Colin Dunlap reports that Pirates lefty reliever Joe Beimel won’t be throwing for a while and will have an MRI on his throwing arm. Jenifer Langosch says the MRI will be today, and it sounds like it’s mostly precautionary:
Said Beimel: “Things didn’t go great today. It’s definitely getting better. I would have liked to have thrown a little more today and I started to feel it so I shut it down. They just want to go and see if there is anything in there. Just talking to the doctors and things like that, they said it shouldn’t be a big deal and that it’s more muscular than anything else. Want to get the MRI to make sure.”
We’ll see. An MRI on a pitcher’s throwing arm can be an ominous sign. The Pirates don’t have a lot of good lefty relief options if Beimel goes down, but Beimel is signed to a minor-league deal and isn’t exactly Billy Wagner himself. The Bucs will have the option of using lefty Scott Olsen, also in contention for a rotation job, in relief, or they could go with any number of minor league options, including Tony Watson, Danny Moskos, Justin Thomas and Aaron Thompson. Watson might be the best of those, but he has no major-league experience.