Ugh: Twins to Place Mick Abel on 15-Day Injured List with Elbow Injury

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images

The Twins suffered a major loss on an off day Monday, as they're set to place right-handed starter Mick Abel on the 15-day injured list. Dan Hayes of The Athletic broke the news on Twitter.

The initial diagnosis—inflammation in his throwing elbow—isn't the worst news you could hear about a player hitting the injured list between starts, but it's awfully close. The extent of Abel's injury won't be clear until the team provides further updates about any imaging taken on the arm, but right away, one must worry about a long-term absence. Inflammation isn't an injury in itself; it's a symptom of fatigue and/or damage, which has some cause. Finding out the cause of the inflammation will tell us whether Abel will be out a few weeks, the rest of the season, or somewhere in between.

No matter what, though, it hurts the team badly to lose him now. Abel, 24, has a 3.98 ERA and a 24.7% strikeout rate through his first four appearances of the season, but that undersells what has been a thrilling upward trend over his last two outings. His dominance of the Red Sox last week at Target Field (7 innings, 4 hits, 10 strikeouts, no walks) felt like a step toward legitimate mid-rotation status, and Abel came out of that outing feeling great.

Abel was scheduled to start Tuesday night in Queens. The team could turn, instead, to left-handed pitching prospect Connor Prielipp, who was on the taxi squad for the trip, anyway. Barring that, it's likely to be a bullpen day, but the team's roster isn't built for that right now. Short-term and long-term, this is a daunting disruption of the team's plans. They can only cross their fingers while they (and we) await more news on Abel's prognosis.

UPDATE: Simeon Woods Richardson will start in Abel's stead Tuesday night, Hayes reports. Woods Richardson moves up a day to fill the gap for now, taking advantage of the off day for the team, but that doesn't answer the question for the longer term. 

To give a sense of how long an absence we're likely to be looking at, though, Baseball Prospectus's Return to Play tool shows that pitchers sidelined with elbow inflammation (that specific diagnosis, not surgery or a documented strain or tear, even if that later turned out to be the cause of the inflammation) in the months of March, April, May or June over the last three seasons missed an average of 72 days, with a median a bit lower. Abel is as likely as not to miss at least two months; the Twins need to find a long-term replacement.

If Abel avoids elbow surgery and comes back at full strength, that's a win, from here. Doing it quickly would be a minor miracle. It's time for the young arms (be it Prielipp, Zebby Matthews, Andrew Morris or someone else) to step into the breach.

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[Patzky]

Was bound to happen to someone.. what a shame  Suggestion.. use Prielipp to start and Sim to piggyback tomorrow. Maybe we can luck into seven or eight innings between the two of them.

 

We will have an extremely busy transaction wire today and tomorrow.

[CRF]

NO! Does anything even remotely good ever happen to this team anymore?

[Blyleven2011]

This is the worst news losing another starting pitcher , losing Lopez was bad enough this spring , we're not showing enough depth at AAA to keep replacing our starters at the mlb level due to injuries or inability to produce quality innings at AAA  ...

Rojas and Prielipp will now be given a chance the can get mlb hitters out ...

Well we had a good start but the bad luck is showing itself again  ...

[JD-TWINS]

Assuming that they will start Prielipp one of the 3 games in New York. Since there was a day off Thursday & today, SWR is full rest (plus a day) on Tuesday ……… probably Prielipp Wednesday, with Ryan Thursday, after 5 days rest?

Pitchers get hurt - just a bummer for Abel & Team on the timing after a couple nice outings!

I thought the move with the two lefties was more of a “form” decision. Looks very likely both will pitch in the next 2-3 days.

[IndyTwinsFan]

14 minutes ago, CRF said:

NO! Does anything even remotely good ever happen to this team anymore?

Just another example of why we can't seem to have nice things. 

[Twins_Fan_in_NJ]

Baseball gods...

[Aggies7]

I hate it here 

[LewFordLives]

Of course he's hurt. It's the Twins. Yet another trade that blows up in their faces. Unbelievable.

[jmlease1]

4 minutes ago, LewFordLives said:

Of course he's hurt. It's the Twins. Yet another trade that blows up in their faces. Unbelievable.

I mean, I'm not aware of any elbow problem with Abel so this is just more horrible luck.

This just sucks. Was really exciting to see Abel starting to figure it out and look like a guy that could be a real piece to the puzzle. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll calm down after a few days and he start feeling better, and MRIs will show there's no structural damage...but Twins have not exactly had that kind of luck with anything injury-related for, I dunno...20 years?

Guess we know exactly why both Rojas AND Prielipp are going to NY...

[Blyleven2011]

3 minutes ago, LewFordLives said:

Of course he's hurt. It's the Twins. Yet another trade that blows up in their faces. Unbelievable.

Let's not over react , hopefully it's a short term injury  and Abel can comeback this year .. 

Duran went on the IL list  just recently  , is that any consolation  , are the Philly fans saying they got fleeced  ....

