Soreness Sidelines Cardinals' Carpenter—For Now

Here we are at yet another patch of rough road where another Cardinals player is not feeling 100 percent at the start of Spring Training.  Are you really surprised?  I’m not.  These guys are warriors in their own right.  Pitchers are those special ops soldiers where we ask them – on rotation – to go out on a mission and lead the troops on the field of battle.  Chris Carpenter is no exception.  The deeper Carp got into the postseason in 2011, the more he had to pitch:

• Division Series: 2 games started, 12.0 innings pitched, 1-0 record, 3.00 ERA.
• Championship Series: 1 game started, 5.0 innings pitched, 1-0 record, 5.40 ERA.
• World Series: 3 games started, 19.0 innings pitched, 2-0 record, 2.84 ERA.

I think he’s a little tired and worn out still.  Last year alone was the second most innings pitched in his career with 237.1 – just 4.1 innings shy of his 2005 season high.  His overall season record was 11-9 which got off to a pretty rough start as well that ranks eighth out of his fourteen seasons (MLB.com player stats retrieved from www.mlb.com on March 13, 2012).

As fans we asked a lot of Carpenter last season.  Don’t think that he didn’t ask of it from himself first last year.  Carp now is dealing with a bulging disc that is reported in Rick Hummel’s March 13, 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article to have, “…affected a nerve in his neck,” where his scheduled start for the regular season against Miami may have to be delayed.

What does that really mean?  I’m by no means a doctor in any regard; I was a collegiate athlete and when you’re talking about any nerve pain, damage, etc. it’s nothing to take lightly.  The ligaments and nerves in my knees were shot my sophomore year, and it took me three months alone of minor movement to get me to be able to just kick a little in swim practice, nonetheless travel to some meet and swim back to back events much longer than 100 yards.  Time and care is what you need.  An “injury” (and I use quote marks for personal reasons as I don’t really want to use that ugly word) of this nature can do one of two things for Carpenter this season:

1)      Carp is going to battle through and try to do his job.

2)      Carp will listen to the doctors for him not to rush anything then he can get back to his job.

Carp is doing the latter right now.  It’s not in his best interest to push a healing neck.  It’s also only been a couple of days with this discomfort which is not nearly enough time to tell if his neck is improving or not.  Hummel quotes Carpenter in saying, “I’m just speculating.  But two days now isn’t going to make a huge difference if I can let the medications work.”

This is Carp’s third nerve ailment since 2004.  When I read in Sunday’s Post-Dispatch (Joe Strauss, March 11, 2012 article) about the injections he began to get as they thought it was initially nerve damage, I will admit I got a little scared and worried for Carpenter.  Anti-inflammatory medication is a wonderful thing, but it causes me concern when the athletes that are constantly injected with this stuff, and then go out and play like there’s no pain.  There’s still pain; it’s just masked.  Pushing a nerve injury is no joke, folks.  These guys will play with cortisone injections like they’ve been healed from any injury.  That’s not the case.  You can’t push your body beyond that limit – only more damage can occur as you just think the pain is gone.  It is true that exercise induced pain is only cured by more of the same exercise; that means you’re getting stronger.  Professional athletes are at the top of their game; their swing back is much greater when there’s pain.  If they “play through” a serious case like Carp’s, it can only break them down further.  Look what happened to Holliday right after the Cardinals acquired him.  He kept getting the injections to help his neck, and his performance lagged because his body just couldn’t take it anymore.  If you mask the pain, it’s still there.  You need time to heal.

Heal the pain; fix the problem; don’t yet be the hero.  No one wants to talk about the shelf life of an athlete, especially when you’re a fan of theirs.  Sports analysts talk shelf life only when they’ve finally seen that athlete trying to be the hero has finally broken down, and they can’t heal properly anymore.  They also tell us that they knew all along after they plastered their top performances in their top plays saying how athletic he’s been because he pushed through.  Luck doesn’t have anything to do with it; the pain will catch up to these guys if they’re not careful.  162 games – plus a postseason – is a long season.  Everyday rigor hurts when a player isn’t feeling on their best.

Continue to read Mr. Hummel’s article aforementioned and you’ll see that there is a plan in place to make sure Carpenter has his rest and that his spot will come around within the starting rotation.  It might not be the best scenario anyone wants; there’s also no mention of the DL or any of that going on.  A Carpenter start will still be a Carpenter start whether it’s first, third or fifth.  If he’s sitting in the back of the rotation, that can become a pretty solid three, five, one rotation teams will have to deal with.

A shot will not heal Carpenter right now especially if they’re talking a slipped disc in his neck (Hummel) is causing the pain and not the nerve itself.  Fix the problem so a performance this season has its best chance.  The only way to heal that is time, a watchful eye, and technique work specific to the right form of play.