© Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports
Jeff Samardzija is injured again. The Giants starter left Tuesday’s game after just one inning, due to a flare up in his shoulder/pectoral area, the same issue that kept him out for the first few weeks of the season.
It appears that Samardzija should’ve stayed out longer. He hasn’t looked like himself in 2018, posting a 6.23 ERA in seven starts. Now he’s back on the shelf, and will be for at least one scheduled start according to manager Bruce Bochy.
Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow shed some light on the pectoral issue, tracing it back to Samardzija’s inability to establish his fastball in spring training.
“I really think it all started in spring training, when he didn’t get his fastball established first and he was working on project pitches,” Krukow said. “He wanted to work on his split and a changeup combination. I think that’s great, but until you get your fastball strength established, I just think that you’re vulnerable. And it turned out he did. He got hot in the shoulder and they shut him down, put him on the DL which was the first time in his career. And his mentality is such a macho football mentality, which I absolutely adore about the guy. I mean he’s one of my favorite players on that team because of his attitude. He goes through pain, he will not let it slow him down.
“You know what, when he came back he wasn’t right. His first outing when he threw five shutout innings against Anaheim, it was a struggle and he didn’t have great command. He was sort of effectively wild, he had a couple breaks…but after that it never really locked in mechanically for him. He never really had the fastball command that we saw him have all of last year. I mean last year he had 205 strikeouts I think and 32 walks. That’s a remarkable statistic when you start talking about walk/strikeout ratio. Well this year, he’s struck out 25, he’s walked 23. So he’s never had the fastball command or velocity that he had. To me that’s all mechanics. I don’t know what’s inside of his arm, but when your mechanics are wrong for a long time, you’re usually throwing around something that doesn’t feel good. With him you kind’ve have to guess for yourself, cause he’s not going to openly tell you about it.
“Now I think this is another head slap and it’s going to slow him down, and I think they are going to completely get this thing under control before they bring him back, because they have to. Because if he comes back and he’s throwing around bad mechanics in his shoulder, you’re going to see more of the same, so I think they’re going to have to really address this thing. It may be long term. It may be some DL time that’s extensive. We don’t know.”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Kruk on Samardzija, start from 2:10.