Pittsburgh Pirates right-handed pitching prospect Clay Holmes is experiencing elbow tightness, and is scheduled to visit Dr. James Andrews next Wednesday for further evaluation. Holmes had issues with his elbow last year during the Fall Instructional Leagues, and was shut down for rest and rehab over the off-season. The elbow started bothering him again recently, and the Pirates shut him down and scheduled him for a visit to get the elbow evaluated.
A visit to Dr. Andrews is never a good thing for a pitcher. It doesn’t always result in Tommy John surgery. As an example, Jason Grilli visited Dr. Andrews last year, but only needed a month of rest. However, that’s the best case scenario, and in most cases that’s the outcome for an elbow issue.
“Once we find out more, we can do what we need to do to get it better,” Holmes said on the elbow, mentioning that he doesn’t know what the specific injury is.
Last week I wrote about Holmes, noting that he made big improvements in the second half of the 2013 season with West Virginia, and looked like he could follow the same path as Nick Kingham this year in his jump to Bradenton. Holmes was our number 12 prospect in the system coming into the season.
+ postsTim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.
Is he only the second possible TJ victim since NH took over (ground chuck being the 1st)? How is this compared to the rest of the league?
Not sure how many but certainly not just the 2nd as McPherson is currently recovering from it.
I think, barring a run of like 1/8 of all your pitchers breaking down over a 5 year period, that making an indictment of the FO is impossible
I always assume that at least 1 out of every 4 pitching prospects will wind up having this surgery. I still figure that among Cole, Taillon and Kingham one of them will probably miss most of the 2014 season.
Fingers crossed this isn’t TJ or anything near as bad. While I didn’t see Holmes’ season as a copy of Kingham’s prior year (i.e. his ERA, Ks and BBs in his “good half” were all notably worse than Kingham’s), you hate to see any good prospect miss significant time.
That sucks. I had high hopes for him coming into this season. Hope the end result isn’t TJ surgery.