Why, you ask?
Because I just read two statements that make me cringe in the same article about the procedure {{bbref|p/pujolal|Albert Pujols}} had on his elbow today. The first:
Pujols has elbow surgery
Ok, not terribly surprising – and it sounds like it was a lesser surgery, one intended to minimize down time for El Hombre and maximize his ability to avoid Tommy John surgery going forward.
The second statement?
Paletta performed the surgery, according to the team release.
Puke. I hope Pujols doesn’t wake up with a baboon heart in his shoulder.
(Ok, I know this isn’t really fair, but I don’t trust George Paletta as far as I can throw him.)
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I hear you. When I first saw the headline, I sat there for a minute with my eyes closed, fingers crossed, whispering to myself, “please not Paletta… please not Paletta” before I could look. But I knew. He’s like the Rasputin of the Cardinals’ organization.
Yep. His track record with bringing guys back to health is, let’s say, not exemplary.
Good news is, knowing Pujols, if something was wrong, he’d just chew off his right arm and play without it.
Are we sure that’s not what the “surgery” consisted of?
Not entirely. Has anyone seen a photo of Mang taken since the operation?
Typical misconception from reading the paper. It wasn’t a surgery. Pujols just needed his 5,000 mile checkup and some oil replaced. I mean, how do you do surgery on a machine? C’mon.
Ah, an excellent observation. So then next year we can expect him to hit .390 with 45 HR and 160 RBI…and STILL not win the MVP?
Apparently, you do it under the cover of darkness and then don’t tell anyone about it until it’s done.
We can fix him. We have the technology. Was that the bionic man or the six-million dollar man? Or were they the same guy?
Hey! He’s gonna win!
Oh there you go – he’d probably hit 50 if he had a bionic elbow! Plus he could close!
Heck, he could probably pitch and field first AT THE SAME TIME.
Now we’re talking.
Pretty unfair to blast Paletta. Like I said before, he did surgery on my daughter and it couldn’t have gone better. Do you have specific instances where Paletta did a surgery and botched it? Not all surgeries go as planned as you never quite know for sure what you are going to find when you get in there. The imaging before surgery only tells you so much. And then everyone responds differently as well.
Maybe the player didn’t follow the treatment, maybe it was worse than management revealed, etc. I’d let Paletta do a surgery on me with no hesitation. He has done many many players, football, hockey, baseball, of course they won’t all have great outcomes.
If I’m not mistaken, Paletta performed procedures on both Mulder and Carpenter. Is that enough to make you nervous?
Like I admitted in even writing the post, I hate dogging the guy, because I’m sure he does his job as well as he can, but there’s a huge difference between performing a surgery that will allow a normal person to continue to live their life without pain and performing a surgery that will allow a highly skilled, highly trained athlete to continue to perform at a Pujols-esque level.
I’d love nothing more than for Paletta to come out smelling like roses on this one, but for the time being, pardon me for being cautious in my opinion…
Add another surgery to Paletta’s list. Hope it doesn’t cost you too much sleep! Another one for Carp no less, ugh.
http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=sportsnetwork&page=mlb/news/newstest.aspx?id=4189086
Ugh, frickin Carp and that pitching arm. I wonder if this changes Mo’s mind about *really* pursuing Peavy?