I can see how you might think I'm some kind of fortune teller or evil jinxer from the future. A few days ago, I posted about Brett Anderson, talking about how his initial rehab recommendation didn't necessarily mean he wouldn't have to undergo Tommy John surgery, which he ultimately had. Now, via everybody on Twitter, we get this:

#Mariners reliever David Aardsma underwent MRI exam Thursday, and recommended Tommy John surgery.

Aardsma, like Anderson, had his elbow examined and was told that he could try rehabbing rather than go right under the knife, in the hopes that his UCL would heal from a partial tear on its own. But Aardsma's rehab, like Anderson's rehab, didn't go as desired, so upon further evaluation, it's been determined that surgery is necessary. There is no other course of action, so long as Aardsma wants to continue his career.

It's obviously a lousy break for a guy who began the year sidelined after hip surgery. Aardsma's been through more over these past several months than he's deserved, and now he's looking at at least another 11-12 months of inactivity and, later, rehab. Stephen Strasburg is looking to come back to the Majors after TJS in roughly a calendar year. Aardsma's approximate best-case scenario, then, is that he's good to go next August.

In the short-term, this doesn't mean much for us or the Mariners, although the front office may now think twice about dealing Brandon League before the deadline. In the medium term, this is bad for next year's Mariners, as they'll be without a good reliever for at least much of the season, if they even choose to bring Aardsma back. He's a certain non-tender candidate over the offseason, as the M's won't want to pay him millions of dollars to not pitch for a while, so we'll see if he's re-signed at a low base.

So, in sum, Aarsdma's down. That blows. On the plus side, you can't round a street corner these days without passing someone qualified to perform a ligament replacement operation, so Aardsma should be fine when he comes out of this. Now we cross our fingers for Shawn Kelley. I like Shawn Kelley quite a bit and would very much like to see him pitch soon. This can't happen to us twice, can it? Can it?

The good news is that David Aardsma's hip is just fine. The bad news is that his right arm is not. After making good progress in his rehab stint with Tacoma, Aardsma was recently shut down with a bit of forearm stiffness. It wasn't thought to be a big deal, but Aardsma had an MRI on Friday, and four days later a radiologist has finally come in to look over the results and inform Aardsma that he has a grade 2 sprain of his UCL.

A grade 2 sprain, as you might imagine, is better than a grade 3 sprain, but worse than a grade 1 sprain. A grade 2 sprain is a partial tear of the ligament, and as such, Aardsma is going to pay a visit to Dr. Lewis Yocum. Dr. Yocum is both an expert specialist and a terrifying, terrifying man for all pitchers, despite his adorable little mustache.

The UCL, of course, is the ligament that often requires Tommy John surgery when torn, so this is a terrible break, and while Aardsma may not need to go under the knife - after all, he doesn't have a grade 3 sprain - he is at least presumably staring at a considerable period of physical rehab. Which means you shouldn't expect him back on the Mariners any time soon.

I suppose this is sort of bittersweet news for Brandon League, who'll now get to hang on to his closer role for the foreseeable future. But for the rest of us, it totally sucks. Even if Aardsma's only out a little while, it's a little while longer than we expected him to be, meaning the Mariners will have a worse bullpen for now while they're competitive, and less to trade around the deadline in case they drop out. David Aardsma is not an elite-level reliever, but he's both a talented and appealing one that would've been nice to have healthy and on the roster by now or next week for a number of reasons.

We can hope for good news from Dr. Yocum. But Dr. Yocum doesn't give a lot of good news. In that way, he's kind of a dick.

The Rangers may have lost superstar Josh Hamilton for two months earlier today on a headfirst slide, but the Mariners have lost Adam Moore for at least twice that long, as the news from his surgery Tuesday is not good.

Moore knew he was in for an operation, but no one was quite sure how badly he was hurt, and no one was going to know until the surgeon got in there and saw the situation for himself. The situation? An "extensive tear" in Moore's meniscus. So, rather than the best-case scenario in which Moore would've been out for several weeks, now he's out for much much longer. The general timetable is 4-6 months, meaning there's no guarantee Moore's able to return to the field this season.

