SAN DIEGO – Braves pitcher Williams Perez left Monday night’s game against the Padres in the fifth inning with what was preliminarily diagnosed as right triceps soreness, and he’ll be evaluated again Tuesday.
The Braves, who just placed starter Mike Foltynewicz on the 15-day disabled list Friday with bone spurs in his pitching elbow, were holding out hope that Perez could avoid a DL stint and make his next scheduled start.
“The hope would be that,” Braves interim manager Brian Snitker said. “We’ll know more (Tuesday). I think by the time he comes in in the afternoon we’ll have a little better read on the scenario.”
Perez (2-2) lasted 4 1/3 innings and was charged with seven hits, six runs and no walks with two strikeouts. The score was 1-1 before he gave up a three-run homer to Yangervis Solarte in the fourth inning, the last of three consecutive two-out hits Perez allowed that inning.
He gave up a single in the fourth inning, then a single and RBI double to Matt Kemp with one out in the fifth before signaling to the Braves bench that something was wrong.
“I felt good,” Perez said through a translator after the game. “I felt a little bit of discomfort in the biceps-triceps area and it was too close to the shoulder to me, so that was the reason I wanted to talk to the doctors and have them take a look at it. We’re just going to take it one day at a time and see what they say tomorrow, but I feel good.”
Head trainer Jeff Porter went to the mound to check on him and Perez appeared to point to his right shoulder.
“I was trying to let them know that I felt a little bit of discomfort that biceps-triceps area,” Perez said, “just let them know that it felt kind of a little bit of tingly, a little bit of something in my shoulder as well, but that was basically it.”
Perez said he’d never had an injury similar to this one, so he wasn’t sure of the severity or nature of the problem. He said he felt a little sensation in the fourth inning, but more in the fifth.
“In the fourth (inning) I felt a little bit of discomfort, but I wanted to keep going, it was not a big deal at all,” he said. “Two years ago I had tendinitis in my shoulder but that lasted about 15 days. I haven’t dealt with something like this before.”
Snitker said, “Guys try to pitch through stuff. It was more like it was a cramp, to me, the way he was describing it out there. But it’s sore and I think the best thing to do is, the doctor said to let him sleep on it and we’ll evaluate him again tomorrow and kind of get a better feel for what we’re looking at.”
