SAN DIEGO -- The fastball velocity was down, long balls were flying, then the thumb was swollen and that was the end of the night Braves pitcher Julio Teheran.
Teheran left Monday night's 11-4 loss to the Padres with a jammed right thumb, after allowing three home runs in the first four innings and walking Jose Pirela to start the fifth.
His velocity was down several miles per hour throughout the night, but after getting jammed on a pitch while batting in the top of the fifth inning, Teheran couldn’t throw a strike to start the bottom of the inning.
Teheran will be re-evaluated in the next day or two to determine if he’ll make his next scheduled start.
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“It was just one of them nights when he didn’t have it, really,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “Velocity wasn’t great the last time out either, but he always finds a way. He was just missing locations (Monday). When he missed he missed bad, they hurt him.
“But the thumb is what forced him out of the game.”
He walked Pirela on four pitches and left the game after Snitker and Braves head trainer George Poulis came out to check on him.
“I didn’t have feel in the fifth inning,” Teheran said. “I know it wasn’t the best night for me, but I was kind of battling and competing like I used to do. Obviously it wasn’t my best; I wasn’t throwing hard. But I was competing, and then in that inning I couldn’t feel the ball -- the four balls (to Pirela) weren’t even close to the plate.”
An X-ray taken at the stadium showed no structural damage and Snitker said the team would wait to see how Teheran’s thumb responds to treatment.
The veteran right-hander was charged with five hits, four runs and three walks with two strikeouts in four innings and has allowed 15 walks and eight homers in 28 innings over his past five starts and has a 6.11 ERA in that span.
Although he convinced Poulis and Snitker that he was fine to continue pitching after they came out to check on him in the fourth inning, when they returned in the fifth Teheran knew it was probably time to exit whether he wanted to or not after the four-pitch leadoff walk.
The first time they went out to check on him was after Teheran was seen shaking his foot. He had tweaked it mildly while covering first base on a ground-out, but said that was just a minor thing and his foot was fine.
But the thumb remained sore following the game, he said.
“Sometimes you get that outing where you don’t feel 100 percent,” Teheran said. “But I was able to throw the ball, that means (the reduction in velocity Monday) wasn’t serious. Because if it was serious I wouldn’t be able to throw the ball. But it’s good that my arm is good; now we have to take care of this, how my thumb feels.”
His fastball velocity was mostly in the 85-88 mph range Monday and only occasionally touching 89 -- it’s usually in the low-90 mph range on a good night -- and he gave up bases-empty homers to Eric Hosmer in the first inning, Cory Spangenberg in the second and Raffy Lopez in the fourth.
A few times during the game, Snitker and Poulis conferred with Teheran in the dugout between innings to make sure he felt OK in light of the reduction in velocity.
“He said he was OK,” Snitker said. “That guy’s a competitor, he wanted to keep going. Because you could see it wasn’t great, it was just one of them days. But those guys who pitch those (high) innings, they don’t want to offer any excuses and they’re just going to keep battling and keep pitching. Heck, the game’s right there…
“(But) then we went out and it was bothering him. I didn’t think it was anything like a stinger that was going to recoup right there, so that’s why we took him out.”
Hosmer homered on an 82-mph change-up and the other two homers were on 87-mph four-seam fastballs, a 5-mph differential that’s only half of the minimum that pitchers generally look for between the change-up and fastball.
“Definitely more inconsistent than normal as far as the action on his pitches and stuff,” said Braves catcher Tyler Flowers, who wasn’t concerned because Teheran has had plenty of similar early-inning struggles before. “That happens – different places, different humidities, long flight…. I mean, so many different factors that can come into that, where my initial thought wasn’t that anything was wrong with him, but that we were just going to have to make some (adjustments) as we go, because his command of everything wasn’t as good as normal.”
Regarding the reduction in velocity, which he’d also seen in some previous Teheran games, Flowers said, “Typically it’s earlier in the games. He kind of usually cranks it up a little bit more in the third, fourth, fifth innings, where you start seeing the low 90s in there. But oftentimes, early on he’s pitching more in the upper 80s.”
Teheran left with the Braves trailing 3-2 and a runner on first base, the final run on his ledger coming after Luiz Gohara entered in relief and got torched for six hits and six runs in just two-thirds of an inning in Gohara’s first appearance since returning from a stint on the bereavement list.
Teheran had a similar reduction in velocity in an injury-truncated April 27 start at Philadelphia in which he left after three innings with tightness in the trapezius muscle behind his pitching shoulder. His next start was pushed back a couple of days and it turned out to be his best this season, with Teheran allowed just two hits and two walks in seven scoreless innings May 3 against the Mets in New York.
He followed that with six scoreless innings of four-hit ball with no walks and seven strikeouts May 9 at Tampa Bay.
Teheran gave up four runs including two homers in his next start May 14 at Chicago, the first of five consecutive games in which he’s issued three walks apiece. The last two of those starts before Monday, however, were quality starts in which he allowed three runs in six innings (including two homers) at Boston followed by five hits and two runs allowed in seven innings Wednesday against the Mets.
He entered Monday’s game with a 4-3 record and 4.03 ERA, which climbed to 4.31 after his third consecutive loss. When he’ll get to try to snap that skid is currently undetermined.
“There was nothing broken, just soreness, swelling,” Teheran said of the negative thumb X-ray. “We’ll treat it and see how it’s going to feel tomorrow. I don’t know, we’ll see how it feels tomorrow and when I throw my bullpen in two days, then decide what we’re going to do.”
