Jul 08 2013 03:11 PM
This Shaun Marcum situation is not working out well at all
By Howard Megdal
11:49 am Jul. 8, 2013
Shaun Marcum shakes his hand in discomfort.
| It's been pretty much all downhill for Shaun Marcum since he signed with the Mets this offseason. His one-year, $4 million contract represented more than 80 percent of the total guaranteed money the Mets used on free agents last winter, and he was only one of two free agents, total, the Mets signed to guaranteed major league contracts. (The other, Brandon Lyon, was just designated for assignment.) Marcum, despite a solid season for the Milwaukee Brewers, wasn't in great demand because teams feared his injury problems would get in the way of his effective pitching. Sure enough, his injuries have gotten in the way of his pitching, which hasn't been that effective in any case. Marcum missed most of spring training and the early part of the season with discomfort in his neck, ultimately diagnosed as nerve inflammation. He finally debuted on April 27, struggled at first, then pitched moderately well while suffering from a profound lack of run support. Ultimately, the numbers have been ugly: a 1-10 record, a 5.29 E.R.A. Then came his start last Monday, with Marcum visibly hurting during the game. Most teams would respond to this by getting the possibly injured pitcher out of the game, especially once determining that that that pitcher not only had back and shoulder discomfort, but some numbness in his hand. "He had a little tingling in his hand," Mets manager Terry Collins, who is not a doctor, said Wednesday. "It's the same stuff he had in spring training. It tightens up in the upper back. But he's pitched with it. The other day, I don't know what inning, it started to bother him a little bit. So we thought we'd get him looked at. He's fine." Yes, an M.R.I. had turned up nothing. But the discomfort hadn't gone away, nor had the numbness. And the Mets decided, once again, to green-light an ailing player and see what happens. Marcum seemed annoyed that he was even asked about it. "That's for me and the club," he said Tuesday. "I don't know why you guys think you need to know everything." Presumably, he didn't think his obvious unconfortable gestures on the mound and in the dugout would draw any notice of people who get paid to write about the team. By Saturday, Marcum prepared to make his next start. At the last minute, the lineup changed, and Collins let it be known that John Buck, not Anthony Recker, would be catching. It was the kind of thing that happens routinely. The strange part was that Collins elected to publicly assign the change to Marcum. Then Marcum, with his personal catcher, went out and got lit up by the Brewers, the team that saw fit to let him go without an offer. After the game, Marcum was more willing to open up about his injury, again discussing the numbness in his hand. Finally, months after this symptom popped up, the Mets are sending him to a nerve specialist in St. Louis. They did so with Dillon Gee last year, where Gee's season-ending blood clot was diagnosed. How much of a mistake Mets doctors made by clearing him to keep pitching will be determined by the severity of the injury. But at the very least, the Mets have allowed Marcum to keep pitching through an injury that, pretty clearly, neither they nor Marcum figured out how to identify or deal with in any significant way. When a team has a free-agent budget that's just shy of $5 million, it makes sense for that team to take basic preventative measures to keep $4 million of it healthy and productive. Or so you'd think. |
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/s ... t-well-all