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St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Carlos Martinez left Friday night's game against the Milwaukee Brewers after throwing just seven pitches. The Cardinals removed Martinez "as a precautionary measure" due to "right shoulder tightness," according to the Cardinals' official Twitter account. After the game manager Mike Matheny revealed that Martinez would undergo an MRI on Saturday of his throwing shoulder.
Both Matheny and Martinez sounded cautiously optimistic after the game.
Brian Stull has a post up at STL Baseball Weekly with embedded audio and extensive quotes from Matheny and Jon Jay, who served as a translator for Martinez. You should check it out. Here's Matheny's assessment by way of Stull:
"The fact that they came back and ran him through all the tests that they needed to run him through and they weren’t overly concerned at what they saw, that’s a good thing. We’ll just wait and see what the MRI says, see tomorrow," added Matheny.
Translating for Martinez, Jay shared:
"He’s felt tired before, but he’s never had something like this," said Jay for Martinez. "When he threw against the Cubs he felt it a little bit and after the game he was sore, but then in the bullpen he was fine and that’s why he wanted to push today."
It was also the reason Martinez did not alert the coaching staff to any issue.
"No, he didn’t say anything because he thought it was normal and wanted to push through it," explained Jay."He feels like he will make another start and he’s comfortable knowing that he’s going to work hard and do whatever it takes."
This is bad. As Craig detailed on Tuesday, Martinez has emerged as the ace of the St. Louis rotation. Ben opined that same morning that "Nobody puts Baby (Pedro) in the corner (of the bullpen)." But now one wonders if Martinez will even be on the active postseason roster.
Hopefully the MRI returns a positive finding. For now we do what we've done so many times this year with respect to Cardinals who have been forced to leave games early. We wait.