Updates on Moustakas and Montgomery

As I mentioned late last night, Michael Montgomery and Mike Moustakas – likely the two most important minor league players in the Royals organization – came out much earlier than anticipated against the Frisco Rough Riders.  Montgomery left after 3 innings and 52 pitches after giving up 3 runs on 6 hits.  Reports mentioned that his velocity was down by 3-4 mph.  It’s definitely concerning.

Moustakas left after one at bat after making a play in foul territory.  The early exit was deemed precautionary and isn’t as serious on the surface as an arm issue with our top pitching prospect. There are a couple of updates regarding both situations:

Thankfully, one of the assets of the Royals online community has a medical background (though hey, it’s dermatology, not sports medicine).  Rany Jazyerli tweeted about the two injuries the information he’s hearing:

"For those who are worried, my best info: Moustakas bruised his knee, taken out precautionarily, X-rays not necessary, expected out 2-3 days."

Hey, a couple of days, make sure he’s at 100% – I can live with that. Good news on that front.

"Montgomery: FB velo down a little, threw lots of CH, admitted to mild soreness in back of elbow and taken out. Not thought to be serious.Had similar elbow soreness at end of ST in ’09 and recovered fine. Will likely have one start skipped for precautionary measures."

Montgomery only threw 97 pitches in his previous start on May 21, and before that he’d come out after 53 due to a rain delay on May 16, so there aren’t any workload issues to worry about. Skipping a start is the right move and I’d maybe even limit his pitch count if he had ANY discomfort at all in his return. Normally, I don’t want to advocate for such conservative measures, but so many pitching prospects flame out from arm issues, you can’t be too careful when he’s tantalizingly close to cracking the majors in the next year or so.

We’ll get to see how Montgomery responds to adversity after a poor three innings. On May 16, he’d had a rough outing, giving up two runs on three hits and three walks. He responded on the 21st by striking out seven over 7.2 innings with no walks. I suspect he’ll be fine when he gets back to full speed.

I hope.

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