We Need to Clarify One or Two Things About Devin Williams's Injury and the Brewers' Handling of It

We all need space and make space for dealing with difficult adversities. We are all human. 

I really can't see any negative connotations in this video. He seems dejected. 

The Brewers seem like they send people for 2nd opinions pretty often. I'd guess he went to an orthopedic surgeon and then they send him to a specialist. I don't know if that's true, purely speculative. There seems like there's always going to be a little tension with players of Burnes, Hader, Williams caliber...when they're closing in on Free Agency and it's pretty clear they won't be with the Brewers long-term. You're at a point in your professional career where you're close to earning generational wealth so you want to protect yourself...and you're also still part of a team and you've probably been with the same franchise for 7-8 years at least. 

Anyway...I actually look forward to seeing how these guys step up and fill the void left by Devin. I look forward to getting the airbender back even more, but I like the pen, and the power arms, and as long as they can keep it in the zone, we've got plenty of talent in that group.

Thanks for the update. It has always seemed to me that the Brewers can be overly cautious with injuries. Except with Garrett Mitchell last year...never should have gone back out to cf. And Yovani Gallardo when he blew out his knee.

I’m more concerned about his future than these comments. 
 

How certain can we be that 6 eeeks of rest will solve this issue or that it won’t reoccur once he starts trying to throw fastballs and  air benders again?  

it 

9 hours ago, Joseph Zarr said:

I speak pretty glowingly of the Brewers org I love and cover throughout the Minor League season. I do this on a consistent basis. I love the team and always will.

However, in this case boy do I find it absolutely hard to believe they didn't follow up on this injury back in September. This is your Ace closer. One of the premier late inning arms in the entire League. He should have been handled proactively and in constant communication once the season ended (I'm not saying they didn't do this but I certainly question how they managed it or what paths they took). This appears to be a failure of assessment and process. The only hope we can have here moving forward is they learned from this and will seek out specialists sooner. I mean, for crying out loud they had an entire off-season to do this type of thing. I commend your POV on this @Matthew Trueblood. And let me also be clear I'm not disdainful in any way but man is this smelling of oversights or siloed mistakes. I am a bit in disbelief. It would be one thing if this miraculously just popped up. It seems quite abundantly clear it did not. And, it also seems clear, when it did pop up the 'specialists' in house didn't know what they were actually looking at or how to look at it. I struggle to understand how a major sports team doesn't have the top specialists in the country on speed dial. This is a back issue flaring up? Who is the premier back specialist or specialists. Let's exhaust these avenues.

Let me put it this way:

If you were somehow a 'small market' Formula One team...and you had a dedicated garage of Ace mechanics. A dedicated team of specialists. And an Ace driver who drove an absolutely top of the line Ace car...and all of the sudden late in the season during a crucial race to chase crucial points, your driver says he notices something different in the sound and feel of the car. BUT, your mechanics run through their diagnostics and their wind tunnels of assessment and vision. AND, nobody can really find anything. BUT, even after the season ends, your Ace driver continues to take this same Ace of a car around laps in practice courses and he insists he continues to feel irregularity and something is consistently just, well, off. Sure, there might be some good days but it still manages to pop up routinely despite the good days. Tell me, as the team owner or someone within the decision-making team, you don't pipe up and ask for an independent assessment from outside the organization? You don't trust your Ace and follow that course to receive multiple opinions from outside the organizational group think? In another manner of speaking, bringing it back to the 'real world', when something goes wrong in our car or in our house do we not seek multiple opinions? Receive multiple quotes or ideas and then marry the consistent discovery? 

Devin Williams may not be angry at or with the Brewers, but I sure as heck hope the Brewers learn from this and improve their process and avail themselves to seeking highly specialized outside counsel earlier in circumstances that require it.

I agree they should have probably checked him in September. However I have a hard time believing that this is the same injury. In the past 6 months of training he would have had pain and gotten more checkups/ specialized care. At some point in those 6 months his back would hurt from throwing programs or lifting weights. I guess it is possible something could have been related to September but in my experience most of the top athletes train pretty hard in the offseason.

Curious, but when did we give Williams the 2 year extension? I'm sure I could be missing something .but wasn't that around the timeline where this could have been discovered?