Injuries hurt Mariners, other teams

It's amazing how quickly a baseball season can shift in a totally unexpected direction, leaving contenders with sudden gaping holes that completely change the landscape.

One moment, the Mets are boasting about their dual aces, Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez, and the next, they're watching Martinez grab his hamstring and limp off the field.

One moment, the Diamondbacks are feeling great about their starting pitching depth, and the next they're reeling from the news that No. 3 starter Doug Davis has thyroid cancer.

One moment, the Mariners are certain that closing out games is the one thing they don't have to worry about, and the next they're holding a news conference to explain J.J. Putz's diagnosis of costochondritis.

The lesson is hardly a new one, but the fickle nature of injuries — and the damage they do to the delicate construction of a team's roster — remains an annual punch in the gut. It's almost a given that every team will be touched by a debilitating injury. The key is how many, how serious, and how much depth and ingenuity they have to overcome them.

Every year, it seems, the utilization of the disabled list is on the rise, largely the result of teams' zealous protection of their multi-million-dollar talent. The season opened this past week with 109 players on the DL, all but the Twins placing at least one player.

St. Louis and Florida had the most disabled players at eight. The Mariners started out with just one DL'd player, pitcher Anderson Garcia, who did not figure in their 2008 plans.

Putz, of course, figures tremendously in their plans, and when he felt an intense pain in his side on Tuesday night while pitching to Texas's Michael Young, it marked the season's first bona fide crisis. The Mariners on Saturday got another jolt when Erik Bedard had to be scratched from today's start in Baltimore because of a sore hip.

While there is no spoken timetable for Putz's return, and while his inflammation was termed mild, rib injuries are notoriously dicey propositions. One would think the Mariners have to be prepared to go at least through April without Putz, a daunting proposition.

It is the same sort of testing ground that faced the Mariners' primary division rival, the Angels. They lost their two best pitchers, John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar, as well as a top setup man, Scot Shields, before the season began.

The Angels believe they have the depth to overcome those losses, and the early signs were encouraging. Jon Garland and Joe Saunders were outstanding in their debut starts, and Ervin Santana was solid. But the Angels' compensatory ability, as with Seattle's, will play out over the long haul.

The Mets are scrambling to replace Martinez, who had teased them with a strong spring into thinking he was ready to be something akin to his old dominant self.

Now they are mulling a bunch of unappealing options to replace him in the rotation: Nelson Figueroa, Jorge Sosa, Claudio Vargas, the rehabbing Orlando Hernandez.

"Crushing," Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson said to reporters of Martinez's loss. "Watching him limp off the field. Emotionally crushing."

It's a sobering dose of reality for a team with designs on the World Series, and the Mets are far from alone.

The Red Sox will be sweating out Josh Beckett's return from a back injury in a start against Toronto today. Backs are known to be as balky as ribs. With Beckett, the Red Sox are the favorites to win it all again. Without Beckett, the defending champions are not nearly the same formidable force.

The Phillies are also hoping for a successful return this weekend by their closer, Brad Lidge, who is recovering from a knee injury. The Phillies predicated their offseason improvement plan around Lidge's presence, which allowed Brett Myers to return to the rotation. Take Lidge out of the equation, and they're left hoping 40-year-old Tom Gordon, gulp, can get the job done.

The Tigers, already scrambling to compensate for the absence of late-game relievers Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya as well as center fielder Curtis Granderson, now are dealing with injuries to sluggers Gary Sheffield and Miguel Cabrera. So far, so not good.

The Diamondbacks must make do without Davis, a 13-game winner last season who faces a much more meaningful battle. Davis will make one more start before undergoing surgery to treat his thyroid cancer.

Other key players that started the year on the disabled list include John Smoltz, Curt Schilling, Scott Kazmir, B.J. Ryan, Moises Alou and Eric Chavez.

Every one of them left their team scrambling for answers. How well they answer them will go a long way toward determining who contends and who fades.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com