Gavin Floyd leaves game with flexor muscle strain in right elbow

With two outs and nobody on in the third inning, Gavin Floyd started Evan Longoria with an 89-mph two-seam fastball for strike one. So it was strange that Tyler Flowers immediately came out for a mound visit, and stranger still that it wasn't a brief chat.

Then Robin Ventura and Herm Schneider came out, and that explained everything. Nothing was off from Floyd's delivery, but he left the game with what the White Sox are calling a flexor muscle strain in his right elbow.

If the injury sounds familiar, it's because it's the same one he suffered against the Mariners on Aug. 26, when he left after two unremarkable (in any way) innings. The MRI came back clean, but Floyd still needed a stay on the DL. That gives you an indication of how long he'll be out, because if he only needed to miss a start, the Sox could have fudged with the rotation a little until rosters expanded on Sept. 1.

The good news? Floyd ended up pitching 16 days later, and finished the year with some of his best pitching of the season, going 3-2 with a 3.03 ERA over 29⅔ innings.