Astros Report: Albers and Crain’s Fate with Club Uncertain

Houston Chronicle—August 4, 2014

Right shoulder tendinitis and setbacks in his recovery have robbed righty reliever Matt Albers of nearly his entire season, outside of eight strong April appearances.

Fellow righty reliever Jesse Crain has yet to throw a pitch for the Astros this season and might not.

Crain’s surgery rare in baseball

Right handed reliever Jesse Crain’s rehab from offseason biceps tendon surgery is known to be an arduous path. As an extension, the operation isn’t common in baseball.

“People are starting to do that (operation), it’s in vogue, but the reality is there’s not a lot of clinical results or outcomes yet,” said Dr. Joshua Dines, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York who wrote a textbook on injuries in baseball. “So it is unpredictable. It’s one of those, I think the pendulum may be swinging too far in that direction (to a proclivity for undergoing it). Again, we don’t have great clinical data on it yet in this setting for baseball players.”

Read the full article on blog.chron.com.