Lot of chat on the 'net regarding 'precedents' for Erik Bedard's return.  At first glance, these 'precedents' leave a very clear impression:  don't expect anything from Bedard in 2010.

We went through this with respect to the strength of Richie Sexson's shoulder.  The medical consensus :- ) in cyber-Seattle was that it was not reasonable to expect Sexson to return at full strength. 

The surgeons' consensus was that it was reasonable to expect this, and on that basis, the M's gave Sexson a contract that presumed full health.  The fact is that the surgeons' consensus, and the M's $45m, were not taken seriously by the blog-o-sphere, which went on to do its own analysis of Sexson's prognosis.

I thought that we'd put this in the past, the idea that you and I can bounce around the net, find a few 'case studies' and come to some sort of educated medical guess.  We cannot!

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=== Have At It, dept. ===

There's nothing wrong with going, hey, some pitchers return from rotator-cuff surgery and some don't.  That's baseball chat.

The problemo comes when we start to believe that our 'educated medical guesses' would be taken seriously by scientists in the field.  We're chatting, is all.  If we keep that straight, there's no harm done.

Let's not get back into the whole Richie Sexson "my best medical guess is..." winter.  The first one was plenty 'nuff for me.  :- )

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=== Pop Science dept. ===

G-Money could speak to this better than me, but if you as a patient were in the office of the chief of orthopedic surgery at the UW ... and offered him these five "case studies" :- \ I think he'd nod, take them out of your hand, swing his hand over to the wastebasket, and release...

A surgeon, as opposed to a cyber-Doctor like myself, would ask questions like,

• How similar were these injuries to Bedard's?
• Were they 20% or 60% tears?
• Of which part of the rotator cuff structure? ('Rotator cuff' refers to the entire structure of muscles and tendons supporting the shoulder.)
• Who were the surgeons and precisely how did they repair the injuries? How good were they at the procedures they attempted?

The chief of surgery (a/k/a "the truth" here) wouldn't be the slightest interested in the opinion of his residents, much less in the opinions of laymen.

Dr. Lewis Yocum is familar with 100's or 1,000's of these cases, not with five of them. His prognosis is the relevant one -- not the one we can guesstimate with a half-hour trip around the internet.

Don't mean to be overly harsh, but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In this case the armchair medical opinions do not help our understanding.  Again, chat is fine, but let's keep in clear focus how overwhelmed our tiny medical understanding is by the complexity of the problem.

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=== Dr's Prognosis, dept. ===

My own $0.02 is on the way that Erik Bedard, specifically, throws his 2-pitch arsenal.

It says here that there are few moving parts in Erik Bedard's "game," and those moving parts are relatively less dependent on arm strength.

A shoulder, better or worse, isn't going to affect the way Bedard snaps off his hellish curve ball. 

That's (1) my take on pitching mechanics, FWIW, and that take was (2) borne out by Bedard's June-July 2009.  Bedard threw slashing curve balls with a trashed shoulder because he throws his hook with his wrist and fingers, and because his motion is so centrifugal (he gets his back and hips into the pitch).

..............

Now, it could be that Erik Bedard never gets his fastball velocity above 86 mph again.  That is the scenario under which Bedard's shoulder ruins his career, IMHO.

The likelihood of that?  Very low.  Matt Clement's career didn't implode because he could never throw 85 again.  It imploded because his fastball, slider, and control were mushy, and his particular game didn't work that way.

Bedard could lose some command, sure.  He could come back with an 89 fastball and mediocre command of it -- plus a gamebreaking curve ball.  Then he wouldn't be a superstar; he'd just be a very good pitcher.

My opinion could be wrong -- but my opinion is based on pitching mechanics and technique, not on my purported knowledge of the muscles and tendons in the human shoulder.

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=== Follow the Smart Money, dept. ===

Very interesting that the A's gave Sheets $10-$13m after pitching 0 innings in 2009. 

Interesting also that the M's gave Bedard $1.5 to $8.0m for his 2010 performance.  You might easily conclude that the market for Bedard was soft, but we have to remember also that Bedard gave his agent clear direction to sign with Seattle, which was free to pay Bedard (more or less) whatever it wanted to.  Zduriencik then filled in the blanks with numbers that were awfully attractive to the M's.

If you want inferences about what the pitchers will do this season, probably the best place to look would be at the way the investors (the M's, Rangers, and A's) are betting.

What's your take? Have the Mariners been cautiously optimistic here, have they been pessimistic, have they been quietly all smiles about the situation, or what? 

That's as good an inference as any, as to where Bedard's 2010 is at.

Cheers,

Dr D