SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Warming up in the bullpen before his first appearance of the spring, Thomas Szapucki knew something was wrong. He couldn’t feel the fingers in his left hand, which he uses to grip and throw the baseball.
Szapucki, the 26-year-old reliever acquired last season in the Darin Ruf trade, entered anyway. He faced seven batters, walked three, allowed two hits and recorded two outs. He hasn’t pitch since, with what the Giants diagnosed Thursday as left arm neuropathy.
“I wasn’t going to take myself out,” said Szapucki, who entered camp in position to battle for the final spot in the bullpen.
There was no pain or discomfort, he said, just a concerning numbness, the root cause of which — almost two weeks later, after an MRI scan and multiple visits to hand and nerve specialists — still has not been determined. He hasn’t thrown a baseball since.
The feeling, which he described to the Giants’ training staff only after sticking around in the dugout to watch the end of the inning, was “like you’re throwing blind out there. You don’t have any feel in anything. You don’t feel your finger tips or the ball in your hand.
“So it’s like, hopefully I don’t hit him.”
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Source:: The Mercury News