabled list.
Then, Minor says it’s a similar discomfort and that he doesn’t want a repeat of his career-worst, injury-plagued 2014 season. Neither do the Braves, who are sending him to see orthopedic surgeon James Andrews next week.
How bad is it? In a best-case scenario, can he hope to avoid starting another season on the DL or at least not missing more than a couple of weeks of the regular season?
In a worst-case scenario … well, he and the Braves don’t even want to go there yet. Questions will be answered next week after Andrews examines him at his clinic near Pensacola, Fla.
“Like I said, I’m not too concerned,” Minor said Friday, two days after the team announced he was scratched from his scheduled start Sunday due to shoulder stiffness. “It would really surprise me if there was something majorly wrong. Last year there was a lot more pain than right now. I was throwing all year, trying to make every start. I could throw (now), I could pitch and potentially I don’t think anybody would even notice if I didn’t say anything.”
Neither he nor the Braves want him to do that. It didn’t go well at all when he tried it last season. An MRI exam in spring training showed no rotator-cuff or labrum damage, so Minor rested and treated it for a few weeks in camp before resuming his throwing program and joining the rotation at the beginning of May.
He slogged through a 6-12 season with a 4.77 ERA in 25 starts, giving up 21 home runs in 145 1/3 innings and allowing left-handed batters to hit .357 with an .887 OPS against him.
This after Minor, 27, had been arguably the Braves’ best starter in 2013, going 13-9 with career-best totals in wins, ERA (3.21), strikeouts (181) and innings (204 2/3).
Given how the shoulder feels now, Minor said he hopes Andrews will say he just needs a couple of weeks of rest, or perhaps some specific conditioning drills if he finds an impingement of some kind in the shoulder area.
“Give me some exercises, give me — I don’t know, something,” he said. “I guess I just want some answers, a direction – ‘Hey, this is what we can do to get the shoulder soreness to go away.’”
The worst-cast scenario, as Minor sees it, would be if Andrews recommends exploratory surgery, to go in the shoulder and find out what’s causing the problem if nothing shows up on another MRI.
“But I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” Minor said. “I just don’t think it’ll come to that. He’s had enough experience, he’s had to have somebody who’s had the same symptoms.”
Minor hasn’t had an MRI exam this year, but had them last year both at the beginning and end of the season.
“And nothing changed from the first one at the beginning of the year to the end of the year,” he said. He said that doctors didn’t really look for an impingement then because the belief was that his shoulder was weakened from not being permitted to complete his usual offseason throwing program.
After having emergency urinary tract surgery Dec. 31, 2013, he was not permitted to work out or throw at all last January. He started throwing just before spring training and the shoulder stiffened when he ramped up his throwing in the first week of camp.
This year, he did his usual offseason throwing program and reported no problems with his shoulder. But when he began throwing bullpen sessions and two live batting-practice sessions in the first week of camp, the shoulder started barking again.
“I had the first live BP and it was fine, then after that, playing catch and stuff it was a little cranky,” he said. “But I was like, I’m fine. Then I had the second live BP, and that’s when I was like, maybe I should say something.”
He did, and the Braves moved quickly to scratch him from his start and set up an appointement with Andrews.
