Just to Send Yankee Fans Panicking through the streets......

Just to Send Yankee Fans Panicking through the streets......

Will Carroll is the blogsphere guru when it comes to baseball injuries and in today's under the knife column he offers up the following on Joba;

"The Yankees are sending Chamberlain and his test results to Pensacola to be reviewed by Dr. Jim Andrews. I keep having to explain to people that this isn't necessarily bad; that if the Yankees were sure he needed surgery, it's more likely that they would have kept him in New York with Dave Altchek. We'll know more after the visit, but indications are that Chamberlain has some damage, but that surgery is not an immediate indication. So far the Yankees are only willing to say that Chamberlain will miss his next start, but they're also giving off signs that Chamberlain will need to go onto the DL. The biggest worry is the location of the pain: while the team is insisting that the center of the shoulder is good, that's still one location where referred pain shows up for the labrum."

How bad is a torn Labrum? From Will Carroll in 2004

"Of the 36 major-league hurlers diagnosed with labrum tears in the last five years, only midlevel reliever Rocky Biddle has returned to his previous level. Think about that when your favorite pitcher comes down with labrum trouble: He has a 3 percent chance of becoming Rocky Biddle. More likely, he'll turn into Mike Harkey, Robert Person, or Jim Parque, pitchers who lost stamina and velocity—"

The good news is that maybe the Yankees didn't really see anything on the MRI but are being extremely cautious because of the location of the reported pain and the severity of labrum injuries. The bottom line is- we gotta hope the news from Alabama doesn't include the word labrum....