This is slightly brighter than that of the musculature, so it was felt to be real. He was treated conservatively, and within two weeks he was back to pitching without pain. Michael Tuite recently published an article in Skeletal Radiology on rim rent tears, in which he looked at 110 patients. He found that they occur in younger patients, usually under age 35. This is a tear that occurs right at the insertion of fibers onto the bone.
Most tears occur in the critical zone, slightly removed from the insertion.
This tear peels off some of the fibers right at the insertion on the greater tuberosity. There's generally some fluid underneath it. A surgeon can fix this with good results if it is, in fact, clinically significant. The oblique coronal image in figure 12 shows another example of a rim rent tear. At the insertion point of the tendon, it's hard to tell if there is joint fluid or a partial undersurface tear.