What does it mean to lose a pitcher before the season has really started? For the Dol Guldur Dragons, 3-3 and already scrapping for position in the Mordor Conference's Orc Division, it means losing the one arm on the rotation they could count on cheap, indefinitely, and without a second thought.
Iver Durieux is done for the foreseeable future. Team doctors confirmed today that the 25-year-old left-hander suffered a broken bone in the elbow — not in the act of pitching, which would be cruel enough, but running the bases against the Dead Marshes Uruk-hai. The injury was initially hoped to be minor. It was not minor. The Dragons have placed him on the injured list, and the timeline carries that particular vagueness that means four months at best.
Here is what the record will show about 2052: 6-13, 3.64 ERA. The losses stack up. The ERA tells a different story. On a staff that ranked among the Mordor Conference's middle-tier rotations, Durieux was the number that held. He started. He competed. He gave the Dragons innings when innings were hard to find. The 7-13 is a function of run support and fortune; the 3.62 belongs entirely to him.
He almost didn't matter this much. He's 25, pre-arbitration, earning $502,000. For a franchise that does not have the payroll flexibility of, say, the Isengard Raiders currently steamrolling everyone at 6-0, Durieux represented something invaluable: elite cost-controlled pitching. That's not a phrase that gets used loosely. It's the thing every front office in every division is quietly desperate for, and the Dragons had it, and now they don't.
Dol Guldur sits right on the playoff line — 0.0 games back of the final Mordor Conference postseason spot. That number will not stay at zero without answers in the rotation. The Dragons reached last season's Return of the King Series. The memory of that run is still fresh in that clubhouse.
A broken bone running the bases. Nothing heroic about it. Just the game turning on you when you weren't looking.