Ted Lilly

Ted Lilly threw 87 pitches—61 for strikes—in a seven-inning stint at Peoria last night, in which he gave up just one run and three hits while fanning nine. The Chiefs beat the Burlington Bees, 2-1.

Lilly walked the first man he faced and gave up a triple to the third Burlington hitter. He was almost perfect after that.

Lilly, as quoted in the Peoria Journal Star...

“I struggled with (my command) at times, but for the most part I felt alright. I was mixing my changeup more than I have, so I was getting a feel for it tonight.”

Ted Lilly threw 5.2 IP (66 pitches – 46 strikes) for the Iowa Cubs this morning against the Angels AAA squad (Salt Lake) at Fitch Park Field #3, allowing one run on three hits, no walks, with four strikeouts.

Lilly was supposed to throw four innings/60 pitches, but he was so efficient with his pitches he ended-up working into the 6th inning before he hit 60 pitches, and even then he ended up going slightly over his pre-arranged pitch limit.

Lilly retired the first nine men he faced, and he generally threw strikes (he didn’t walk anyone, and he went to a three-ball count on only two of the 20 men he faced). While he had outstanding command of his fast ball and had a really good change-up today (same as last time), he had some difficulty commanding his curve, bouncing three in the dirt.

Here is Lilly’s INNING-BY INNING LOG:

Ted Lilly tossed three scoreless innings and then Thomas Diamond followed with five more shutout frames, as the Iowa Cubs blanked the Fresno Grizzlies (Giants AAA squad) 3-0 at Fitch Park Field #3 this afternoon in Mesa.

Here is Ted Lilly’s inning-by-inning recap:

Ah, another new adventure in Cubbery.

Sorry for missing the day's rampant speculation on Ted Lilly's left pitching shoulder arthroscopy. I was in the OR all day and connecting hip bones to...

So in one hour what can you see during a shoulder scope? Dr. Yokum puts the scope in from the posterior portal, low and behold he sees a caricature of Sean Marshall smiling face on the anterior capsule. He then puts in a Wissinger rod to create an anterior portal and whoa, is that a Tom Gorzellany autograph on his biceps tendon?

As we all remember from a report right here at TCR, the Ted Lilly Chronicles...

As we know, Ted Lilly was battling through some shoulder issues through 2009 and still delivered a fantastic season with a 3.10 ERA. It didn't seem like it was too serious and something a little offseason rest may take care of, but instead he went under Dr. Yocum's knife.

Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly underwent a left shoulder arthroscopy and debridement on Tuesday by noted orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Lewis Yocum in Los Angeles. During the surgery, Yocum found no major damage to Lilly's shoulder and the procedure consisted of a washout and clean up of the shoulder.

Bruce Levine reports Ted Lilly goes to the DL, righty reliever Justin Berg (acquired in the 2005 Matt Lawton trade from the Yankees) gets called up from Iowa. Lilly's MRI-Arthrogram apparently didn't show "any significant abnormalities" (possibly showing tendonitis but no structural damage) but as we've all seen what the media gets to report and what the radiologist and orthopods see isn't always identical.

Levine also says Lilly has agreed to having his sore left knee undergo arthroscopic surgery (scheduled for Monday) to clean up Lilly's meniscus (link to anatomy pic), speculating that he can be back in 3 weeks if they do that now.

From a report on Levine's ESPN-1000 radio show, Lilly said the shoulder got his attention the day after the game in Philly. The shoulder felt "a little unusual". Yesterday he tried to throw and had sharp pain. He said he was familiar with it as it felt like his symptoms in Toronto. Lilly said he expects himself to come back in 3 weeks...

Based on my experience, how long it takes to recover from a knee arthroscopy varies greatly and 3 weeks is certainly possible but continuing to push the envelope on these injuries is like playing with fire. This implies the medical staff thinks Lilly's shoulder injury is a cascade problem, meaning that his knee soreness lead to altered pitching mechanics that secondarily lead to the shoulder problem. I found evidence that they connected his knee and shoulder woes when his shoulder took the brunt of the blame in 2005. 

From this mlb.com article on the Bluejays archive circa Spring 2006:

Last year, he said he had a tendency to have a "stiff" landing with his right leg, which put unnecessary strain on his throwing shoulder. Perhaps not coincidentally, Lilly sat out last spring with a shoulder injury.

