Injuries Continue For The Astros In The Minor Leagues

The pitching depth that has been discussed so much over the off-season is dwindling down rather quickly. First was Alex White who's now having Tommy John surgery. Second was Travis Blackley who injured his shoulder in his first bullpen at Minute Maid Park. Then Josh Fields followed him up with forearm tightness. Now, we have John Ely going down with an elbow injury.

Jose Martinez was also placed on the disabled list for a hand injury. Both moves came out yesterday and are retroactive to April 7th.

The Astros have a policy of not releasing injury information on minor league injures so the information online only gives the disable list date, but my contact only knows that it's his elbow. It's impossible to know the severity of the elbow injury but it does continue a trend with recent pitching additions.

Now, I'm not privy to how much information the Astros had with each addition. It's pretty likely that they didn't with Fields since it was Rule V acquisition. I would say they had at least some with the other three since they those moves were made with trades. How much is not known.

I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this because they could all be very minor injuries and pitchers are pretty susceptible to injuries. However, the fact that each are new additions is an interesting trend. So, is there a relationship?

Alex White incorporates the dreaded Inverted W.

Travis Blackley isn't necessarily an inverted W pitcher but his elbow does tend to drift a little high into that position at times.

Josh Fields has a pretty high effort delivery with a lot of arm strength involved. It definitely has some jerk in his movement.

John Ely doesn't have bad mechanics but his slow initial movement that rapidly accelerates does add a little stress to his shoulder and elbow. There's definitely some added effort in his arm.

I'm not saying these acquisitions are poor, but I am indicating that they weren't the safest because of their mechanics since they may have potentially higher injury risk, albeit slightly more in the case of John Ely. Perhaps those are reasons they were able to buy low on them. Just something to think about.