Baseball Prospectus latest Under the Knife column from the prodigious Will Carroll includes this tidbit:
It was back and forth for Rich Harden. Early reports had "torn oblique" in them and by the following day, Harden was saying he felt good and thought he'd avoid the DL. He didn't, as the A's took the smart, conservative route, hoping to keep this stint shorter than what Tim Hudson had last year with a similar, more serious injury. It was nice to see Larry Davis, the team's athletic trainer, actually taking the ball out of his pitcher's hand. Harden will be replaced by Seth Etherton and hopes to be back by the end of the month. The A's are also dealing with a shoulder situation - not injury, I'm told - with newly acquired Dan Meyer. Meyer has a fatigued shoulder and will require physical therapy. The "medieval" description that Davis gave seems a bit dramatic, but it's not the easiest thing to go through either. If the shoulder problem was caught early and with no talk of tears or sprains, it appears they did, then Meyer should be able to come back and return to form. The A's are also being very careful with Bobby Kielty. His sore side could be a mild oblique strain and the team is already painfully short of outfielders.
The A's are truly having extraordinarily bad luck on the injury front. Kielty finally starts performing the way the A's expected him to and he goes down. A small market team just doesn't have the same abilities to plug that hole as easily.
By the way, the Wear it. tees are now available in the Athletics Nation official store as well as the set of AN stickers you helped create. If you order now, they should ship Wednesday.
