Shouse expects absence to be brief

Posted May 25, 2009 by Marc Lancaster

Updated May 25, 2009 at 04:13 PM

CLEVELAND—Brian Shouse said he doesn’t expect to miss much time because of the strained left elbow that landed him on the disabled list today, and that seems to be the consensus with the team also.

Shouse said “something flared up” in his elbow after his May 16 appearance at home against the Indians. He didn’t pitch again until five days later against the A’s and said everything felt fine during and after that appearance. The same went for his outing yesterday against the Marlins.

“Everything was going fine again warming up, pitching, did all my stuff afterwards,” said Shouse, “and then as the evening went on it was just like, ‘Something’s not right again.’ It felt really stiff, throbbing, discomfort, and it kind of moved to a different spot. So we’re just going to get it taken care of now so it doesn’t just linger on and go from there.”

Randy Choate has arrived here in Cleveland and is out on the field as the Rays take batting practice. Joe Maddon said he’ll use him as he has Shouse in the lefty specialist role, but I’d be surprised if Choate gets the high-leverage situations Shouse had been handling right out of the gate. The Rays can always turn to J.P. Howell or Joe Nelson, who is usually effective against lefties, as an alternative.