This is becoming something of a preseason tradition, and not the comfortable kind — more like finding cold mutton where your second breakfast was supposed to be. Gealf Agayous, starting pitcher for the Lothlorien Lumberjacks, has been confirmed out four months with ulnar nerve entrapment, suffered throwing a pitch during spring camp. The Lumberjacks, who came into 2053 with genuine Goblin Division ambitions after last season's dominant run, are now scrambling to fill a rotation hole before a single regular-season game has been played.

Mind you, the injury itself is the kind that inspires cautious official optimism — team doctors confirm Agayous is expected to make a full recovery — which is precisely the phrasing that every Lumberjacks supporter should read twice and then quietly worry about anyway. Ulnar nerve entrapment is not a clean fracture. It is, as the doctors are unlikely to say but everyone in a pressroom understands, a complicated neighbor that has a way of overstaying its welcome. Four months means Agayous, best case, is back sometime in July — which is to say, he will miss roughly half the season's meaningful work.

The Tea Leaves, consulted on the matter this morning, settled into a tight spiral formation at the bottom of the cup — which handlers here at MESN recognize as the leaves' way of saying "yes, this is as bad as it looks, and no, they will not be more specific about what comes next."

I'll say this much: MESN has noted and is choosing not to investigate further whether Lothlorien's front office had any forewarning. What we can say is that this Lumberjacks club was not built to absorb a four-month absence from a key arm without consequence. The rotation behind Agayous will need to do work it was not designed to do, at least not this early.

It has been a grim few weeks for pitching arms across Tolkien Baseball — as anyone who followed our Seredic Black coverage knows, the Hops are already in similar straits. The spring air smells like possibility, as we noted when camp opened, but someone keeps leaving the larder door open.