an update on UT’s breakout sophomore starting pitcher
Friday started AJ Russell left tonight’s game after just three innings due to “soreness,” Tony Vitello said, via Rocky Top Insider.
“Just some soreness and we’ve kind of been harping to our players to communicate with us with what’s going on. It could be anything,” Vitello said postgame. “He had some soreness in a certain part of his body. I don’t know if it was necessarily (his) arm. I kind of leave that up to those guys. Maybe it’s my mechanism. I don’t have any control of it, so I don’t want to stress until we’ve got the full word, but we got enough word to take him out of the game and give the ball off to (Chris Stamos) there.”
Rocky Top Insider reported the soreness as “side soreness,” but I didn’t see anything Vitello said that confirms that statement. That doesn’t mean it’s not true, because Ryan over at RTI is definitely more plugged in than I am. My point was just that we haven’t heard the exact nature of the injury from Tennessee’s manager, yet.
“[He] started out with not as good of command as he had,” Vitello said. “Stuff was good, but command wasn’t as good and he kind of got rolling there for a minute. And then he reached a point where you know, to kind of quote him to the training staff, he was kind of reaching back and giving it all he had, and he didn’t really feel like the ball was coming out.”
RTI noted that Russell’s strike-to-overall pitch ratio was down tonight compared to his initial start last weekend:
“Russell ended the day allowing three hits, one walk and no runs while striking out four in three innings pitched,” RTI said in its article. “After throwing 73 pitches (53 strikes) last week against Texas Tech, Russell threw just 54 pitches (36 strikes) against the Great Danes.”
Vitello said that while Russell’s off-speed command was good, perhaps even better than last week, it was the fastball command that gave away the issue.
“Didn’t start off as crisp, but really got in a nice rhythm there and kept it together with baserunners on, kept his composure and made some nice pitches,” Vitello said. “Off-speed might have been as good, if not better as last weekend. Just the fastball command wasn’t. Eventually the whole thing got cut short.”
We’ll see what Vitello says in the upcoming days, but I know I usually freak out when I hear the term “soreness,” related to a pitcher. I wouldn’t go that far until we know more.