More on Kip
According to this article on MLB.com, it's the axillary artery in Kip's pitching arm that has the clot. Being curious, I pulled the following Gray's anatomy image (the medical book, not the TV show, there was actually a girl in a lecture of mine that didn't know there was a difference) from Wikipedia.
(Click the image to enlarge)
The axillary artery is that big thick red line going down the middle of the arm and turning into the brachial artery right around the biceps. I'm not a doctor but I do watch a lot of Scrubs and House and it occurs to me that if that artery is 100% blocked like Littlefield said it was in the AP report there can't be much blood getting to the rest of Kip's arm and he's is probably going to be having surgery.
Anyways, the MLB.com article says that this clot isn't related to the elbow problems and numbness in his fingers that Kip had in 2004 (which I had forgotten until pointed out by Vaughn in the comments below) but given the nature of this injury and the awful manner in which Kip pitched last year, I find that claim to be pretty dubious. By dubious I mean I'm pretty sure it's a flat out lie so that the team can cover it's own ass. Again, I'm no medical expert, but a clot like this has to form over quite a long period of time. If it was the cause of his 2004 problems (and it HAD to be, it's too giant of a coincidence that unexplained arm numbness isn't related to a clot like this), than it probably could've been addressed in a much less dramatic manner that offseason. It's also not a stretch to think it may have affected his performance last year. We can now thank Dave Littlefield for the impressive seminar on "How to watch your impressive pitching depth disappear in 6 months or less" that we've been privy too since the end of last season.
(Click the image to enlarge)The axillary artery is that big thick red line going down the middle of the arm and turning into the brachial artery right around the biceps. I'm not a doctor but I do watch a lot of Scrubs and House and it occurs to me that if that artery is 100% blocked like Littlefield said it was in the AP report there can't be much blood getting to the rest of Kip's arm and he's is probably going to be having surgery.
Anyways, the MLB.com article says that this clot isn't related to the elbow problems and numbness in his fingers that Kip had in 2004 (which I had forgotten until pointed out by Vaughn in the comments below) but given the nature of this injury and the awful manner in which Kip pitched last year, I find that claim to be pretty dubious. By dubious I mean I'm pretty sure it's a flat out lie so that the team can cover it's own ass. Again, I'm no medical expert, but a clot like this has to form over quite a long period of time. If it was the cause of his 2004 problems (and it HAD to be, it's too giant of a coincidence that unexplained arm numbness isn't related to a clot like this), than it probably could've been addressed in a much less dramatic manner that offseason. It's also not a stretch to think it may have affected his performance last year. We can now thank Dave Littlefield for the impressive seminar on "How to watch your impressive pitching depth disappear in 6 months or less" that we've been privy too since the end of last season.