After a month in which he gave up 30 runs in 30 innings as he pitched through a hip issue that had bothered him since the end of spring training, Twins starter Bailey Ober described the need to “take a look in the mirror and see what’s really the best course of action.”
That course of action, Ober and the team decided, would be to take a period of time on the injured list and get his hip injury — described by the team as a left hip impingement — healed once and for all while working on fixing mechanical issues that cropped up as a result of the injury.
“I came up to them and said, ‘Hey, I think this is the best thing for the team and for me just to take a little breather and try to get back to normal as much as I can and get ready for the second half,’” Ober said.
Ober is currently doing some light throwing and is hopeful to get back on the mound sometime next week. From there, his absence might not be an extended one, but there will be a focus on getting his mechanics straightened out. While Ober said it’s been “better from a pain standpoint,” in the past few weeks, he said he got to a point where he wasn’t comfortable with how he was throwing as he altered his mechanics to protect his hip.
“(I’m) trying to come in here and get back as soon as I possibly can, so I’m definitely putting in a lot of work right now trying to get my mechanics in line to not really … compensate and affect how I’m throwing the baseball,” Ober said. “I feel like that’s the biggest thing right now.”
The Twins have yet to announce a replacement in the rotation for Ober, but it appears they’ll roll with some kind of bullpen game on Saturday with rookie Travis Adams, who was in the Twins’ clubhouse Friday on the taxi squad, likely getting his share of work.
Adams was called up in June but did not appear in a game. Saturday, he’s expected to be added to the roster again for reliever Kody Funderburk, who will be optioned to Triple-A.
“Getting that three days before helped me get familiar with everything I needed to do and what to kind of expect,” Adams said.
Adams, who has a 3.68 earned-run average across 63 2/3 innings pitched at Triple-A this season, has been primarily coming in in long relief this season as the Twins have thrown him for shorter stints in minor league games typically every four days rather than start him every five days.
“It’s been a longstanding discussion that guys can pitch every four days. They just might not be able to go max effort for 100 pitches every four days,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “But there’s a big difference, I think, between throwing 55 and 100. I think he’s done a good job with it. I think he was very open-minded to it and I think the results, I don’t want to say they’ve spoken for themselves, but it’s proven that this can work.”
Other injury updates
Besides Ober, the Twins are also without starters Pablo López and Zebby Matthews, both of whom landed on the injured list in June. Matthews, out with a shoulder strain, has been throwing bullpens — he is scheduled to throw another on Saturday — and should that go well, he’ll then progress to seeing hitters next week, head athletic trainer Nick Paparesta said.
One of those hitters might be Luke Keaschall, who is progressing well from a broken forearm, an injury suffered in late April. Keaschall has been hitting off the Trajekt machine in the cage, which Paparesta said he has come out of well, and once they get final clearance, they’ll want him face live pitching before sending him into game action. Paparesta noted they have younger players throwing at their facility in Fort Myers, Fla., and Keaschall could travel there to face them before getting in rehab games.
As for López, his return from a Grade 2 teres major strain still is not expected soon but he had magnetic resonance imaging taken on Monday and “things are progressing nicely,” Paparesta said. His strain is healing, though not all the way healed and he has not started throwing yet, Paparesta said.
“The MRI was encouraging and we were happy with what we saw,” Paparesta said. “It’s kind of exactly where we thought he’d be at 26 days post-injury. … He’s moving in the right direction.”
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