Surgery to remove blood clots in Kip Wells' hand was successful, the official website of the Colorado Rockies reported on Wednesday. The pitcher had been placed on the disabled list as of April 30, but the team had been relatively quiet about his surgery beforehand.
Wells' condition will be re-evaluated on Wednesday, but he did avoid further surgery on a previously repaired artery under his right collar bone. He is out indefinitely.
[...]In March 2006, Wells underwent surgery to repair a complete blockage of the axillary artery, which was replaced by a vein in his leg. That procedure also was performed by Dr. Thompson. Wells returned to pitch in nine Major League games that season, going 2-5 with a 6.50 ERA.
Of course, all the best to Wells and his family as he recovers. It's a little terrifying that Wells has already had a similar surgery, in only that it feels like something that he should probably use to take a serious step back from baseball and make sure his health is in check. On the other hand, maybe it shows that Wells and/or the Rockies medical staff is doing something right to catch this, both times, before it became a much more serious problem.
Which it actually could be, in terms of endangering his career; blood clots can only continue to surface before teams -- and Wells himself -- will start to ask questions about the safety of him as a major league pitcher. As Lackey pointed out, both times he has returned quickly, but the continued emergence of blood clots is certainly disconcerting.
Extra inning games are weird. When they first get going, you want to see some sort of resolution so you can go to sleep. But as a game goes to 15, 16, 17 innings and so forth, the masochist in me always comes out and hopes that the game hits that magic threshold of 20 innings ... even though I have to get up early the next morning to go to work.
The Rockies and Padres have hit that magic threshold for me ... and then some. The teams played a 22 -inning extravaganza which finally ended after Troy Tulowitzki drove home Willy Taveras with an RBI double off of Glendon Rusch on an 0-2 count. Taveras had reached with two outs and nobody on when Khalil Greene's throw from short pulled Tony Clark off the bag. Taveras then went to third on a stolen base and an error in front of Tulo's double. Of course it would have to be an unearned run that would win the game ... which finally ended at 4:21 AM ET after six hours and 16 minutes when Kip Wells struck out opposing pitcher Rusch looking.
Amazingly, both catchers, Josh Bard and Yorvit Torrealba, caught the entire game. And both teams now have to travel for Friday night games ... the Rockies go to Houston, and the Padres go to Arizona. Hopefully, Rockies announcer George Frazier will make it to the next game with his sanity, as he spent his time between innings on pizza runs, scrounging for food in adjacent luxury boxes, and contemplated sending their on-field reporter out for food in the 21st inning.
One of the fun parts of the first week of the season is seeing all the players in different uniforms. It's fun for fans especially to see someone like Johan Santana suit up in their favorite teams' duds and take the field. In St. Louis, Troy Glaus is the big new acquisition, and he made his official debut last night after Monday's partial game was washed out. Opposing him on the mound was another welcome site for Cards' fans: Kip Wells wearing a new uniform.
Unfortunately, things didn't exactly go according to plan for the Cardinals last night. Kip Wells, he of the 7-17 record and 5.70 ERA in Cardinal red last year, held the Cards to one run over 5 and 1/3 innings despite three walks. In the eighth inning, Troy Glaus made a throwing error that allowed a run to score and ended up extending the inning and allowing the Rockies to score 2 more and give them their 2-1 win.
Now, I'm not really one to judge seasons by one game, but it's not really an encouraging start to the season for the Cardinals. Being held to one run by Kip Wells is never anything to brag about, but it does highlight just how thin the Cards' lineup is right now. At least Kyle Lohse was fairly solid in his debut, holding the Rockies to just three hits and no runs in his five innings. That patch-working pitching staff is going to have to be solid this year if the Cardinals want to hang with the Brewers and Cubs instead of the Pirates.
On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing matchups
New York Yankees (0-0) vs. Toronto Blue Jays (0-0) - 7:05PM Est.