It's a miserable break for a guy who's just trying to establish himself as a big league-quality catcher. A knee injury cost Moore the early opportunity to jump in front of Rob Johnson and get comfortable a year ago, and now a knee injury has cost him the opportunity to get a lot of time behind Miguel Olivo in 2011. These are chances he's missed - chances he'll never get back - and there's no telling what impact his medical misfortune will have on his career.

If there's good news, it's that Moore's still only 26, so it's not like he's reached the end of the line. Although knee injuries are bad news for catchers, he'll make a full recovery and get after it again when he's better. But he's got to be one of the most unhappy people in Seattle right now, and no matter what you think of his skillset, you have to feel bad for him, because he doesn't deserve this kind of shit luck.

* consisting of strenuous physical therapy

The MRI results are back on Adam Moore, and they aren't good. After some whispers that he may not be badly injured, it turns out he's badly injured, having been diagnosed with a torn meniscus in his knee. He's going to need surgery, which I'm sure he'll have very soon, and he's going to be out for a long time. Drayer sets the tentative best-case scenario at 6-8 weeks, but it could very well end up being more than that. Or less than that. Who knows, really, in this crazy world of ours.

You'll recall that Moore's 2010 season was also interrupted by a knee injury, although that was a problem in his left knee, while this is a tear in the right one. On the one hand, it's good not to see a recurrence, but on the other hand, now we have a catcher who has injured both of his knees.

If there's a silver lining here, it's that the severity of Moore's injury is such that he can presumably be placed on the 60-day DL, freeing up a 40-man roster spot without the organization having to jettison someone from the minors. We'll probably see Josh Bard come up to serve as Olivo's backup and as the team's fifth switch-hitter, although Chris Gimenez is a possibility as well. Bard's the more likely of the two, though, because Gimenez's advantage is his versatility, which is less of a factor when you're only carrying two catchers.

The great tragedy here - aside from the fact that Moore got injured - is that Moore got injured going after a loose ball on a play on which the baserunner didn't advance. His meniscus didn't even go down a hero, like Tsuyoshi Nishioka's fibula did earlier today.

But that doesn't matter, and all we really care about is getting Moore healthy and back on the team at some point so that he can continue gaining big league experience, because these knee injuries of his have come at really bad times for his career, and you never like to see a player end up something less than he could've been because of his body. That's always just a real bummer.

A little while ago, test results from Seattle suggested that Franklin Gutierrez had a "slow digestive system". This was said to be the problem at the core of his discomfort, and everybody was optimistic that Guti would be able to put it behind him on the right diet and medication, which had already been recommended by his doctors. Indeed, Guti felt terrific for at least a week or three after returning to camp, and we all began to worry about problems elsewhere, taking for granted that Guti would be okay.

Surprise! He's not okay. Guti hasn't been out of the lineup recently because he aggravated his lower back - he's been out of the lineup because his stomach problems have returned. Writes Larry LaRue:

"We've got to get Franklin to a place where he feels comfortable," general manager Jack Zduriencik said. "It's bothering him, and we're waiting for more test results. Franklin doesn't feel strong."

It may have raised some eyebrows when Seattle quickly gave Gutierrez a seemingly conclusive diagnosis after almost a calendar year of tests and dead-ends. Well, here we are, and he's getting more tests.

It's pointless to speculate what's going on. The diagnosis may have been wrong. The diagnosis may have been right, but the recommended treatment course may have been wrong. We'll see where we go from here. This is just assuredly bad news, a few weeks after we all thought we had good news. As long as Guti's still fighting whatever he's fighting, everything's worse because of it, and you feel bad for the man both personally and professionally.

Depending on how things go, Guti may have to start the year on the disabled list, in which case I imagine we'd see the team carry both Ryan Langerhans and Michael Saunders. Or they could carry Sean Kazmar. You never know!

Right now, courtesy of KING 5 Sports, this is all we have to go on:

KING5Seattle has learned #Mariners outfielder Milton Bradley has been arrested on a felony in Los Angeles County.

We have no idea what Bradley has been accused of, nor do we have any idea whether he's innocent or guilty. What we do know is that people don't get arrested for staying home and ordering a delicious stuffed crust pizza, so we can say with a high degree of certainty that Milton Bradley has not been arrested for staying home and ordering a delicious stuffed crust pizza.

