Well after injuring his wrist, Fernando Tatis Jr. was swinging an axe and a weighted bat and progressing extremely well on his primary goal of strengthening his shoulder, according to his accounts and those of others familiar with his offseason regimen.
It wasn't until the Padres shortstop stepped up the intensity of his swings during batting practice that he felt a more severe pain in his left wrist about two weeks ago.
This is consistent with how his type of injury often manifests.
"It's common to have a scaphoid fracture and not know it," said Dr. David Hay, an orthopedic hand and wrist surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles. "(People) will think it is a wrist sprain or say, 'I just jammed it' and dismiss it. When they return to high-level activity, they will notice it. That's a common pattern."
The scaphoid is a small peanut-shaped bone between the hand and forearm that coordinates the motion of the bones of the wrist. If a fracture is diagnosed immediately, it can be allowed to heal in a cast.
According to Hay, what likely happened in the time since Tatis was injured, believed to be early December, is the fractured bone failed to heal and scar tissue formed between the fragments.
"It's been sitting in there wobbling around for months," said Hay, who is the hand surgery consultant to the NHL Anaheim Ducks. "In that case, there is no way to treat it without surgery. It's almost 100 percent (surgery is required)."
The procedure would involve clearing away the scar tissue, inserting a screw buried in the bone and possibly a bone graft from the wrist or hip.
Hay said "if everything goes smoothly" a return to play in three months is "possible." He said such a timeline is "optimistic but not unrealistic."
Hay said a pessimistic prognosis would be that the bone doesn't heal and a second surgery is required. He placed the chances of that worst-case scenario occurring in a person such as Tatis at less than 10 percent.
"A young, healthy, athletic guy has a great chance of healing," he said. "The only negative is there was this delay."
That delay, which appears to have left the Padres without the reigning National League home run leader until at least mid-June, seems to have come about due to a unique convergence of events and circumstances.
Besides the nature of the injury, which often leads to a delay in diagnosis, there was a built-in communication void between players and teams for three months this winter.
Three days before Tatis was injured in a Dec. 5 motorcycle accident in the Dominican Republic, MLB owners locked out players as part of a labor dispute. That lockout was not resolved until Thursday. (While Tatis maintained Monday he doesn't know when the fracture occurred, the belief by most in the organization is the early December accident was the cause of the injury. The fact pattern, including multiple photographs on social media in the ensuing weeks that show Tatis' wrist in a brace, seems to support this conjecture. And, regardless, a contrite Tatis has reportedly told the Padres he won't ride motorcycles anymore.)
Due to the lockout, communication between Tatis and Padres officials after the accident was limited and second- or third-hand. Rules prohibited team personnel besides a team doctor from speaking with players.
It was permissible under MLB rules for a team physician who is not employed by the team to provide treatment to a player during the lockout provided the player paid for the treatment or it went through the player benefit plan. (Padres team physicians are contracted through UCSD Health.)
But, relying on conversations with Tatis' representatives, the team felt assured Tatis merely suffered scrapes and bruises in the fall from the motorcycle. No mention of the wrist was made, according to a person familiar with those conversations. Tatis said Monday he didn't notice wrist discomfort at the time.
Multiple people in the organization said that had there been no lockout, not only would there have been immediate communication with Tatis after the accident, but President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller and others would have almost certainly gone to the Dominican Republic to check on Tatis.
That didn't happen. The Padres were not aware of any issue regarding Tatis' wrist until after the lockout ended. The fracture was not discovered until intake physicals on Sunday.
So rather than Tatis perhaps being able to start the season on time (if diagnosed immediately) or possibly returning at the end of May (had surgery been done two weeks ago) the Padres likely must wait until at least two months of the regular season have passed to see their shortstop in a major league game.
