Injury That Doesn’t Hurt Ends Vance Worley’s Season

Here’s the deal, folks.

If a pitcher is pitching with a known injury and his performance is obviously suffering, you can assume he’s in pain.

If that same pitcher is then shut down for the season a few weeks later, after struggling tremendously for weeks, you can be really, really, really sure that he’s in a lot of pain.

Both Worley and Phillies officials have said for weeks that the loose bodies, or calcium deposits, floating around the lining of Worley’s right elbow weren’t causing him any pain when he threw.

Today, the Phillies announced they were shutting the begoggled one down and assigning Wednesday night’s starter Tyler Cloyd Worley’s spot in the rotation for the rest of the year.

I know what you’re all worried about. What are the Phillies going to do now when the playoffs get here? Who’s going to be there fourth starter come October? Will Cloyd be ready?

Tee hee hee. Just wanted to harken back to old blog habits. Ah, that was fun.

Now, I don’t consider myself a naive person, but I am a trusting person. So, I kinda figured that if both Worley and the Phils were saying that his elbow problems weren’t affecting his pitching, they weren’t feeding me a lot of bull.

I know, I’m cute, aren’t I?

You don’t shut a pitcher down for the season, even a meaningless final month like this, if there isn’t a problem. Clearly there was a problem, although Worley continues to swear that he wasn’t in any pain.

“It’s something I thought I could make it through,” Worley said. “We all kind of talked it over. We feel like this is the best thing to do right now, have the surgery now and prepare for next season. [I’ll] get a couple extra weeks to work on making sure my arm’s good and conditioning myself.”

And if there is a problem, then it’s the right move. I just hope there aren’t any other phantom injuries on the Phillies that we need to be worried about.

I hope Ryan Howard isn’t actually playing on a broken leg. Let’s all pray that Roy Halladay’s isn’t secretly hiding a torn rotator cuff, or that Cole Hamels’ stomach bug isn’t really the Hanta virus.

Pitching coach Rich Dubee indicated that while Worley’s elbow issues weren’t causing him pain, it was affecting him on the field mentally.

“His demeanor was different,” Dubee said. “His personality was different. His mound presence was extremely changed. And those aren’t good things. Those aren’t things we want engrained in him for the rest of his career for sure. It was a good time to stop him and get him straightened up.”

So, Worley’s goggles will go on a shelf until spring training, where he is expected to be right on schedule with the rest of his rotation mates.

And Cloyd will gear up for October.

Crap, I did it again.