Evan Longoria has been as critical to the Giants’ success this season as any of their grizzled veterans, but the NL West leaders (!) could be without the 35-year-old third baseman until after the All-Star break. Longoria suffered a sternoclavicular dislocation of his left shoulder in a collision on Saturday, and landed on the 10-day Injured List. Ouch!

The injury occurred during the top of the ninth inning of the Giants’ game against the Cubs. Shifted towards second base with lefty Anthony Rizzo at the plate, Longoria ranged to his left to field a soft chopper, where he ran into shortstop Brandon Crawford and got the worst of it, and not only because Rizzo was safe at first as Kris Bryant scored. Longoria remained on the ground for several minutes and left the field accompanied by the team’s head athletic trainer, Anthony Reyes:

Crawford was uninjured, but Longoria was placed on the IL on Sunday with what was initially termed a left shoulder sprain, and initial indications that he would miss four to six weeks. Sunday brought a bit more specificity, via The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly:

Evan Longoria said he was diagnosed with a dislocated SC joint, which links the clavicle to the sternum. So the pain isn't in his shoulder. It's a weird injury and he isn't sure what to expect timetable wise. He's had X-rays but not an MRI yet.

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) June 6, 2021

Sternoclavicular joint dislocations aren’t often seen in baseball; they’re more often associated with motor vehicle accidents or collision sports such as football and rugby. Anterior dislocations such as the one Longoria apparently suffered, are one matter, but posterior dislocations can be life-threatening, as they can affect a person’s esophagus, airway, or vital arteries. Read the rest of this entry »

Though the 13-game losing streak that left them with the NL’s worst record came to an end on Sunday, the Diamondbacks’ season has taken another turn for the worse, with Madison Bumgarner leaving Wednesday’s start against the Mets after just two innings due to discomfort in his left shoulder. Fortunately, an MRI revealed nothing more than inflammation, though he landed on the injured list anyway, joining three other members of the team’s starting five. That’s hardly the only issue holding down the rebuilding Diamondbacks, who at 20–38 are on pace to lose 106 games.

Even before he took the mound on Wednesday at Chase Field, Bumgarner’s performance this season had veered all over the map. He allowed 17 runs in 13.2 innings over his first three starts, then went on a five-start run during which he allowed just three runs in 30 innings. On April 25, he spun a seven-inning no-hitter — a feat not officially recognized by Major League Baseball, but the high point of the 31-year-old southpaw’s season — in the nightcap of a doubleheader against the Braves. Bumgarner’s performance has deteriorated since then, however, with 16 runs and eight walks in 14 innings over three starts from May 17 to 28.

Even that couldn’t have prepared anyone for what took place on Wednesday. Facing a makeshift Mets lineup that included James McCann in the third spot and just two regulars (leadoff hitter Jonathan Villar and cleanup hitter Pete Alonso) who entered the game with a wRC+ of 100 or better, Bumgarner began by allowing six straight hits, including a three-run homer by McCann, and four runs. The Diamondbacks countered by piling up five runs against Mets starter David Peterson and reliever Robert Gsellman, with Bumgarner’s own two-out RBI single giving his team a 5–4 lead. But he couldn’t hold it in the second inning, yielding a one-out single to Villar and then a two-out RBI double to McCann.

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In Tuesday’s otherwise lopsided rout by the Phillies, Nick Castellanos collected a pair of hits off Aaron Nola. With that, he extended his hitting streak to 18 games, thus surpassing his personal best and breaking a tie with Jose Altuve for the majors’ longest streak of this season. The Reds’ right fielder isn’t just hot all of a sudden, however. He’s been raking since Opening Day, and entered Thursday with his .361 batting average, .644 slugging percentage, 185 wRC+, and 2.9 WAR all sitting atop the NL leaderboards, a big step up from last year’s disappointing campaign.

The 29-year-old Castellanos, who signed a four-year, $64 million deal with the Reds in January 2020, hit just .225/.298/.486 in his first season in Cincinnati. He did play every game and bopped 14 homers while helping the Reds to their first playoff appearance since 2013, but his hot start (.340/.411/.840 through 14 games) quickly faded. His final 102 wRC+ was his lowest mark since 2015, his 28.5% strikeout rate represented a career high, and all told, his 0.4 WAR made it a pretty forgettable season.

