Ailments are par for the course

After Albert Pujols was put on the disabled list July 13, Angels manager Mike Scioscia suggested Pujols had been playing at close to “50%.”

After Nick Tropeano came off the disabled list, Tropeano disclosed that he had been pitching with discomfort in his shoulder “pretty much all season.”

As a sport, baseball happens every day. And who feels perfectly healthy every day, baseball or not?

“There is not a pitcher in any major league clubhouse at this point of the game that is not battling something,” Scioscia said Tuesday. “Everyone is. Nobody feels 100% … from the [position] player side, also.”

Pujols returned Monday after spending 10 days allowing his inflamed knee to calm down. His rehabilitation included a plateletrich plasma injection.

Tropeano came back Saturday and, after giving up one earned run in five innings, explained that the bigger goal was to emerge physically intact.

“It was one of those things I wanted to pitch through,” he said of an ailment eventually diagnosed as bursitis. “At the same time, the thought was ‘Let’s get this out now so it’s not an ongoing issue.’”

Tropeano initially went on the disabled list in early May, a move that at the time appeared to possibly be more about roster manipulation.

He returned to the DL a month later, after the Angels approached him about some of his pitch measures, like spin rates, declining.

“Then I had to break the news to them,” Tropeano said. “‘Hey, my shoulder’s a little soggy.’ They took the precautions that were necessary.”

The Angels ordered an MRI exam, which revealed swelling caused by Tropeano’s shoulder not functioning at peak efficiency.

Now, he and the Angels hope the issue is in the past, Tropeano having just passed the two-year anniversary of the elbow injury that caused him to undergo ligamentreplacement surgery.

Ohtani is playing catch

Everything about Shohei Ohtani is big news, otherwise there wouldn’t be a Japanese television show employing an Ohtani-looking puppet to reenact his exploits.

The show recreated the rookie’s 435-foot home run from Monday, complete with the call from Angels TV play-by-play man Victor Rojas.

But, regarding the throwing program Ohtani began last week in an effort to return to pitching this season, Scioscia indicated that it would be best for everyone to slow down.

“This is like Stage 1 … where they’ve got to get to Stage 10,” he said. “This is not a challenging period that he’s in.”

Ohtani is basically playing catch and throwing the ball roughly 90 feet with minimal exertion.

If he does make it back to pitch in a game, his first appearance likely wouldn’t come until the season’s final weeks.

“I would suggest just relax and enjoy the fact that he’s throwing,” Scioscia said, “and stayed tuned for when it really gets exciting.”