Reliever talks of `throwing blind' with no feeling in arm

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.”

With most of the 26-man roster settled, the final one or two spots in the bullpen were considered to be one of the few competitions in camp, along with the two open catching spots. But less than two weeks in, Szapucki became the second candidate forced out of the running by injury, after righty Cole Waites strained his lat during a pre-camp bullpen.