Posted by Michael Street on Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 3:53 pm

Three items of note on the pitching injury front: one new arrival, one extended stay, and one imminent return.

Yankees fans and coaches knew something was wrong with Chien-Ming Wang, who stunk up the joint in all three of his starts this year. He pitched a total of six innings in those three starts, giving up 7 ER in the first, and 8 ER in each of the next two.

His sinker was up, which is a crippling deficiency in a pitcher who relies on the heavy, dropping fastball. Not only was his sinker staying up in the strike zone, it had a cascading effect on his other pitches, which became much more hittable when opponents could sit on them.

Nobody expected an injury at first, and could find nothing directly related to the foot tendon injury that shut him down for most of 2008. Then Dr. Mark Lindsay, who had been checking out A-Rod’s surgically repaired hip, took a look at Wang and diagnosed him with “weakness in the adductor muscles in both hips,” according to the team’s website.

While it’s not directly associated with his foot problems, the weakness likely had to do with the fact that Wang couldn’t maintain his strength while his foot was in a boot. He’s done most of his workouts on a stationary bike instead of by running, so the hips haven’t been built up to game strength.

Will the DL trip make a difference? Possibly, but what’s more of a concern is what he’ll be like when he returns; the sinker is a bit of a feel pitch, like a knuckler, and depends on Wang throwing it at just the right speed. It may take some time for him to develop that feel again, which can’t happen for at least the two weeks he’ll be rehabbing in Florida.

And Wang could suffer a setback, just like what happened to Brandon Webb this week. Webb has been on the DL (retroactively) since April 7, and was diagnosed with bursitis, a condition that team doctors were confident could be remedied with rest and rehab.

That had all seemed to go well until yesterday, when Webb was warming up in the outfield and felt the same shoulder tightness that he’d suffered from in the first place. After working with him a short while, the team decided to shut him down again. Webb won’t throw for another week and return to strengthening his shoulder again.

Will that work? That’s the mystery of pitching and the disabled list, and Webb’s another pitcher who relies on his sinker. His secondary pitches are better than Wang’s, but Webb still isn’t going to retire any batters without his best pitch. He, too, looked awful in his only game action this year, a six-run four-inning performance against Colorado on April 6. But an MRI didn’t show any structural damage, so the prognosis is still favorable in the long term.

Arizona fans hope their ace returns as soon as possible, which now looks no sooner than three weeks.

The Brewers should welcome an important pitcher back from the DL when Trevor Hoffman returns to the team on Sunday, as expected. He’s been out since spring training, when he was slow in coming back from an oblique strain.

Milwaukee has taken it carefully with the 41-year-old closer, who holds the all-time lead in saves. After rehab work at their minor-league complex, he’s had two outings for their AAA Nashville affiliate and is expected to return to the team tonight in Houston, to be activated tomorrow.

In his absence, the Brewers initially relied on Carlos Villaneuva, who was expected to be the closer before they’d signed Hoffman. Initially strong, Villaneuva faltered, while Todd Coffey finally revealed the promise he’d long shown. Coffey put together a string of 17.1 scoreless innings before yielding a homer to Jayson Werth of the Phillies on Wednesday.

When Hoffman returns, Coffey will likely slide into eighth-inning setup duties, pushing Villanueva back to the seventh, and step in if Hoffman can’t go or gets hurt again. His return not only gives hope to Milwaukee, who’s 7-9 and 4.5 games back in the NL Central, but also to Wang and Webb.