I did some additional background research on Lilly's shoulder problems from 2005. Back then his diagnosis was biceps tendonitis (link to anatomy drawing). He missed most of spring training and started his season by coming off the DL 4/10/05 but had a rough April and worked through the problem until it flared up at the end of July 05. This lead to a 2nd DL stint lasting 5 weeks. 2005 wasn't kind to Lilly producing a 10-11 record but Lilly is a tough guy and naturally he didn't make his injury an excuse in this end of season interview from the Bluejays site.

"To put it very mildly, I'm disappointed in the way I've gone out there and competed," Lilly said Wednesday after his last start of the season. "I guess, coming into this year, I just expected us to be competitive in this league. And [I expected] myself to really make a push to help us do that."

To be fair, injuries played a large part in his inability to meet those goals. Lilly missed all of Spring Training with a case of shoulder tendinitis, and when he came back, he clearly wasn't ready to pitch in the big leagues.

Regarding the 2009 version of Ted Lilly, his shoulder tendonitis/torn knee meniscus might just take 3-5 weeks if they don't push things and add the knee arthroscopic surgery to his recovery list. Getting Lilly back in September is just like trading for an All-Star for the pennant stretch (slamming head in Rob G's door).

A chronology of the Ted Lilly 2005 biceps tendonitis after the fold...

Saturday, 10 AM UPDATE: Bruce Levine's ESPN AM-1000, Talkin' Baseball radio show from this saturday morning has updates on Soriano's injury saying it's just a jammed finger and not a dislocation. Also, Lilly's knee symptoms are related to a meniscus problem and Dempster may just miss one more start.

Also he interviewed Oneri Fleita (Cubs VP of Player Personnel) who comments on all things in the Cubs minor league system as well as the recent rule 4 amateur draft, saying 2nd round pick LSU infielder DJ LeMahieu is close to signing.

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A dark cloud seems to loom even with a two game winning streak after tonight's 3-1 win vs the Gnats.  So I ask, is dropping like flies worse than dropping flys?

This is not following Lou Piniella's script for the 2nd half of the season:

1) Get Healthy and Stay Healthy

2) Score runs

The "Road to Wrigley" game with the Iowa Cubs vs the Vegas 51's isn't coming until August 9th but it looks like the Iowa Cubs will be staying with their parent club just a bit longer, as two more Cub starters are possibly out for days and maybe more.

 

 

 

In the friday night 6-2 win against the Nationals, Alfonso Soriano dislocated his right little "pinky" finger (his throwing hand) in a base running mishap during the 4th inning. He singled to center on a play where DLee was on second but Lee rounded third and held there based on a strong but high throw to the plate by Nyjer Morgan. The catcher, Josh Bard caught the throw well in front of the plate then caught Soriano half way between first and second in an 8-2-6-4 putout. On the replay you can see that Soriano jammed his hand sliding into the base and he pulled on the finger right away apparently reducing the dislocated knuckle. The Comcast telecast also showed Soriano getting treatment from trainer Mark O'Neal as soon as he got back to the dugout but he stayed in the game and even batted again (he grounded out to 3B in the 6th and walked in the 9th). This type of injury doesn't swell until a few hours later but once the swelling develops the finger stiffens up making it hard to grip things (like a baseball or a bat).

Monday night's game seemed otherworldly from even before the first pitch.

A Wrigley Field home game on a holiday at night? It made scheduling sense, given that the Cubs had to fly all the way east from San Diego following Sunday's game, but it still felt wrong.

Then the lineups were published and owing to a combination of illness, injuries, and an opposing lefthander, we saw Reed Johnson hitting cleanup and an infield of Freel, Theriot, Miles, and Hoffpauir. In other words, the stuff of split squad spring training games.

Tuesday night in St. Louis...

Joel Piniero, coming off three consecutive losses, recorded the Cardinals' first complete-game shutout of the season. He faced only 28 hitters, threw only 28 non-strikes (never reaching a three-ball count), only allowed one man into scoring position, and dispatched the Cubs in 125 minutes, the Cards' fastest game in almost three years.

Rookie Colby Rasmus, who had just two singles in 25 AB against lefthanded pitching this season, bashed a 2-run homer off of Ted Lilly.

The Cubs claimed a rain-shortened victory Wednesday night, winning behind: Ted Lilly, who pitched into the seventh inning and improved to 5-2; Alfonso Soriano, who hit his 53rd career leadoff home run; Geovany Soto, who hit his first homer of the season after 96 plate appearances; and George Herman Theriot, who banged out two home runs and now has five in the month of May. (He had seven career homers in 380 games heading into this month.)