Castellanos turned the page on 2020 by homering and doubling off the Cardinals’ Jack Flaherty on Opening Day and adding three more homers (plus two doubles and a triple) in the Reds’ next five games; he didn’t strike out for the first time until the team’s fifth game of the season. That week was a particularly colorful one, as his hop-skip-bat-flip sequence on Opening Day led to a retaliatory hit-by-pitch the next day, followed by an in-your-face flexing gesture after he came around to score, and then a bench-clearing brawl and a two-game suspension that made the powers that be look like stick-in-the-muds.

As silly as the suspension was, it halted Castellanos’ brief slump; he resumed raking upon returning, collecting 10 hits (including two homers) over his next six games. On May 2, he went 5-for-6 against the Cubs, with two homers as well as a walk-off RBI single in the 10th inning. On May 12, he began his hitting streak by going 2-for-4 with a walk against the Pirates. Over his 18-game jag, he’s hit .464/.532/.710 with three homers in 79 plate appearance, and overall he’s at .361/.416/.644 with 12 homers. Read the rest of this entry »

In a rotation already stretched thin by injury, the last thing the Cardinals needed was to lose their top starter for an extended period. But that’s what happened on Monday night in Los Angeles as Jack Flaherty left his start against the Dodgers after five innings due to tightness in his left side and was placed on the injured list on Tuesday with an oblique strain that will likely sideline him for several weeks.

Matched up against Trevor Bauer, Flaherty allowed only two hits — back-to-back solo homers by Gavin Lux and Chris Taylor — while striking out nine and walking one over the course of five innings and 83 pitches. He reportedly felt some discomfort on his final pitches and then appeared to aggravate the injury while swinging the bat in the top of the sixth inning. Ain’t this single-season return of pitchers hitting great?

Flaherty didn’t take the bat off his shoulder after that 0–1 foul ball, striking out looking. He gave way to reliever Ryan Helsley in the bottom of the frame even as his teammates scored three runs off Bauer to take a 3–2 lead, but the Dodgers got their licks against Helsley and the rest of the Cardinals’ shaky bullpen and won 9–4.

Regarding Flaherty’s injury, manager Mike Shildt told reporters on Tuesday, “It’s not a minimal situation. It’s a real strain, tear, I don’t know which grade (they) want to call it. It’s significant that Jack is going to miss some time. And it’s going to be awhile. We’re still in the exploratory stage to determine how long.”

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With disastrous free agent signing after disastrous free agent signing, and then the trade of Nolan Arenado, the Rockies have already fallen into irrelevance, even if their 20-34 record isn’t actually the NL West’s worst. As if they needed more problems, star shortstop Trevor Story has been sidelined by inflammation in his right elbow. At a time when his production has already fallen short of expectations, the 28-year-old shortstop’s injury — which recalls a late-2018 scare — could have a significant impact upon his trade value.

According to manager Bud Black, Story began experiencing tightness and pain in his elbow and forearm following a play against the Mets in the second game of a doubleheader last Thursday. Fielding a grounder off the bat of Cameron Maybin in the third inning, he ranged to his left, spun, and threw a one-hopper to first base in time for the out.

Story left the game in the middle of the fourth inning, without fielding another ball or coming to bat. He did not play on Friday, and was placed on the 10-day Injured List on Saturday. With the Rockies in the midst of a week-long road trip to New York and Pittsburgh, the team planned for him to undergo an MRI on Monday, once he returned to Denver, to determine if the injury is more severe. At this writing, the Rockies have yet to share the results with the public, but the early indications are that this isn’t a worst-case scenario; Black characterized Story’s injury as “not as bad” as one he suffered in late 2018 (more on which momentarily). Via MLB.com’s Manny Randhawa:

“Trev and I and [head trainer] Keith [Dugger] spoke this morning, and we decided the best thing for Trev was to go on the injured list,” Black said. “There’s still some residual soreness and general tightness around the joint of the elbow. He wasn’t gonna play today, probably wasn’t gonna play tomorrow, and then the off-day. And then the three of us also thought there’s gonna be a couple days to test this, to go out in Denver and throw and hit at some level of intensity as opposed to just picking up and playing.”

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The Padres’ nine-game winning streak came to an end on Monday night at the hands of the Brewers, who beat them 5-3 in Milwaukee, but the loss did have at least one bright spot, in that Tommy Pham homered for just the second time this season. The 33-year-old outfielder has struggled mightily since being acquired from the Rays in December 2019, particularly after being the victim of a stabbing last October, but lately he’s showed signs of heating up, a welcome development for the surging NL West leaders, who have since returned to their winning ways with back-to-back wins and at 32-18 lead the NL West by a game and a half.