The Yankees wanted to kick off the final season at Yankee Stadium yesterday, but ol' Mother Nature wouldn't play along, as she instead chose to try and flood the city of New York on Monday. So that means for Yankees and Blue Jays fans opening day is today, as the two teams try and do it all over again. Aside from the significance of this being the last opening day in Yankee Stadium history, it's also the first time the Yankees will be playing a game at the stadium without Joe Torre in the dugout in 13 years. For the Blue Jays, they've kinda become a darkhorse pick in the AL East this season, and a win tonight against a division powerhouse like the Yankees would be a nice way to start off the season. Both of yesterday's scheduled starters, Chien-Ming Wang and Roy Halladay, will be making the start tonight. Wang will try to put his playoff collapse behind him, but he's not going against a team he's enjoyed much success against. In three starts against Toronto last season, Wang went 0-2 with a 6.35 ERA. Roy Halladay on the other hand is 4-0 with an ERA of 1.77 in his last eight starts against the Bombers, suffering his last loss on September 21st, 2004.
Remember how the Cardinals and Pirates combined to use 18 pitchers? At first I thought it was an interesting piece of trivia, but it turns out it may have been in part a cost-cutting move by the Cardinals. You see, Kip Wells was set to trigger a $500,000 incentive clause if he hit 165 innings. Instead he threw three scoreless innings on Sunday before being pulled, finishing the season at 162 2/3 innings. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
General manager Walt Jocketty fiercely rejected any inference that the Cardinals were counting innings.
"You saw what you saw," said Wells, a pending free agent, after the game. He declined to say anything else, acknowledging the irony in getting the win in the season finale.
"I think it's more than coincidental that I'm not throwing all that much in the last 12 days," Wells said. "But it's one of those you-make-your-bed, you-have-to-lie-in-it situations. You haven't pitched well, so you don't really deserve to throw."
Wells may have sealed his fate by allowing five earned runs in 4 2/3 innings a couple of weeks back -- ever since then he was used very sporadically and without a great deal of success. But still, he was pitching extremely well in the finale which made it a little suspicious that La Russa decided to empty the bullpen as opposed to letting him continue.
Kip Wells' 2007 hasn't gone very well, and you don't need me to tell you that. Kip's a free agent again when the season ends and it's hard to believe he'll be back in St. Louis. Lucky for Kip, though, he seems pretty certain there will be a market for his services:
"There's still a demand for starting pitching in this game, regardless of whether I pitched well or not," Wells said. "If that translates into interest from other teams and what shape or form that takes, I don't know. I've still got plenty of weapons that are above average."
Now there's an interesting use of the phrase "above average." Now granted, I am no wordmetrician, but in the past I've always seen the phrase "above average" to describe things that are better than average. In this case, Kip Wells seems to be confusing it with "really, really bad."
Baseball-Reference keeps track of a stat called ERA+. It's just a pitcher's ERA normalized for park factor and compared to the league average. 100 is an exactly average ERA+. Above 100 is above average, below 100 is below average. Since 2004, Kip's yearly ERA+s have been 91, 84, 70, and 75. Maybe he's got "weapons that are above average" but his results haven't been in a long time.
By now you know all about Pedro Martinez's successful return to the mound for the Mets today. But he's not the only former All-Star starter that will make his 2007 debut this week as Mark Mulder will take the mound on Wednesday for the St. Louis Cardinals as they fight to stay in the NL Central race. In fact, that's only half of the rotation moves the Cards will make this week as they're also going to put Mike Maroth back into the rotation and send Anthony Reyes to the bullpen, leaving the rotation at six strong for the stretch drive.
Tony La Russa did admit that the changes might not be long term:
"We're making decisions to save our life," manager Tony La Russa said after announcing the moves. "If it changes next week, it changes next week."
The horrible inappropriateness of La Russa likening playoff baseball to a life or death situation for a team that watched a teammate die this year aside, I don't see how Mike Maroth and a guy that hasn't made a major league start in a year are going the be the cure to what ails the Cards. Kip Wells is still in the rotation and he couldn't make it out of the fourth inning against the Pirates today. Braden Looper and his 5.52 ERA since May 18 is still in the rotation. So I guess what I'm saying is that Mulder is going to have to find his form real quick if he's going to make that much of a difference.
