Matt Lindstrom the quintessential Marlin

Matt Lindstrom, like all the young Marlins players, he lies, this time by omission.

Sometime in late May, Lindstrom's on-again, off-again back spasms returned, and that's where the problems really started. The hop was still on the fastball, but maybe it straightened out ever so slightly.

Worse, Lindstrom could no longer hit his spots and started to doubt his abilities. 

"Throwing through some of those issues, health-wise, maybe I started questioning myself," Lindstrom said. "It was, 'Should I really be out here right now?'"

Some nights his back would bark, others it wouldn't. 

"It was weird," he said. "It wasn't allowing me to be myself, I guess, but I was willing to overlook that and try to get through."

Had he complained, he could have earned a couple of weeks on the disabled list and worked out his problems amid the comforts of the major leagues, not to mention at a major-league salary. 

Instead, he kept his mouth shut and wound up back in the minors. 

"Just being stubborn, which is kind of my personality," Lindstrom said. "I'm not like, 'Oh, I'm hurt.' I'm not going to sit around and do nothing. So there was a little struggle."

I've said it before and I will say again, lying (even by omission) about injuries doesn't help the player or the ball club.  Be that as it may, they all lie.

Now that Lindstrom has finally come clean, hopefully, he will get the medical attention needed.  

I do understand why they don't say anything while they are up in the majors, but is a complete mistake to do so.  First off, as the article states, if something is physically wrong it is better, financially, to be on the major league DL doing rehab stints than being reassigned to the minors.  But they never learn.

The second thing is: exactly how many pitchers does Matt think the Marlins have in the organization who can throw 100 mph?  There is no way he is going to lose his job to injury.  Anibal Sanchez is not the roll model when it comes to trying to tough an injury out.  Of course, Sanchez's injury was pretty easy to spot at the time.  I must say Matt did a stellar job of hiding his.  Except for the results thing.