Worrell's season comes to abrupt end

Well, though Kevin Towers is well known for making trades that end up being highway robberies (see: Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Young from the Rangers), the deal that sent long time short-stop Khalil Greene to the Cardinals for Tim Worrell has done the opposite.

Worrell came out of a game early a few days ago with elbow soreness, something you never want to hear a pitcher say. Padres' manager Bud Black was quoted as saying that it didn't look good after the pitcher was examined by team doctor's back in San Diego. On Saturday, the worst fear was realized as Worrell will need to undergo Tommy John surgery and will miss the entire 2009 season.

Manager Bud Black, "our fears were confirmed when the elbow was examined. It didn't look good. He hadn't had any pain in the elbow. It just came on late. He's a pitcher we thought highly of. We wanted to give him a god look, now we have to move on."

With Worrell lost for the season, the Padres have even more of an urgency to find bullpen pitchers as well as fill the #4 and #5 spots in the starting rotation. Towers has a lot of work to do prior to Opening Day and not a lot of time to do it, so believe that he's already had several conversations with teams about available players.

Padres lose another pitcher to injury

Speaking of ill-timed injuries, sidewinder Mark Worrell has been shut down by the San Diego Padres for soreness in his pitching elbow.

Padres' manager Bud Black: "He came out of the game Tuesday with soreness. We're going to let it quiet down. We might possibly do some further tests."

Worrell returned to San Diego to be examined by team doctors, after which Black said, "it doesn't look great."

Worrell was a guy that the Padres really liked as a late inning specialist and he had a good shot at being that guy, but after the pain intensified after being pulled from the game on Tuesday, the Padres had to know that they weren't going to get good news back. Where the team goes now is anyone's guess. They could look internally, or the more likely scenario is GM Kevin Towers looking outside the team to find a late inning reliever. We'll just have to see who Towers comes up with.