Chad Moriyama Dodgers, Sabermetrics, Scouting
Yesterday’s shocking article by T.J. Simers about Andre Ethier’s knee had a lot of fans understandably asking a ton of questions of both him and the organization. Today, Tony Jackson got reactions out of Ned Colletti, Don Mattingly, and Andre Ethier.
| Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder Andre Ethier met with team physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache on Sunday morning for further examination of Ethier’s right knee, in which Ethier says he has experienced gradually increasing discomfort over the past two years and where he probably will undergo minor surgery after the season. |
It’s frightening that it took an article to get one of the Dodgers best players examined. Furthermore, with the Dodgers far out of the race for the playoffs, what’s the wait for on the surgery? I see absolutely no point in him playing out this season.
Edit: Ethier actually had been examined prior to this, hence the injections, but it took an article to get it “further” examined, which is still stupid.
| “I got kind of blindsided by that (column),” Mattingly said. “To me, the way I read it was that Dre has been telling us he couldn’t play and we said play anyway. That definitely isn’t the case. For me, that is taking a shot at my integrity. Not just mine, but the organization, the training staff and Ned.”
“His knee has been banged up, there is no denying that. But with that, we check with him. ‘Are you OK today?’ There have been times when I will get him in the weight room after a game and say, ‘I’m giving you the day off tomorrow,’ and then he’ll come into my office and say he wants to (play).” |
For his part, Ethier admitted that playing through the injury was his decision.
| “It has always been my decision to keep playing and keep going,” he said. “They never said, ‘We don’t think you can go.’ It has always been, ‘You obviously can play on with this, so it’s at your discretion.’ If you physically can go out there and do it, do you tell yourself to stop?”
Colletti said he then received a call from Ethier’s agent, Nez Balelo, while the Dodgers were in Milwaukee two weeks ago informing him that Ethier was experiencing knee problems, that he might need a minor surgical procedure at some point to correct them and that they were affecting his offensive performance, which has been disappointing this season, especially since the All-Star break. “I said, ‘Can he play?’” Colletti said. “(The answer was) yeah. I had a conversation with Nez again before the game (Saturday). We talked about a lot of different topics related to Andre and related to the knee. My impression was that it was something that would have to be looked at, but it wasn’t something that had to be taken care of right now.” |
Normally when a player attempts to play through the injury, I take the side of the organization and place blame on the player because his selfish macho actions are usually hurting the team, regardless of whether he thinks he’s being a knight in shining armor or not. However, in this case, where the blame shifts to the organization is in their excuses. Usually when a player hides an injury, the organization is in the dark about it (Jonathan Broxton comes to mind), but with Ethier, they admit they were aware of his knee problems but basically pushed it aside because Ethier told them he could play.
It’s ridiculous.
The excuse that Ethier told the organization he’s alright, so they couldn’t know the extent of the damage is a poor one. By nature, all players say they can play whether they are healthy or not, especially hyper competitive ones like Ethier. It’s like Clayton Kershaw saying he wants to finish games no matter the pitch count, well of course he does, he would throw 150 pitches if they would let him, but it’s up to the decision makers to tell him what’s in his best interest, if not, what’s the point of having them around?
The fact of the matter is that most guys would rather be taken off on a stretcher than take themselves out of games, and that’s where it’s on the management and training staff to step in and either look into the issue further or tell him he can no longer play with the injury.
In a way, I suppose it’s good news that Ethier is confirmed as hurt, as an injury like this could lead to a rapid drop in power, but the fact that it took an article by Simers to get a knee examination and confirm future surgery is disturbing. Either way you cut it, this issue has brought up unnecessary drama and it’s an embarrassment to have one of the few quality players the organization has left basically expose its shoddy internal communication.
On this issue, I’m not so sure. I think Jon Weisman sums it up pretty well in his post about this whole subject.
I think what everybody (including players) need to understand is that even though they are playing a game, they are being compensated as professionals. And as a professional, it is their responsibility primarily to bring awareness whenever they are not performing at their optimum level, be it injury or otherwise.
And Ethier has now backed off his earlier comments to Simers that the team was aware of his problem the whole season and told him to play regardless of the severity of the issue.
Are the Dodgers culpable? Yes, but unlike you Chad, I think the majority of the blame lies with Andre Ethier.
But he did bring it up. The Dodgers knew about the injury but didn’t get it examined “further” until T.J. Simers wrote a controversial article.
Whether he backs off his dumb comments is a null point to me. The organization has to step in and do what’s best for the player regardless of what he says. If Ethier bitches and moans and goes as far to file a grievance, nobody will be on his side then.
Dre has me confused because I totally want to be in “Gay for Dre” mode rooting for the guy, but he seems to be constantly saying stupid stuff to the media without even being asked most of the time. However, this particular situation does seem to be more on the training staff imo, then on Dre. I always wonder, when it comes to these guys and their insane contracts, why the Dodgers don’t medically check every possibility when a player is hurting. I get that doctors bills are expensive and sports doctors probably even more so. but a healthy team is going to produce better and hopefully generate wins which will put butts in the seats and money in the owners pockets. Seems worth it to me.
