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While it was certainly disappointing to see Angels’ ace John Lackey go down with a triceps injury on Saturday, I got great pleasure out of keeping my mouth shut until right after a competing owner paid $32 for him in one of my league auctions. I suppose it had a little something to do with the fact said owner had, on multiple occasions, bid me up on a player after the bidding was essentially closed. Regardless, an Angels team already dealing with Kelvim Escobar being sidelined until May with shoulder tightness, are scrambling.
This would seemingly give top prospect Nick Adenhart a chance to grab a rotation spot, but he has extremely minimal experience above Double-A, making it less likely that he serves as the temporary solution. Obviously with both Escobar and Lackey out, Ervin Santana is suddenly a lock for a rotation spot and the guy that could join him is Dustin Moseley.
Moseley was mildly intriguing in the first half of 2007, when he was an extreme groundballer and posted a 2.41 ERA and 1.07 WHIP, but for whatever reason, those few things he seemed to do right in the first half escaped him after the break. At least with Adenhart there is obvious upside, even if both the Angels and fantasy owners have to navigate through the bumps in the road along the way. All things considered, I think keeper league owners shoud definitely target Adenhart, but there isn’t a league format in which I would consider Moseley.
As for Lackey, the mood was obviously grim in Angels camp. “It’s going to be a huge blow,” fellow starter Joe Saunders told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s definitely not good. John is our horse, the leader of the pitching staff and a leader of the team. Our Nos. 1 and 2 starters are not doing so hot right now. We’re going to have to step up our game.”
Lackey claims that his right elbow locked up pretty significantly on Saturday and he was diagnosed with a triceps strain and expected to miss at least four weeks. That’s four weeks until he resumes baseball activities. The most notable part of the report is that Lackey will need at least four minor league starts to build up his strength, which sidelines him until mid-May. My player rankings will obviously change (hopefully today despite my fighting a sinus infection) and I expect Lackey to fall from ninth among starting pitchers to somewhere in the 15-16 range.
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