Athletics roster moves: Chad Smith recalled, Richard Lovelady to IL

A move everyone saw coming after yesterday, the A’s placed left-hander Richard Lovelady on the IL and is recalling righty Chad Smith from Triple-A:

This comes after Lovelady was seemingly hurt after getting the second out of the eighth inning yesterday, just his 11th pitch of the afternoon:

With fellow lefties Sam Moll and Sam Long in the bullpen and Ken Waldichuk seemingly now joining them there the team could afford to swap out a lefty for a righty. All the team is calling the injury right now is a strained elbow but that ominous diagnosis often leads to a lengthy absence or even worse, elbow surgery. We should be finding out more over the next few days a timetable for Lovelady’s return. It’s a loss for the bullpen as Lovelady’s been solid this season with a 3.86 ERA over 21 innings, mostly as a lefty specialist.

Taking his place is the right-handed Smith. He hasn’t established himself in the big leagues yet but got into 8 games for the club during the month of April. The results were less than encouraging as he gave up 7 runs in just 10 innings, including at least one run in 5 of his 8 appearances.

It hasn’t been much better at Las Vegas this year with Smith sporting a 10.26 ERA in 16 ²⁄₃ frames. It is the PCL but still, that is not a good number to look at. Smith is probably the last man on the totem poll for the time being. Let’s hope the A’s see something that we’re not seeing.