Carlos Rodon’s late scratch brings early scratches to mind

Entering Thursday, Carlos Rodon had made 12 starts in a row during which his consistency and ceiling were called into question, but not his health. He found a groove with a 3.00 ERA over his last seven starts, and a rain delay cut his last outing short after four innings and 69 pitches.

Alas, the shrouded shoulder issue that introduced itself at the start of the season disguised as “biceps bursitis” turned out to be a Chekov’s gun in the third act. He was a late scratch for his start because of shoulder stiffness, and he’ll undergo and MRI today to better understand what the deal is.

It’s hard to get a sense of severity from the quotes, except that it sounds like more than he slept on it funny.

“I can’t really put a finger on it,” Rodon said. “Just a day you just don’t feel right and you know you don’t want to be -- you don’t want to compete when you’re not at your best, you know.”

“It’s tough. It’s frustrating. Things happen. You just move on from this.”

“It’s been up and down. Had some good starts. Now we’re fumbling it.

“I’ll see how it goes tomorrow and go from there.”

The biceps issue always seemed like a shoulder issue since the two are connected in multiple senses of the word. John Danks had his worked on while getting a capsular tear repaired, which is the first thing that came to mind for me. Also, as Larry quickly pointed out, the shoulder is where the nearest bursa sac is located. The other one in the area is the elbow, and “tennis elbow” would be easy enough to tell the media.

So this doesn’t seem like good news. At best, it provides needed perspective. The fact that it’s nagging is something to keep in mind when accruing pitching depth and concocting offseason plans.

Jake Petricka is another guy who didn’t need what Thursday brought. In his case, it was a trip to the disabled list for an elbow strain.

It’s yet another blow to Petricka’s body. This is his third DL trip this year (two elbows, one lat), coming after hip surgery that cost him the majority of 2016. To maximize frustration, it came just as he started showing signs of life for the first time in two years. He had allowed just one run and six baserunners to eight strikeouts over his last 6 ²⁄₃ innings, stranding seven of nine inherited runners.

September DL stints are unnecessary except to indicated a cemented period of unavailability. With Petricka, a reliever in his second year of arb-eligiblity with a 40-man roster crunch looming, it could also signal uncertainty afterward, as this makes him more vulnerable to a non-tendering.