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Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Erik Bedard strains his hip flexor while executing a momentary pensive reflection. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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With my Cardinals out of the playoffs, I'm afraid I can't muster the will to write anything about the remaining basta...er...teams in the old Fall Classic. Instead, I'm going to begin writing about the upcoming winter and free agency. There are a few big names that will likely hit the market, including Matt Holliday, John Lackey, and Vladimir Guerrero. In all likelihood, these players will get their money from a small set of large market teams- the more intriguing aspect of free agency is the deal-making that leads to contracts with real value.

In 2009, Russell Branyan signed a $1.4M, 1-year contract on the heels of a decent season where he made the league minimum to man a platoon for Milwaukee. He followed that up with an excellent 2.8 WAR year in which he basically did the same thing he always does: Hit for a ton of power and flail with various levels of ineptitude at breaking pitches, providing a very good deal for his employers. These sorts of contracts happen every offseason, but who is the next Russell Branyan?

How the hell should I know?

As a medically-inclined person, the thing that intrigues me about this upcoming free-agent class is the sheer volume of damaged goods. There are the usual set of pitchers-with-reoccurring-arm-problems damaged goods. There are the veterans-who-may-or-may-not-be-done damaged goods. There are the headcases.

I'm going to concentrate on a handful of starting pitchers with this analysis, because these players seem to get the most headlines. I will not talk about Mark Prior, who in my world accepted reality a few years back and stopped stealing money from the Padres. First in this series, Erik Bedard.

After a quick ascent through the minors on the strength of incendiary stuff, Bedard's first prolonged D-list engagement was for Tommy John in 2002-03. After his 18-month recovery, he was reinserted into the Orioles pitching staff in 2004, where he became a rotation staple and within a few years had ascended to ace-dom. His control progressively improved over his tenure, and he posted back-to-back seasons over 5 WAR in 2006-07. After the 2007 season, Bill Bavasi, whose Mariners had posted an extremely lucky 88 win season (beating their pythag by 9 wins), mistook this as blood in the division water and got mugged by Andy MacPhail for Adam Jones, George Sherrill, Chris Tillman, Tony Butle, and Kameron Mickolio. Up to this point, Bedard had never topped 200 innings thanks to hip and oblique injuries.

If we had some idea of the story up to this point, we know the rest by heart. The Mariners crashed and burned when Jose Vidro shockingly failed to live up to his 1.2 WAR potential. They started Yuniesky Betacourt way too many times, and Bedard's 5 WAR per season streak came to an abrupt end. Bedard's 2008 was injury-pocked with seperate incidents of hip and arm trouble, and his season ended inauspiciously: What was first reported as a torn labrum actually was not. Obliquely described as a "cyst removal with minor labral debridement", this procedure primarily entailed the removal of damaged tissue from wear and tear on and around Bedard's glenoid labrum, and his long recovery period revealed the seriousness of the operation. After some consideration, the Mariners did tender Bedard and avoided arbiration for $7.75M. This gamble failed to become a jackpot, but Bedard's considerable skill showed in the nearly league-average value the Mariners received from only 80 innings. Again, Bedard battled injuries, skipped starts, missed most of June and was shut down in late July. Under the knife for the second time in a year, the damage resembled the findings of the previous surgery-  a torn labrum and inflamed bursa (an incidental finding). From the sound of it, this was probably a posterior labral tear, or possibly some kind of partial-thickness SLAP tear (of which there are ten types). 

Before I go into Bedard's prognosis, I'm going to talk about him as a pitcher. As with any pitcher, there's a substantial amount of confusion about what Bedard throws or used to throw. Primarily he's a fastball/curveball pitcher, reputed by various sources to throw a changeup, maybe a slider, and some other junk. The data doesn't really support that, showing only two speeds.

via www.fangraphs.com

Definite fastball, definite curve, along with what looks like cluster of sinkers on the top left (or it could be the opposite- a 4-seamer on the left and a cutter on the right). His stuff is quite good, and he has the ability to come off of the DL and produce excellent results with what appears to be little fine-tuning in a similar fashion to Rich Harden and Chris Carpenter. This is good news for anyone planning to offer him a contract in the coming offseason, but the bad isn't exactly news-worthy:

Erik Bedard can't stay healthy. After what appeared to be a minor core injury early in 2008, Bedard has been dogged by persistent issues in his hip and shoulder for two seasons. Because of the recurring labrum issues that appeared to be absent or less serious prior to 2008, it's possible that Bedard changed his mechanics to compensate for his ailing hip and oblique, increasing the load on his shoulder. If he continues to try to pitch this way, he's doomed to a Prior-esque free fall during which he will probably take gambling money from a handful of teams, often find himself on the reels of MLBTR and Buster Olney's blog as a bounce-back candidate, and will eventually retire back to French-Canada where he will probably either open a restaurant or become some sort of broadcasting personality.

On the other hand, if he's able to heal completely and adjust mechanically to his physical limitations, he's still an excellent pitcher. He's longer odds to come back to form than, say, Brett Myers, but he's also a better player. Without complete information of the exact injury and surgery, it's tough to say whether Bedard is a good or bad bet in the future, but even a good recovery from this sort of surgery will only give Bedard three quarters or half a season to work with. If he makes it back, he's likely to produce the same way he has in appearances after injuries, so he's probably worth a $4M gamble with a shot at 1.5-2 WAR production, the 2009 John Smoltz contract.