Since the offseason started taking shape, we've figured that Bradley was probably out of a job, and no matter what's going on, this isn't going to help him stick around. In other words, welcome back, Ryan Langerhans.

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Update, via Geoff Baker:

LAPD confirms Milton Bradley arrested for violating California penal code section 422. Involves making "criminal threat". No other details.

Here's some information on California penal code section 422. Hopefully the M's just cut Bradley tomorrow so I don't have to bother following this story.

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Update #2: I have no idea if the M's will be able to void the rest of Bradley's contract because of this. Keep in mind, though, that the Mets were not able to void Francisco Rodriguez's contract after he beat the crap out of his girlfriend's dad. So I'd say we're probably stuck.

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Update #3: again from Baker, we learn that Bradley was arrested at 10:40am for making a threat to an unidentified woman, and was later released on bail. Sports!

I was just sitting here, staring off into space, thinking about how hard it is to get back into the writing mood after the holidays when there's so little new news to discuss. Thankfully the Mariners' official Twitter account saved the day by delivering this delightful little nugget completely out of the blue:

#Mariners have announced that RHP David Aardsma will have surgery (Dr. Phillipon, Vail, Co.) on Monday to repair torn labrum in left hip.

A torn labrum in the hip is, of course, a lot better for a pitcher than having a torn labrum in the shoulder, but having a torn anything is always bad news, and this is hardly insignificant.

Alex Gordon had a very similar surgery and was out of action for three months. Chase Utley, Mike Lowell, and Alex Rodriguez have dealt with similar injuries as well, and none of them were given quick timelines. There's a slim chance that Aardsma is recovered by the start of Spring Training, but more likely is that he isn't recovered until the end, or even the start of the regular season.

Aardsma should be able to make a full recovery - this isn't something that should damage his long-term prospects. What it does, rather obviously, is make him untradable, at least for the short-term. So you can forget about adding some financial flexibility, and you can also reduce the odds of some of those fringey guys making the bullpen out of camp.

Just how much this actually changes, I'm not sure; my sense is that the M's were leaning towards keeping Aardsma into the summer anyway. But now they don't have a choice. Aardsma and his salary are locked in with the Mariners for at least the next three months, and if this is the way it ends, then I think we can all agree that 2010 can go eat shit and kill itself.

Long-time readers of the site know that I generally hate the "in a nutshell" exercise in summarization. Not only is it hackneyed and lazy; most of the time, it's misapplied, and not at all thought through. Take this year's Mariners. The Mariners were bad. They absolutely sucked. But that doesn't mean that any moment in any game that sucked made for a good recap of the season in a nutshell. You have to consider all angles. Identifying a proper nutshell requires one to condense, not omit.

So I try to stay away from that kind of thing as often as I can. But then, sometimes something just fits. Even when I'm not looking for it. They say the best way to find a girlfriend or a boyfriend is to not look for one. I wasn't looking for the Mariners' season in a nutshell. But I found it, while running a photo search for something completely unrelated. Fate? I wouldn't call it fate. It's happenstance. But it's glorious happenstance. You can't spell 'happenstance' without...well you can't spell it without 'happee', which basically works.

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We have Felix Hernandez. We have Felix, representing all that went right. And Felix was pretty much all that went right. There were minor successes and minor continuations, but Felix stood out as the one guy clearly deserving of a more able supporting cast. Felix was the star. The ace. The hero. Felix was the one to wake us up in the morning, and Felix was the one to sprinkle sand on our eyes come the night. Felix wasn't the one to make it all worthwhile, because Jesus himself couldn't have made it all worthwhile, but Felix was the one who came closest. Felix was the one who nearly saved a lost season.

And we have Felix on the ground. Not because he fell. Not because he'd given up. We have Felix on the ground because he was trying to do as much as he could. We have Felix on the ground because he was trying to do it all himself, because he had to do it all himself, because no one would give him any help. Felix didn't sulk. Felix didn't retreat. Felix kept going, not because he was able to win games on his own, but because he so strongly believed that he could. We have Felix on the ground, trying to make a play, because Felix was about the only player on the team capable of getting anything done.

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