Twins

Twins Righty May Tears UCL; Likely to Miss 2017 Season

Screen cap courtesy of FoxSportsNorth

News broke early Saturday that Minnesota Twins right-hander Trevor May — who was in the mix for the No. 5 spot in the team’s rotation — has suffered a torn UCL while pitching against Team USA in a recent exhibition game. On the Twins telecast on Fox Sports North on Saturday, Cory Provus said that May had gone through his post-game workout feeling mostly fine and went home that night hoping the soreness would subside, but the next morning it persisted.

The Twins found out early Saturday morning that the official diagnosis was the torn ligament, which often requires Tommy John surgery that would force May to miss the entire 2017 season. This is a crushing development for May, who told Midwest Swing this offseason that he was geared up to become a starter again, not only because of his mentality but also the financial payoff that comes with being an established MLB starter.

LISTEN: Trevor May joins Midwest Swing after the 2016 season.

According to Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, May will pursue a second opinion in the days to come. He also told Berardino that he felt a slight grab on an 0-2 pitch to Andrew McCutchen in the second inning of that appearance against Team USA, but still managed to throw 34 more pitches after that.

Here’s the pitch in question, and you can see his reaction afterward:

MayInjury

May hit 95 mph on the first pitch of the plate appearance. After the pitch, he missed low with a breaking ball and ultimately walked McCutchen after getting ahead 0-2.

It’s also worth noting that his velocity dipped afterward, of course:

Here’s May addressing the media after the start, also courtesy of Berardino. At this point, he had no idea anything was wrong:

Twins pitching coach Neil Allen joined the Provus and Kris Atteberry on the telecast on Saturday to break down his diagnosis of the situation.

First of all, Allen expressed his disappointment with the situation, and explained what May is facing after starting the spring with a good run of work.

“Any time you hear a young man get something like that he is facing, like a Tommy John situation, it’s very sad,” Allen told Provus and Atteberry during the second inning of Saturday’s game against the Red Sox. “You know it’s a long healing process and he was having such a good spring, throwing the ball well and feeling good about himself. His confidence was sky high. To have a bubble like that burst on you is awfully sad. He’s a tough kid. He’s really strong and he’s got a tough road ahead of him. With everybody’s blessing and  help like this, he’ll get through this thing and return to us sooner rather than later.”

Allen noted that he felt May had put himself in a good position to win the No. 5 starter’s job this spring, which makes the injury all the more disappointing.

“I think so,” Allen said about May showing more poise and preparation this spring compared to last, when he was also in the competition for a rotation spot. “I don’t think it’s a big secret that we were going to give him every opportunity in the world to win that fifth starter’s spot in the rotation. He came in with the idea and presence of mind that what he was going to do was win the fifth spot. He knew that it wasn’t a lock for him and he had a lot of work and competition. We were thrilled to death to have competition to push him. He was pushing himself and doing very, very well. It’s just a sad bump in the road of life, but in sports these things happen.”

While this is the first arm issue of any kind for May, he’s obviously not the first in the organization to deal with this sort of thing. Kyle Gibson had Tommy John surgery early in his career, for instance. At this point, Allen is just trying to be a sounding board for May, who is predictably disappointed after the diagnosis.

“He’s a tough kid. He’s really strong and he’s got a tough road ahead of him.”

“We had a nice talk this morning and talked about this situation,” Allen added. “Some teammates have already approached him and talked to him about it. I said to him that he needs to reach out to people who have experienced this; who’ve been through this and lived it. Get their thoughts. Get their opinions. What to expect doctors to tell you and what to expect about a rehab. It’s a long process. It can be mentally draining on an individual. If you haven’t been there before — any kind of surgery — it’s a very tough thing mentally as well as physically. The best thing for him right now is to reach out to individuals — teammates as well as guys outside the Twins organization — that have had these kinds of things happen to them. That way he can have a little idea and a feeling about what he’s about to experience.”

The brutal reality of a situation like this is that it keeps a spot open for others to compete, and Allen said it’s still a pretty open competition. “I think there’s a wide-open door right now,” Allen said. “We’ve still got quite a ways to go. Spring training is an extra week to 10 days. There’s a lot of guys in the mix. [Adalberto] Mejia’s in the mix. [Tyler] Duffey’s in the mix. Them two jump out at me right now. There are three or four or five guys that stick out right now. We’ll see who grabs the bulls by the horn and gives us the best situation to win at the starts of ballgames. Right now it’s who brings the consistency and gets the job done.”

Speaking of Duffey and Mejia — two pitchers who have thrown on the same day this spring — Allen noted that they’ll eventually have to split them up to get them enough work to determine which one is the better candidate, assuming they’re one of the pitchers chosen.

“You know what, I do,” Allen said, speaking in terms of if he enjoys seeing Duffey and Mejia back-to-back in the same game. “But now we’re getting innings built up and eventually I’m going to have to split them up. The longevity of their games are built up now and they’re going to head into higher pitch counts. I’ll probably put one of them in Triple-A for a start and the other will stay with the major league club for a start. Ryan Vogelsong is in the equation, so he’ll get some starts. We’re just going to weigh and measure everything. We’ve got an extra 7-10 days in spring training. The longevity gives us the luxury of looking at guys a bit longer. We’ll see where we go. They’re all going to get their starts. I am going to split those guys up eventually because of the pitch counts and we’ve got to get them an opportunity to go out there for six innings to see what we get.”


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Screen cap courtesy of FoxSportsNorth

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