By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/09/15/preller-padres-learn-the-hard-way-about-medical-deception/It’s not nice to fool either Mother Nature or your trading partner. The Padres are learning that the hard way. General manager
A.J. Preller has been suspended for thirty days without pay for trying to fool the Red Sox at minimum. It may not stop there.
Allowing that docking a GM with a fortnight left in the regular season amounts almost to a slap on the wrist, baseball government
has sent a message: Deal straight, or we’ll straighten you out. This after a considerable probe into whether Preller and the Padres
played entirely straight when it came to medical information involving players it sought to trade.
Specifically, pitcher Drew Pomeranz, whom the Padres swapped to the Red Sox in mid-July, the run-up to the non-waiver trade
deadline, getting in return pitching prospect Anderson Espinoza.
The Red Sox only learned of medical preventative measures provided Pomeranz after the deal was made. Nobody’s saying just
what. Or, whether it involves followup maintenance to the non-throwing-hand fracture the lefthander suffered while pitching for
the Athletics in 2003—when he punched a wooden chair after the Rangers lit him up eight runs in three and two thirds innings.
But just before the non-waiver trade deadline, the Padres sent pitchers Colin Rea and Andrew Cashner to the Marlins for pitching
prospect Luis Castillo. And Rea’s first start for the Marlins was a disaster: he worked three and a third before leaving with elbow
stiffness. That’s when the Marlins learned Rea had been taking treatment on the elbow for weeks before the deal. Two days later,
baseball government swung Rea’s return to San Diego, forcing the Padres to surrender Castillo.
ESPN says “multiple sources” told the network the Padres kept two sets of player medical information: “one for industry consumption
and the other for the team’s internal use . . . Trainers were told in meetings during spring training that the distinction was meant to
better position the team for trades, according to two sources with direct knowledge of what was said.”
Preller’s suspension was Pomeranz-specific. (Pomeranz as a Red Sox cratered somewhat from the first half that got him onto the
National League’s All-Star team.) But the Red Sox, the Marlins, and the White Sox complained about the Padres’s apparent medical
information deception. And ESPN says a fourth team, unnamed, had similar complaints.
The better news is that we’ve come a very long way from the days when teams could trade the health compromised with impunity
and almost no consequences other than on the field for the hapless trading partners. One of the single most notorious trades of all
time, and certainly the most notorious in the history of the Cubs, might have been avoided otherwise.
Thinking themselves in need of pitching help pronto, the 1964 Cubs cast longing eyes upon Cardinals righthander Ernie Broglio.
What they saw: a righthander who’d led the National League in wins (tied with Hall of Famer Warren Spahn) in 1961, shook off a
couple of so-so seasons, won eighteen games in 1963 with a nifty 2.99 ERA, and looked like a classic change-of-scenery candidate
after starting 1964 3-5/3.50.
What they didn’t see and probably didn’t want to know: Broglio already had a compromised arm, probably abetted by his once-
monstrous curve ball. The Cubs couldn’t plead ignorance: two weeks before casting eyes upon Broglio, they dealt for another
Cardinal pitcher, Lew Burdette, who heard they were looking at Broglio and warned them the righthander was taking cortisone
shots in his pitching elbow.
The Cubs soured on young center fielder Lou Brock, who showed promise but had yet to live up to it. The Cardinals wanted Brock
despite a few reservations among the players at first. (“He was not a good fielder, he struck out a lot, and he didn’t know how to
run the bases,” said first baseman Bill White, words on which he’d have to dine hard in due course.) But then-Cubs general
manager John Holland pushed the hardest for the deal and got it.
Broglio turned out to have ulnar nerve damage for which he underwent surgery after the 1964 season. It didn’t help, in some
part because the righthander had been afraid—as many if not most players were in that time and place—to speak up for fear of
losing a job and tried pitching through it regardless. He’d spend three seasons with the Cubs and win eight games over the
three.
“Some [Hall of Famers] I played ball with,” Broglio said in recent years, “and some I helped put there.” Including, of course, Lou
Brock, whose path to the Hall of Fame only began with his helping those Cardinals to win a slightly surprising pennant on the
final weekend and an even more surprising (and thrilling) 1964 World Series.
On the other hand, one question is begged somewhat: What’s to stop a team from overloading medical treatment information on
a player for the aforesaid industry consumption . . .
not because the player
has health issues, but because the team in question
would like all other teams to keep their meathooks
off their man?
Who’s to keep, say, the surprisingly resurgent Yankees from filling the industry consumption menu with just enough health
flags on, say, white-hot rookie Gary Sanchez (is it possible for a young man to be his league’s Rookie of the Year after playing in
maybe less than sixty games?), that it guarantees nobody can even think of touching their prize? Not even if they offer the moon,
the stars, and three Delta Quadrant planets?
Who’s to say the Orioles—enjoying the oddity of Mark Trumbo’s worst-of-all-time 42-plus-bomb season (Trumbo’s stats otherwise
resemble Dick Stuart and Dave Kingman more than David Ortiz)—haven’t loaded up the industry consumption health menu with
just enough red flags to keep Trumbo off the coming free agency market (the former Angel signed a one-year deal with the Orioles,
and you may rest assured some sucker will take those 40something home runs no matter how little comes along with them) and
leave them to sign him post haste?
It sounds far-fetched to some, and please bear in mind the foregoing is mere speculation. But when has there been a baseball
era in which at least a few owners didn’t indulge in a little trickery to grease their wheeling and dealing?
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Come to think of it, once upon a time in the 1980s, the Yankees were victimised by something similar to the Drew Pomeranz
situation. In 1985, the Yankees dealt for White Sox lefthanded pitcher Britt Burns---despite the Yankees' team physician John
Bonamo advising them not to make the deal: Burns had a congenital hip condition. When Bonamo advised George Steinbrenner
and his staff not to make the deal for that very reason, Steinbrenner snorted after Bonamo left the room, "What does he know
about baseball? He's a doctor. We're baseball men."
Sure enough, Burns broke down the following spring training and never pitched again. (Steinbrenner was fool enough to entertain
the idea of sending Burns for a hip replacement.) At that time, baseball still didn't have the medical information bank that got
A.J. Preller into hot water.
