Like most catchers, Christian Vazquez is accustomed to playing through pain. This was different.
A cut on his right elbow had become infected, and the infection traveled up his arm and into his shoulder. Fluid buildup caused the shoulder to swell, and it tightened so badly that he couldn’t help keep the starter warm between innings during a game at Detroit in early August.
“I was like, ‘I cannot do this,’ ” Vazquez told reporters from the Twins’ dugout on Friday. “If I have pain, I have pain. I can tolerate it. If I say something, it’s serious. I can play with pain.”
He told head athletic trainer Nick Paparesta, “Hey, my shoulder hurts a lot. I cannot move it.”
Since then, it’s been a long road back to normalcy for Vazquez, who returned to Target Field this week after rehabbing at his home in Miami. The process started in a hospital, where the shoulder was drained and cleaned, then moved to his home in Miami, where a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) in his right biceps delivered three doses of antibiotics to his shoulder three times a day for four weeks.
“It was scary, man,” Vazquez told reporters before a 7:10 first pitch against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday. “I never had this before, an infection in my body.”
His absence has been felt. A streaky hitter with some power, Vazquez has always been an excellent defensive catcher and game-caller who in 2022 won a World Series with Houston and caught a combined no-hitter in Game 4 against the New York Yankees.
His absence only exacerbated the loss of 10 regulars that were dealt for prospects at the trade deadline. The Twins are 11-22 since Vazquez last started a game.
Finally able to use his right arm again, Vazquez has returned to working out and hopes to play in a game before the season ends. After Friday, he’ll have 15 chances left.
“They pay me for this, to play,” he said. “I don’t want to finish the season on the IL. It’s boring.”
Festa optimistic
Shoulder injuries have shut down two pitchers this season, as well. Pablo Lopez has returned from a teres minor strain and started against the Diamondbacks on Friday. David Festa, sidelined by what was initially diagnosed as an impingement, has been shut down.
Festa has since been diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, defined by the Mayo Clinic as “a group of conditions in which there’s pressure on blood vessels or nerves in the area between the neck and shoulder.”
But Festa on Friday said that might be overstating his injury.
“It’s not technically wrong,” he said, “but my situation is a lot more common and at this point, very, very mild.”
A right-hander who made his major league debut last season, Festa, 25, hasn’t pitched since throwing 2⅔ innings in a rehab start with Triple-A St. Paul on Aug. 28. He said he will travel with the Twins to Dallas-Ft. Worth for Sept. 22-25 series against the Rangers and see vascular surgeon Dr. Gregory Pearl on the 24th.
Best-case-scenario, the pitcher said, is he gets a Botox injection that will decompress a nerve near his collarbone. If that remains the case after his appointment, Festa is confident he’ll be healthy for the start of training camp next February.
“The Botox should release (the nerve) pretty quickly, and I should feel some sort of opening up in this area,” he said. “So, if all that works, I feel like this is really good news.”
Briefly
Veteran right-hander Justin Topa was placed on the 15-day injured list with an oblique strain on Friday, likely ending his season. … To take Topa’s place on the roster, the Twins called up Cody Laweryson from St. Paul to make his major league debut. Manager Rocco Baldelli said the right-hander will be a one- or two-inning reliever. He made 17 appearances with the Saints, going 2-4 with a 2.86 earned-run average, and 45 strikeouts, in 44 innings.
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