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

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.