Markakis has surgery

[Can_of_corn]

This would explain while there hasn't been even a peep about trading him.

Also I agree it is inexcusable for it to take this long. Considering how he is handling his cyst I would not be surprised if Nick isn't partially to blame for the delay.

[Sports Guy]

Yea, this has nothing to do with his struggles early on IMO.

[Nigel Tufnel]

Because the O's have a long track record of their initial diagnoses sucking?

Not to mention being stingy with MRI's.

[Camden_yardbird]

Surgery is never the first option. Despite modern medicine it is not the safest or least costly option for most injuries. He was probably told to rest it and go from there. It was still hurting and they found further injury on a mote evasive exam or determined surgery was the last best option.

I'm never going to fault a player over health decisions and I am certainly not going to double guess the sports medicine doctors.

[allstar1579]

With one of your more important and most expensive players, not fully diagnosing an injury is inexcusable. This could have been nipped months ago. Our handling and susceptibility to injuries should raise some questions in new management's meetings about the team's medical approach.

It's not that the injury is different than it was originally. It was fully diagnosed. With MOST injuries there are two different courses of treatment, with this one there was probably something like a 70-80% chance it healed on it's own. Anything above 50% you want to give a shot to heal, there could be much worse complications from him having surgery.

[allstar1579]

This is true, but with an important and expensive player like Markakis I just wish they would have gotten multiple opinions. And even if those opinions were all rest, why did they wait 3 months before deciding to investigate further?

I promise this isn't the first time they've checked on him. I'm sure he's had multiple appointments with the doctors handling things, and this is just the point they decided if they hadn't seen enough improvement they'd schedule surgery. He's already HAD the surgery, and with the holidays just being over I'm sure they put it off a few weeks to get through those first.

[Nigel Tufnel]

Here's the line from the Sun article. It sounds to me like it wasn't a case of choosing rehab over surgery, but of an initial misdiagnosis without ever having an MRI to confirm.

He said he had rested this offseason and felt like he was improving, but when he wasn't fully healed, he was sent to a specialist. An MRI revealed the damage to the abdomen.

[UMDTerrapins]

Well this sucks. Get well Nick.

[allstar1579]

Here's the line from the Sun article. It sounds to me like it wasn't a case of choosing rehab over surgery, but of an initial misdiagnosis without ever having an MRI to confirm.

That's an awful lot of jumping to conclusions from a one-sentence blurb from the Sun. I'm pretty sure I remember him getting an MRI after he first had the injury. That line just as easily says that they were letting it heal, and he went to have another MRI done to check on it since it wasn't fully healed yet which showed it wasn't fully recovered.

It's not like they just suddenly noticed there was damage in there during this MRI, they already knew there was damage in there. This was just the follow up MRI to see how the progress was.

[sangar]

I am going to go blow my brains out. Is there ever any good news with this team? I''m just sick about this.

I understand the frustration, but don't you think suicide is overreacting just a little?

[luismatos4prez]

Can anything ever go right for us?

[wellsk86]

This makes me feel a little better now that we hear more of the story.

Dan Connolly: "Answering Tweep ?s, an MRI was done initially w Markakis and bruise was diagnosed. Swelling apparently prohibited good look at the damage."

https://twitter.com/#!/danconnollysun/status/155329624476368896

[markdublya]

Good to know he won't be packing on a little muscle AGAIN this offseason!

[Sports Guy]

I would expect a true recovery time to be 8-10 weeks based off of what was said about Zimmerman, which puts you into mid March.

He gets 25-30 at bats before OD.

[allstar1579]

Is it? The initial diagnosis was "bone bruise". A later MRI showed a torn muscle. How is that jumping to conclusions?

The "initial" injury was from sliding into a base on a steal, and then a couple days later he dove for a ball in the OF and had the bad abdomen pain. I don't know how long he played through it but I remember them talking about it at the end of the season. I'm pretty sure that muscle was torn during the playing through it part and not the original slide.