Portland manager Mons Raider had been touching on the subject for weeks now. When to shut guys down and prepare for the post-season. It's a tricky balance. You don't want to give guys too much rest and they be rusty in the post-season. But play them in meaningless games down the stretch could result in fatigue, or worse, injury.
The latter is the case for Rule 5 rookie pitcher Bill Beals. In Bill's start Friday night in Valencia, Beals was pulled from the game in the bottom of the 3rd inning citing elbow soreness. Considering the Lumberjacks had already clinched the division, and never wanting to mess around with arm issues from a pitcher, Raider removed Beals from the game. Training reports, xrays, and an MRI showed no structural damage to the pitching elbow of the rookie.
"We're still placing him on the 10-day IL" commented Raider after the game. "The training staff said they saw no real structural issues with the elbow and that it could just be a usage and fatigue issue. Look at Bill's body of work and you'll see he's only reached this level of innings once in his career through the minor leagues. He came up as a reliever earlier on. We think everything should be good for the Doubleday series but we'll reevaluate things during the Geoghegan break."
The training staff stated typically an injury like this requires 1 to 2 weeks of rest. They have Beals listed as needing 2 weeks of rest so the front office decided that in order to ensure he rests and doesn't throw to place Beals on the 10-day IL. As for what this does to the potential rotation for the post-season, Raider didn't provide much insight.
"We don't know just yet" stated Raider. "We've had 5 solid starting pitchers all season. We have no intentions of using 5 starters in the post-season. So someone from the rotation will be shuffled to the bullpen for the series. As of now, we're not sure who that will be. Wullenweber and Putachli are locked in as our top 2 starters for the series. But after that, we'll decide when the time comes. Obviously if Beals is injured and can't return, that makes our decision for us. But we want him on the team. He's been too valuable to us this season. I want him to return so my decision is hard to make."
Beals will be a candidate for the rotation along with Steffan Gimsing and Juan Marroquin. Beals finished his rookie season with a 14-5 overall record and a 3.07 ERA and 1.22 WHIP in 161.1 innings pitched this season. Despite the impressive numbers, his 1.7 WAR ranked 5th among the 5 primary starters Portland used this season.