Kip Wells returned to the rotation for the Cardinals last night. He got pounded for six runs and eight hits in only two innings. At that point the Cards had to be feeling lucky that Chris Carpenter was making another rehab start yesterday to get closer to his return to the St. Louis rotation. Then ... SETBACK!
Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said Friday that Carpenter suffered "a bit of a setback" after a 39-pitch appearance and could not provide a timetable for when his ace might resume his throwing program.
"We'll re-evaluate it after someone sees him," La Russa said. "I don't know what it is or how substantial it is. But it's something."
It's described as some "stiffness and swelling" in his pitching elbow, which could be anything really. That's why the word "setback" is so scary for a guy coming off of surgery. It could literally mean anything. It could mean, "he just had elbow surgery and things don't always go smoothly from stuff like that but this is nothing to worry about," or it could mean, "his elbow just exploded into a million pieces." Vague wording: unhelpful and torturous to the baseball fan.
Kip Wells must have some dirty pictures of Tony La Russa and/or Dave Duncan stored away somewhere. After a long stint as one of the worst starters in baseball this year, Wells was demoted to the St. Louis bullpen where he seemed to finally be finding his stride, working eleven innings over four appearances and only allowing one earned run in that stretch.
With Todd Wellenmeyer making some solid starts, it would seem to make sense to keep Kip in the bullpen, right? Wrong. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Kip is back in the rotation and Wellenmeyer is going to the pen.
"All six guys could give us a good start," La Russa said. Wells "has thrown better (since moving to the bullpen), has better command and life on his fastball down in the zone. He looks like he did in spring."
Being rather familiar with Wells' career as a Pirate fan, he's one of those guys that I think might excel in the pen after struggling as a starter. He's got great stuff, but can't figure out how to use it over the course of a start. As a reliever, he can focus on one or two innings at a time and just worry about getting people out. I don't forsee his return to the rotation going terribly well.
Things couldn't go more right for the Brewers and more wrong for everyone else in the NL Central if the Brewers could write the script themselves. Today the Cardinals put both Jim Edmonds and Braden Looperon the shelf, just after the Cards had won two in a row and pulled even with the Cubs for second in the division.
Edmonds is going on the DL with about a million different things wrong with him. He had off-season shoulder and foot surgeries and the shoulder has been giving him trouble recently. He's been pretty bad this year, but the Cards don't have many options to replace him with. They're calling up Skip Schumaker (not Rick Ankiel, like I think they should), owner of a .233/.277/.279 line with the Cards this year. Anyways, this injury puts So Taguchi in the lineup every day. Did you know he's 38?
Amazingly, it probably hurts them even more to put Looper on the DL. He's cooled off a lot recently after his ridiculous start, but taking him out of the rotation means that Kip Wells has to stay in the rotation. I discussed Wells' struggles at length yesterday. His replacement will technically be Anthony Reyes, who's been better than his 0-8 record but certainly hasn't been great this year. That's the thing about these two injuries for the Cards. Neither of these two guys have been great, but the Cards just don't have anyone to fill the holes. Six and a half games can look like a hundred sometimes.
Surgery to remove blood clots in Kip Wells' hand was successful, the official website of the Colorado Rockies reported on Wednesday. The pitcher had been placed on the disabled list as of April 30, but the team had been relatively quiet about his surgery beforehand. 
One of the fun parts of the first week of the season is seeing all the players in different uniforms. It's fun for fans especially to see someone like 
Remember how the Cardinals and Pirates combined to use 18 pitchers? At first I thought it was an interesting piece of trivia, but it turns out it may have been in part a cost-cutting move by the Cardinals. You see, 
By now you know all about 
Things couldn't go more right for the Brewers and more wrong for everyone else in the NL Central if the Brewers could write the script themselves. Today the Cardinals put both 
