Even Mariners pitcher Steve Cishek was surprised by injury news
Aug 4, 2016, 5:21 PM | Updated: 5:28 pm
Steve Cishek has landed on the DL for the first time in his career with left hip labrum tear. (AP)
(AP)
Thursday afternoon the Mariners announced that Steve Cishek had been placed on the 15-day DL with a tear in his left hip labrum. The announcement was a surprise but one that perhaps answered a number of questions about what we had seen from Cishek on the hill the last couple of weeks.
“It’s his landing leg, it does explain a few things,” said Scott Servais in his daily meeting with the media. “Anything with your lower half is going to be an issue.”
The main issue was finishing pitches. Cishek first felt something wrong in the hip/groin area playing catch before a game in the Cardinals series in late June.
“The stuff’s just kind of gone down a little bit,” he said. “I’ve started to pitch a little more carefully, the velocity has been down a tick. I just wasn’t having the same life on the fastball.”
While he was feeling something, he didn’t believe it was anything terribly out of the ordinary.
“I’d stick my landing and try to get through my delivery and drive the ball down and it felt like my muscle was rolling over some kind of a sharp knife,” he said. “It was weird, it came out of nowhere. I went through a stretch where I was still getting people out and I was still kind of dealing with it. I was kind of too prideful to say anything else but once it started really affecting my performance – my shoulder started getting more sore than usual because I was using more arm because I can’t get through my delivery – I thought it was time to say something.”
An MRI Thursday morning revealed a slight tear. It does not appear that surgery will be required at this time but Cishek will take four to five days off after receiving a cortisone shot and then the hope is to get him throwing again.
“It sounds probably a little worse than it actually is,” Servais said. “We fully expect him to be out moving around throwing within four or five days then hopefully get him back going again when the 15 days are up.”
Cishek was relieved to get the diagnosis.
“When you hear ‘tear’ you think worst thing possible but I guess it is not too uncommon and guys can pitch through it depending on how they react to treatment so I am just hoping that after this little stint I will come back stronger than ever,” he said.
This is Cishek’s first trip to the DL in his career and it has been a learning experience. You hear about the importance of knowing the difference between being sore and being injured. Cishek now has a better idea of just what that is.
“This is all new to me,” he said. “If I was to complain about every nick and pain that comes up – any of us for that matter, I don’t know a single guy that plays 100 percent – we’d be in trouble. We’d be in the training room all day. I take a lot of pride in this game. I try to deal with little things. It turned out to be a little more than I anticipated.
“I know how I felt before I said something so I can kind of gauge that to when I come back. I am going to have to force myself to be honest about it because I just really want to pitch.”
