Catching up with Hoey
Good morning, and welcome to blog entry No. 250 since the School of Roch opened its doors on Aug. 1. Extra credit to anyone who's been counting.
Lance Cormier gets the start tonight for the Orioles. Go ahead and set the over/under on innings for him.
Exactly four months ago yesterday, reliever James Hoey woke up in his hospital room and was told that the exploratory surgery on his right shoulder revealed something that a couple of MRIs did not.
He had a SLAP tear in his right labrum that required three anchors and a lot of patience.
Hoey has been rehabbing at the minor league complex in Sarasota, Fla., with a short break over the weekend to attend a wedding. He'll go back down there in a few days and hopefully begin a throwing program that will carry him through the fall instructional league and the end of October.
The goal now is to eventually throw on flat ground from a distance of 45 feet - a progression that sounds modest, but actually would put Hoey right on schedule. He'd be shut down for a while, then crank it up again in preparation for spring training, which he fully expects to attend.
"No doubt," he said. "I've been pushing myself pretty hard."
And trying to cope with a tedious schedule.
"Honestly, it's boring as hell sitting around," he said. "Sitting in Florida and going to rehab every day and watching the games...to a guy who's a competitor, that's the most boring thing you can do to somebody."
For the last few months, Hoey said he's been restricted to doing cuff exercises and undergoing therapy to strengthen his shoulder "and get it back to its original state." He's recently been able to perform more conditioning exercises and work his legs, though the upper body is off limits.
Throwing from a mound in Sarasota is "probably far-fetched," he said, but he'd be satisfied with spotting his pitches inside and out from a flat surface.
"I haven't had any setbacks. I'm pretty much on schedule," he said. "The strength is there, the flexibility is there, the range of motion - which always has been an issue after surgery - that's come back. There's just a slight difference than before surgery, but it's very minute."
At least Hoey knows why he was in such pain after the MRIs didn't reveal the tears, the news coming to him as he tried to clear his head after the surgery.
"Now you have to look on the optimistic side and say that hopefully it's fixed and I can go out there and never have an issue again. That the goal," he said. "After the first MRI reading, it was kind of disheartening to know nothing was there. I was in pain. I was like, 'Can I play with this? I'm going to have to play with this.' The last option was to clean out the shoulder, and that's when it all came down."
Hoey, 25, said he's been "following the ups and downs" of the team. He's ridden that same rollercoaster. The only pain now comes from being forced to watch it from a distance, unable to jump on board and perhaps smooth out the ride.
"We're keeping on track, I guess, with the young talent," he said. "I was there last year and I feel so bad for those guys who have to come out there and throw every day. I want to help them so badly."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say Cormier will last 2 1/3 innings ... and give up 6 earned runs in the process.
That probably wouldn't chase him from the game the way it's been going lately but he'll leave with the bases loaded, and feel a twinge in his shoulder.
Congrats on the first 250. Was that one for each pitching change that Dave Trembley had to make?
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Nicely played! - Roch
Roch,
How much do you think the poor, poor pitching to close out the season will affect the front office's ability to entice Roberts/Markakis to sign away any of their free agent years this offseason?
This has to be embarrasing for everyone on the team. I don't know who can watch these games. These guys have had to play with it year after year. I have feeling it will be a hard sell for Andy.
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Certainly in the case of Roberts, it can't help. He wants to see progress. Hopefully, he looks beyond the final record and sees it. It's there. - Roch
Here's why it's called rebuilding. The coach can talk all about fundamentals, throwing strikes, letting your defense play behind you, but if you don't have players prepared to do that by the age of 25 all of the rhetoric in the world will fall flat. That is what we are seeing. Systemic failures aren't addressed with 2 trades. I thought more work needed to be done in July and August but so be it. MacPhail is on a pretty good track. He doesn't deserve carte blanche just yet but he has built some good will. I have seen someone with a shrewd business sense and a firm set of principles, but not as much creativity as is probably needed for a turnaround to happen sooner than later. I guess that's okay too.
By the way, I haven't seen Krannitz interviewed in a while. Hopefully someone has taken his shoelaces away from him. Tough first year... he is starting to make Mazzone's tenure with the O's look respectable. We have almost 140 walks more than the league average and have over 100 less strikeouts-- how's that for a bad combo of soft tossers with poor control leading to the 3rd worst ERA in the majors.
Roch-- is MASN thinking of shutting you down soon so that you will be ready for spring training next season? No reason to waste all of these good posts on a losing team.
The line:
Cormier goes 5 and 1/3, gives up 8 hits, 4 runs, and only 2 walks
Is that the new definition of a quality start for Baltimore? If we lower the expectations, we won't be disappointed, whose with me?
The Hoey scenario sounds painfully familiar to me. The difference was, I was alot older & didn't have the luxury of the best medical attention & rehab opportunities that he does. I also had to go to work every day. Granted, I am not a ML pitcher, but I still wanted to be able to pick up my little girl, play ball, golf, lift weights again. Normal stuff... I feel for the guy, but if that was all I had to worry about, rehab, I'd try & enjoy getting paid to do it in Florida.