Dan Haren goes on disabled list for first time in his career

It took six awful starts for Dan Haren to admit to pitching through a back injury and upon being placed on the disabled list yesterday the Angels right-hander revealed that he’s been dealing with lower back soreness for most of the season.

Haren also told Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles that trying to keep alive his streak of never missing a start and never needing a DL stint played a role in his trying to pitch through the injury, saying:

I think I was doing a disservice to the team by going out there at less than a hundred percent and trying to win ballgames. So I went and talked to Sosh, and I said basically, rather than making 16 more starts not being a hundred percent, I’d rather make 14 starts at a hundred percent. If I was pitching for a team in last place, I’d probably just finish off the year like this and get it taken care of at the end. But I think my last 14 starts or so are going to mean a lot to this team, and hopefully I can make a few more in October as well.

That’s the best-case scenario, of course, because there’s certainly no guarantee that a couple weeks off will cure Haren considering he estimated that the injury left him pitching at around 70 percent effectiveness recently.

Through the end of May he had a 3.52 ERA and 66/14 K/BB ratio in 72 innings, but after June 1 he allowed 29 runs, including nine homers, in 32 innings as his overall ERA ballooned to 4.86.