[tony&rodney]

Hopefully it is minor and Abel returns to finish up the year without incident. Short term it is a drag because the Mick Abel-Nolan McLean matchup had some promise.

 

[Patzky]

23 minutes ago, LewFordLives said:

Of course he's hurt. It's the Twins. Yet another trade that blows up in their faces. Unbelievable.

Actually it was meant to be, as Jhoan Duran went on the IL yesterday.

[bean5302]

This is terrible news. I don't see Abel missing less than 4 starts, but at least the issue wasn't immediately off the mound and his velo didn't show a big drop at the end of his last start. The fact this is "elbow inflammation" looks really bad, though.

Rojas was up to 50 pitches and pitched 3.1 innings in his last outing.

Prielipp was up to 76 and pitched 5.0 innings in his last outing.

I think there's a fair shot Zebby gets the call even though the Twins have had him working on his sinker. He threw 96 pitches last time out.

[Mike Sixel]

25 minutes ago, LewFordLives said:

Of course he's hurt. It's the Twins. Yet another trade that blows up in their faces. Unbelievable.

Duran is on the IL. Did that trade blow up on Philly? You can't predict this stuff, I'm boggled this is a real take. 

[Brett]

May have an interesting choice to make when Abel returns if Prielipp has a couple or more good starts. Does SWR still have options?

[Greglw3]

He was just about the brightest light in the whole organization. Now, definitely sign Giolito ASAP, you truly can never have too much pitching. This is a severe bummer! Double and Triple Ughh!

[Patzky]

6 minutes ago, Brett said:

May have an interesting choice to make when Abel returns if Prielipp has a couple or more good starts. Does SWR still have options?

I'm crossing my fingers Abel does return. 

[Parfigliano]

1 hour ago, CRF said:

NO! Does anything even remotely good ever happen to this team anymore?

Falvey and Rocco are gone but I get your point.

[jmlease1]

10 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Duran is on the IL. Did that trade blow up on Philly? You can't predict this stuff, I'm boggled this is a real take. 

well, people do like finding as many reasons as possible to crap on the former Twins President...

[Gamblerssoftball]

He's a pitcher. This is what happens to pitchers. It's just his turn. 

[Patzky]

49 minutes ago, Twins_Fan_in_NJ said:

Baseball gods...

There's some Twinchronicity for past and present pitchers on 4/20. Duran, Abel, Sonny Gray, all hurt. Glad we aren't actually playing today. Stay in the hotel and off the escalators, fellas.

[thelanges5]

Per Bobby N:

Connor Prielipp will make his MLB debut Wednesday night, starting for the #MNTwins against the Mets. 

The Twins' rotation for the upcoming series is now:

Tues - Woods Richardson
Wed - Prielipp
Thurs - Joe Ryan

[WarPath1211]

Really gutted for Mick here, it looked like he was starting to put it together. Even if he doesn't need elbow surgery, inflammation this early in the season is not a good sign. Hoping for the best that he can be back out there in a few weeks and that this stint is a distant memory later in the season.

Looks like Prielipp will get the starting nod on Wednesday but I wouldn't be surprised if Rojas is maybe tabbed to piggyback off of him.

[Craig Arko]

Wishing the best to Mick. Hopefully no surgery required. 

[jorgenswest]

Best case…

Abel misses a month and returns to form. Prielipp and Rojas pitch so well they are here to stay. 

[Danchat]

Brutal. Injuries happen to every team, but it stinks that the rotation has lost Lopez and now Abel. Gotta hope he can avoid the surgery and get back to try building off his last two dynamite starts.

[karcherd]

25 minutes ago, WarPath1211 said:

Really gutted for Mick here, it looked like he was starting to put it together. Even if he doesn't need elbow surgery, inflammation this early in the season is not a good sign. Hoping for the best that he can be back out there in a few weeks and that this stint is a distant memory later in the season.

Looks like Prielipp will get the starting nod on Wednesday but I wouldn't be surprised if Rojas is maybe tabbed to piggyback off of him.

If you want Rojas to come in for Prielipp to add length that is good.  But don't go in with a plan of piggybacking, after the 6th or 7th inning you have to react to the game situation.  They already tried this once with Able and it was a disaster.  This is not the minor leagues,  the Twins need to develop starting pitching stop all this 4 and 5 inning cap on pitchers.

[LewFordLives]

51 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Duran is on the IL. Did that trade blow up on Philly? You can't predict this stuff, I'm boggled this is a real take. 

You can't pretend that there's no difference between an oblique strain (Duran) and elbow inflammation (Abel). One is a stint on the DL and the other has potentially career altering implications.

[Mike Sixel]

13 minutes ago, LewFordLives said:

You can't pretend that there's no difference between an oblique strain (Duran) and elbow inflammation (Abel). One is a stint on the DL and the other has potentially career altering implications.

Players get hurt. I don't get blaming the twins for that.