The “we can’t find anything” excuse is always odd and we’ve heard that a few times. At least that’s not the case here, but I don’t remember which Dodger it was not too long ago where they went in to check his injury and found nothing, only to have it get worse and ultimately require surgery. After the fact, the excuse was that it was hidden and hard to find. Ok, but you have access to some of the best equipment and doctors that probably exist, so why not use them and get a second opinion if it’s changing a players’ game? And if you are doing that but not getting the proper diagnosis, then you may want to consider finding new doctors.
It’s annoying that Dre feels the need to vocalize his displeasure to the media and fans, but now I start to wonder whether some of it is warranted. I’m just glad it’s not affecting his attitude on the field. Saw him as one of the first into the Kemp dogpile the other day…think it may have been the same day the Simers article came out. I just can’t help but think back to his comments at the beginning of the season though where he said he wants to be a team leader and then is immediately quoted in the media talking about potentially being sent away because the front office has done it to others. Guess we’ll never know every side to all the behind the scenes stories from this year and last…at least not any time soon.
Man this comment came out wayyy longer than I intended.
He’s sort of an idiot, I’m not defending that.
They did find something though.
At some point, you gotta realize that these athletes are adults, and that the training staff aren’t mind readers. I suspect that most MLB ballplayers have some sort of minor nagging injury at this point in the season, and it’s up to them to tell the organization when that injury escalates from something minor to something more serious.
According to the LA Times, “When Mattingly told Ethier he was going to give him a day off in a recent series against Houston, Mattingly said, the outfielder came into his office and told him he wanted to play.” That doesn’t sound like somebody that’s in unbearable pain to me.
True, but by the same token, different people respond to pain in different ways. So the pain that player A feels is huge issue and needs attention may be minor in the big picture while player B feels only slight discomfort but has a major problem that requires surgery. When I was about 9 years old, I walked around with a collapsed lung with blood pouring into my lungs for an entire day and yeah it hurt, but I didn’t realize just how bad it was until my mom made me go to the hospital for fear that the symptoms were that of a heart attack.
This season alone we’ve seen two players now who have gone through extended periods of below average play (Ethier’s loss of power & Broxton’s lack of speed on his pitches) and yet it’s taken a large amount of time in both cases for any discussion of an injury to surface. Personally, I would think the medical staff should be checking out any player who is in a slump of any sort. Better safe than sorry. Hell, Aaron Miles is contributing his ability to now hit to his getting laser eye surgery…not that it has anything to do with the Dodgers but it just shows what proper care can do to help improve a player. Shouldn’t eye exams be a normal procedure for all players? Yet we hear about that being a revelation for players at times. Guys with big egos need to be treated like babies in some respects and health should probably be the first on the list.
I do agree players need to be more open, but like Chad said…these guys would go out there in tatters to play if they felt they could help the team win. That type of mentality is great on the field, but not so great off the field. You can’t really expect those same egos to come off the field and act like a kid running home to mommy to kiss his booo boo. The guys that do play hard and yet are honest with their ailments seem like the rarity in sports. I just think the trainers should know this and treat them accordingly.
I agree with you – the trainers SHOULD be keeping close tabs on players’ health. And in a perfect world, that’s what would happen. However, I still think that a player bears most of the responsibility for telling the training staff that he has a condition (no matter how minor he thinks it is), and then let them decide what the severity actually is. That doesn’t seem like it happened in this case.
Like you said, you dealt with your own terrible pain until a professional intervened and pointed out that wasn’t normal. Athletes sometimes don’t seem to realize that medical professionals have a lot more knowledge regarding injuries and healing than the athlete does, and it almost seems like “hide the injury from the trainer” is a game to some of them.
I tend to side with Chad here. We all know that Ethier can be passive-aggressive. He’s a sensitive guy and a lot of that stems from his high school/junior college/university years when he was trying to prove himself. The fact of the matter here is that the team has known about this injury for about 18 months, and they didn’t step in and tell him to have surgery last off-season, and they still haven’t. Guys like Ethier are going to keep playing until they can’t walk. It’s management’s job to put a stop to that, starting with the head trainer Stan Conte. Unfortunately, this is the same trainer who told Agent Ned that even though his MRI showed a torn rotator cuff, Jason Schmidt could pitch through it because he was tough…so Secret Agent Ned gave Schmidt 3 yrs/$47m. That 4-5 MPH drop on his average fastball over the final month of his last season in San Francisco wasn’t even considered. Does anyone trust Conte to make the correct decision regarding Ethier? I certainly don’t.
Player does bear responsibility, but knowing how these guys are, and knowing he’s struggling and he has a knee issue, I don’t see why it wouldn’t warrant further examination immediately.
Sounds like what every player would do regardless.