Cordero Is Done

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"Yeah! 18 months of daytime TV!"

The Washington Nationals front office has announced that Chad Cordero will be on the disabled list for the remainder of the season. What they don't say, but know to be true, is that Cordero will also be out throughout most or all of the 2009 season.

Cordero has a torn labrum, and a doc in California will decide today whether or not surgery is required. Either way, this is a career-ender for a guy who throws a ball overhand at high velocity for a single inning.

... it's not just a popular teen hangout.

You see, kids, the human shoulder is a ball-in-socket joint, much like the hip joint. Picture a joint on the head of a tripod. Can't picture that? OK ... I'll do it for you.




The primary difference is that the shoulder socket is much more shallow than the hip. This shallowness allows the shoulder joint to be the most flexible joint in the body. The labrum is a cuff of cartilage that goes around the socket to help hold the ball part of the joint in place. If the labrum is "torn", the ball rattles around in the socket, and it hurts worse than, say, congress's betrayal of the American people with the passage of the new FISA bill.




The labrum can be repaired surgically, but it can only be made "like new", not "good as new". The scar tissue left from the repair will slow down the fluid motion of the ball in the joint. For us regular folk, that's a perfectly acceptable trade off. You'll be able to reach for that can of soup on the top shelf, but you won't be able to throw a 98 mph fastball. Heck, let's all get labrum surgery. We want our soup.

Pitching coach Randy St. Clair tipped his hand, saying recently, "It's very difficult getting through all that rehab. It's a lot of work, a lot of time and usually not a lot to look forward to." He then casually estimated a 12- to 18-month recovery period.

If Chad misses all of next season, which his own coach says is probable, he'll come back a slower pitching, 28 year old who hasn't been on the mound for two years. Maybe he'll pitch in middle relief for the rest of his career. That shoulder won't ever get a ball moving faster than 90 mph again.

You can relax,
for I am here.

Thankfully, we got a couple things going for us. We got Lil' Jon Rauch. Last night's blown save aside, Rauch is a reliable closer. Secondly, with most of the team's heavy hitters on the DL, we ain't need no closer much anyways.

The truly bad news is one of timing. Chad Cordero has, for years now, been Jim Bowman's favorite bait when he's fishing for trade. Unfortunately, Bowden has never been able to set the hook and drag in any kind of catch. Now his bait has gone spoiled, and there is zero chance anything will be biting. As the July trade deadline looms, the Nats have precious little to offer from the majors:



Paul LoDuca


Wily Mo Peña



Felipe Lopez
"That's OK, son. Don't worry about that. You're fired."


If Lopez were to go, there are a few things we'd all miss, but not so much all the choking with RISP.

Felipe's inky life. Felipe's kinky wife.

You could throw Ronnie Beliard on that sorry list, but that would mean that the pitcher alone would have to defend everything up the middle. That leaves prospects as the other possibility for trading. Everybody else trade-able is wounded (I'm looking square at you, Kearns). The front office say they don't intend to trade prospects. Watch closely to see how they lie. The organization, having cut everybody with a fat paycheck over the past couple of years, is swimming in cash. They don't want to buy players, though. They're saving that money for - well, themselves. There is some ugly, dirty work to be done in the near future, and not a whole lot of able bodies around to shoulder the burden.




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