A’s place Sean Manaea on disabled list, bring back Emilio Pagan

Pagan was off the roster for only a few hours before returning.

The Oakland A’s placed starting pitcher Sean Manaea on the disabled list on Sunday, the team announced. To replace him on the roster, reliever Emilio Pagan was called up from Triple-A Nashville.

The diagnosis for Manaea is a left shoulder impingement. There is no word yet about the severity of the injury nor any kind of timetable for his return, so theoretically this could be anything from a quick breather to a season-ender with only a month to go in the campaign. Manaea was the only starter who’d stuck in the rotation all year, and he’s now the ninth one to go on the DL (or 11th counting the top Triple-A prospects).

Manaea, 2018: 3.59 ERA, 160⅔ ip, 108 Ks, 32 BB, 21 HR, 4.25 FIP

It’s not a complete shock to see Manaea land on the shelf. His velocity has shown dips in recent weeks, sometimes finishing outings in the high-80s or even 86 rather than his usual low-90s. That doesn’t guarantee an injury, but it certainly raises the question. To his credit, though, even with his average fastball sitting two miles slower than his rookie season of 2016, he’s still having a quality season.

Earlier Sunday morning the A’s called up Chris Bassitt to make a spot start. The original plan was for him to make just the one appearance to push everyone else back a day, but now we’ll have to wait and see what happens. One possibility would be Bassitt simply sticking around in Manaea’s place, or Frankie Montas or Daniel Mengden could come up as the long-term fill-in. One way or other, Oakland has been dealing with a glut of rotation injuries all year long and they’ve consistently found ways to patch things together and make it work — on the bright side, the rest of the current group has been amazing throughout August.

As for Pagan, he was off the roster for just over three hours. He was optioned to Triple-A to make room for Bassitt, but now he’ll stick around instead. He would normally have needed to wait until next week to return, but he’s replacing an injury so that period is waived and he’s eligible to come back immediately.

Pagan, 2018: 3.71 ERA, 53⅓ ip, 53 Ks, 15 BB, 10 HR, 4.62 FIP

In summary, the A’s rotation now includes five pitchers (Cahill, Fiers, Jackson, Anderson, Bassitt), while six more starters are out injured (Manaea, Cotton, Gossett, Graveman, Triggs, Blackburn) and two backups remain in Triple-A (Montas, Mengden). The eight-man bullpen is unchanged from yesterday. Here’s the full roster:

10-day DL: RHP Paul Blackburn (elbow), LHP Sean Manaea (shoulder), OF Matt Joyce (back)

60-day DL: RHP Jharel Cotton (TJS), RHP Daniel Gossett (TJS), RHP Andrew Triggs (triceps/nerve), OF Jake Smolinski (blood clot)

AAA DL: RHP Kendall Graveman (TJS)