Brewers shut down Jim Henderson with shoulder injury - MLB

Jim Henderson had been pitching pretty well since being demoted from closer to setup man by the Brewers and came into yesterday’s game with a 3.38 ERA on the season. He exited the game with a 7.15 ERA (and a loss), allowing five runs while recording two outs against the Reds.

And now Milwaukee has placed Henderson on the disabled list with shoulder inflammation.

Henderson has had some issues maintaining peak velocity, but that wasn’t really a huge problem yesterday as he averaged 93.6 miles per hour with his fastball and topped out at 95 mph. That’s a slight dip from his peak levels, but hardly enough of a drop to scream injury.

Francisco Rodriguez has been flawless in the closer role, converting a league-leading 13 saves with a 0.00 ERA and 23/4 K/BB ratio in 16 innings, so Henderson wasn’t going to get his job back anytime soon anyway. And the Brewers’ bullpen has been so ridiculously good as a whole that moving everyone up one notch on the relief hierarchy may work out just fine in Henderson’s absence.

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Roger Clemens will be an analyst for ESPN when the defending World Series champion Houston Astros host the Chicago White Sox on opening day.

Clemens made four appearances on last year’s KayRod Cast with Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez. He will be stepping in on March 30 for David Cone, who will be doing the New York Yankees opener against the San Francisco Giants on YES Network.

“Roger has been sort of a friend of ours for the last year, so to speak, he’s in. He’s been engaged, knowledgeable and really present,” said ESPN Vice President of Production Phil Orlins. “You know, whatever past may be, he’s still tremendously engaged and he really brought that every time he was with us.”

Clemens was a seven-time Cy Young winner but his career after baseball has been tainted by allegations of performance-enhancing drug use. He is a Houston native and pitched for the Astros for three seasons.

Orlins said that with the rules changes and pitch clock, it is important to have a pitcher in the booth with Karl Ravech and Eduardo Perez.

“We don’t feel like we have to have the dynamic of Eduardo with a pitcher, but we certainly think that works. Throw in the added factor of rule changes and it is better to have a batter-pitcher perspective,” Orlins said.

Orlins did not say if this would open the door for future opportunities for Clemens as an ESPN analyst.