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Garza’s nerve could strike the Twins

Written by Paul Raymond in Thursday, April 10th 2008 under MLB, Rays, Twins

The radial nerve irritation that pitcher Matt Garza is currently experiencing could come back to haunt the Minnesota Twins. The Tampa Bay Rays are debating on whether or not to file a grievance with Major League Baseball and seek compensation from the Twins.

The problem here is did the Minnesota Twins know about the injury before the Rays and Twins made a trade this off-season. The Rays currently contend they knew Garza had been bothered by this when he played college ball at Fresno State but had no idea he was still being bothered by it. Garza says he did have this problem while pitching for the Twins but usually just pitched through it. Garza pulled himself out of Monday night’s game and said afterwards “This time it was just real bad, I knew something was up”

The Twins contest there were no problems with Garza’s arm while there. “If he said he was hurt, I’m not going to call him a liar or anything like that,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said, “but he should have let us know that he might have had an injury. Normally, it’s good when the team you are pitching for knows that” Later on in an interview in Chicago, Gardenhire said, “Wasn’t he healthy all spring? Now, he’s going to say he was hurt? That’s no good … No, we have no documents of Matt Garza ever having any problems with us.”

This whole situation could get very ugly if Garza misses more then just a few weeks. The Rays gave up a LOT to acquire one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. Remember, in this deal they gave up their future star outfielder Delmon Young as well as Brendan Harris. The hardest part for the Rays thou will be proving that the Twins knew of this injury and that it could affect his future.

MLB doesn’t like to deal with situations like this, but if the Rays file that grievance they’ll be forced to deal with an issue that will be very public. The pieces involved are just to big for them to not do a full investigation. If there would wind up any compensation it would depend on how long Garza is on the DL and how much it effects his future abilities.

Here’s a link to the Raysindex, they’ve got an excellent article on this topic.