Another One Bites the Dust

Just a quick note before my hellacious day starts.

Troy Glaus is having surgery to fix a nagging shoulder ailment from last season. Complete details are here. Affected shoulder?

His right shoulder.

His throwing shoulder.

While today's report states this is a muscle tear in the muscle holding his shoulder to his chest (you know, the one helping prevent his arm from falling off or at least dangling at an obnoxious angle), and not the labrum, this is serious.

So serious, that in 24 hours the estimate of the amount of time he'll miss went from the first 2 weeks of the season, to a month, to 5 weeks, to 5 weeks being called "extremely optimistic".

A clean MRI after the season, and now a torn muscle in his chest. There are two possibilities:

a) The guy who read the MRI in October is the same bonehead who read my skull X-ray in 2004 and concluded I didn't have a broken jaw (which I actually did; try eating for 3 weeks when it hurts to bite a scrambled egg. MOTRIN = GOOOOD) ; OR

b) he hurt himself during his off-season work routine.

a) would further reinforce the widely held perception the Cardinals Medical staff commutes to work together in a Clown Car. b) is bad luck.

Either way, the projected left side of our infield now consists a third baseman who will miss at least a month, and a shortstop who is guaranteed to miss a month when completes his annual 'gotta break a finger, but which one?' tasker. Great.

David Freese was floated as a potential replacement for Glaus. I guess we'll see how well Mo did when he traded Edmonds away (all reports indicate this was a steal of a deal, BTW).