He broke it, and the Reds elected for him not to have surgery. It turns out that the physical therapy didn't work and that he should have had Tommy John surgery in the first place. It happens all the time except most teams just go straight to the surgery. But in the case of Lotzkar, they thought it might be better if they tried to skip surgery since he's so young. I remember the first time the injury happened, people were hardly worried about it. If people thought the injury wasn't a big deal in the first place, why would it bother them the second--especially when you consider that the recovery rate for Tommy John surgery patients is very high?

Just this year, Travis Webb came back from TJ surgery and managed to produce almost identical numbers at a higher level. Scott Gaffney came back from TJ surgery and improved his numbers at a higher level (which is far from unheard of). Todd Coffey had TJ surgery in the minors and is now performing better than ever. Adam Rosales had TJ surgery, and the Reds are still comfortable with him having a strong enough arm to play third base. In the past, Erik Bedard, Ryan Dempster, John Smoltz, Mariano Rivera, Kenny Rogers, etc. have all come back from the surgery just fine--and often with improved results and one or two more ticks on the fastball. We saw Jose Rijo come back from it three times. It's not until you start to mention shoulder surgeries that I start to write a prospect off.

I'm sticking with Lotzkar until he's picked.