Neal Huntington had his weekly session with the media yesterday, and had some injury updates on the top three pitching prospects in the system.
**Nick Kingham hasn’t had his second opinion on his elbow yet, according to Huntington, although they are hoping that takes place this week.
“Nick chose a very busy doctor,” Huntington said. “Our hope is to get him in this week and we’ll have an update for you after he gets in.”
Kingham is currently shut down with elbow soreness, and is waiting on a second opinion to diagnose the problem.
**Tyler Glasnow was placed on the disabled list over the weekend with an ankle sprain. He suffered the injury two starts ago, then missed some time before returning for one more outing. In that start, his velocity was down, and his control struggled, leading to the Pirates placing him on the DL.
“He still felt it. We decided let’s be safe than sorry,” Huntington said. “He passed all the clinicals, passed all the tests that we wanted to pass. The one final test was a game and how did it feel in the game, it didn’t feel right. We got him out of the game early. We’ll slow him down and make sure we do everything in our power to get this as healthy as it’s going to be as quickly as possible and get him back out there again.”
As for why the Pirates sent Glasnow back out for another game, rather than sending him to the DL in the first place:
“The challenge with body parts and the medical and the gray area of medicals is you have your clinical and then you have the player observations and then you have your staff’s physical observations and the swelling was down, he was moving fine, the final test was a game. In that game he just didn’t feel that it was where he needed it to be. So rather than push through it, we pulled the plug, got him off it and make sure we do everything in our power to get whatever effusion is in there out, to get the swelling out, to get him back confident in the ankle and that’s the steps we’re taking right now.”
**As I reported last week, Jameson Taillon was set to throw his next game on Saturday. Huntington said that he threw a two inning sim-game, and that he “threw the ball well, free and easy.” I didn’t see this outing, but that describes how he looked in his first outing. Taillon wasn’t on a five-day schedule yet, but I’d expect that to come soon, especially since time is running out in extended Spring Training.
