Joe Borowski sidelined with a hanging curve

This seems to keep happening: a team's closer goes out, gives up what seems like a hundred runs, blows the game, and goes on the DL the next day. It happened with J.J. Putz and now with Joe Borowski.

Borowski's blowup Monday was maddening, not only because we prefer the collective Boston Red Sox team to all get flat tires and then robbed by a pack of wolves while waiting for AAA, but because he was so close to picking up a save for our fantasy squad, but instead chalked up an ERA around 40.

Is Borowski hurt or just bad? Here's what the AP article has to say:

On his walk from the bullpen to the mound, Joe Borowski already knew he was in serious trouble. With Cleveland clinging to a one-run lead, the maligned closer was about to face the Boston Red Sox without his best stuff.

Yeah, he only had a one-run lead, his fastball isn't fast enough, his curveball is flat and he's probably tipping his pitches. But something else was on his mind.

"It was like I went out there with an unloaded gun," he said.

He says the same thing in the bedroom. ZING!

No, really though, he does that pretty much every night of his career. His ERA hasn't been below 3.75 since 2003, he's highly susceptible to the long ball and he averages less than a strikeout per inning. But yeah, unloaded gun.

Borowski, who has dodged so many ninth-inning jams since joining the Indians, couldn't escape a trip to the disabled list. He was placed on the 15-day DL on Tuesday, a day after blowing a save and giving up a two-run homer in the ninth inning to Boston's Manny Ramirez.

Elsewhere, if you get hurt you go to the doctor. If you want to learn, you go to school. If you leave an 83-MPH breaking ball over the plate to a future Hall of Famer, he's going to hit it 800 feet. If the team doesn't want you messing up in clutch situations, they put you in the one place where you can't possibly fuck up: the disabled list.

Borowski, who led the AL with 45 saves last season, has a strained triceps - an injury he first felt in spring training and one the Indians have kept a secret for weeks.

If he has strained triceps, we have Carpal Tunnel from typing this post. He went out, did his job badly, and now the team is telling him to rest because if he pitches again the entire city of Cleveland might burn down.

He had been puzzled by a significant loss in his velocity before being examined by doctors, who recommended he stop pitching for a while.

He is also puzzled when he can't find new Sopranos episodes. That light next to the gas gauge thoroughly confuses him. And he just discovered that hot air rises.

Naturally, an anti-Borowski blog has popped up which will pretty much make Borowski never want to pitch again. Then again, maybe a strained triceps will require six surgeries and years of rehab. And if his arm is simply tired, well, that might be an obstacle he'll never be able to overcome.