Pham crushed a two-run homer in the ninth inning of Monday’s game off reliever Angel Perdomo, at a time when the Padres trailed 5-0:

The blast had an estimated distance of 430 feet, making it his longest since his 440-foot homer at Coors Field last July 31. In his previous 75 games with the Padres, he’d hit just one other drive of more than 390 feet, a 410-foot homer against the Dodgers in Los Angeles last August 13, three days before fracturing a hamate bone in his right hand while fouling off a pitch.

That hamate fracture, which required surgery and sidelined Pham for just over a month, was a far less severe injury than the stabbing. On October 11, three days after the Padres were ousted from the playoffs by the Dodgers, Pham was involved in an altercation in a parking lot outside a San Diego strip club, during which he was slashed across his lower back. He needed 200 stitches to close the deep gash, and was fortunate to escape even worse damage. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite losing Corey Seager to a broken right hand, getting less-than-vintage work from Mookie Betts, and continuing to await the return of Cody Bellinger from a hairline fracture of his left fibula, the Dodgers have won seven straight games and 11 of 12 to move within half a game of first place in the NL West. Leading the way on the offensive side — indeed, leading the entire majors from an offensive standpoint over the past two weeks — has been Max Muncy. After a down 2020 season and a dismal slump that more or less coincided with the team’s 5-15 tailspin, the 30-year-old infielder has seen some adjustments to his approach at the plate pay off.

This past weekend, Muncy helped the Dodgers to a three-game sweep of the division-leading Giants by homering twice and getting on base a total of six times in Saturday and Sunday’s wins. After taking Friday night off save for a late-inning defensive cameo to replace Albert Pujols, he opened the scoring on Saturday by putting one into McCovey Cove at the expense of Scott Kazmir, who was making his first major league appearance since September 23, 2016.

As best we can tell, Muncy did not suggest that Kazmir go get the ball out of the ocean, as he did for Madison Bumgarner on his previous splash hit in 2019. Sunday’s homer was window dressing in a rout; he hit one off reliever Sam Selman, who replaced Anthony DeSclafani after the Giants’ starter was rocked for 10 runs in 2.2 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve still got a week to go in May, a month that has included four no-hitters, including two last week on back-to-back days — the Tigers’ Spencer Turnbull against the Mariners on Tuesday, and then the Yankees’ Corey Kluber against the Rangers on Wednesday, plus two that were just two days apart earlier this month. That brings this year’s total to six no-hitters of the nine-inning variety, plus a seven-inning one by Madison Bumgarner that The Man doesn’t want you to count. Particularly because the major league batting average of .237 is in a virtual tie for the all-time low mark set in 1968, these remarkable achievements are threatening to lose some luster.

That’s a shame, because the experience of actually watching a no-hitter from start to finish, rather than just flipping over to rubberneck for the final three or six outs, is still one of the most gripping in all of sports. The dawning of the possibility at some point in the middle innings — individually, we all have our thresholds for when our antennae go up — and then the batter-by-batter, pitch-by-pitch suspense, knowing that this gem could disintegrate either though one bad pitch or one bad break, makes a no-hitter a thrill to watch. Every single one of them is meaningful to its participants; for the pitcher and probably the catcher as well, it’s the pinnacle of performance. It takes a heart of coal not to be moved by the likes of Turnbull or Carlos Rodón having that one day of untouchability after years of ups and downs.

That said, some no-hitters are more impressive than others, with strikeouts galore and maybe just a walk or two separating them from perfection. Particularly given the current conditions, under which three teams have been no-hit twice — Cleveland, Texas, and Seattle — it’s obvious that there are varying degrees of difficulty when it comes to opponents as well. No-hitting the Mariners, who entered Sunday with a team batting average of .198, isn’t the same as doing it to the Rangers (.236), and neither of those are the equal of, say, Sean Manaea no-hitting the 2018 Red Sox, who hit .271. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite all the injuries the Mets are dealing with — including losing two key regulars to hamstring injuries in the same inning on Sunday and then two more players the next day — they still lead the NL East with a 20-17 record while the Braves lag behind and languish below .500 at 20-23. The latter’s hopes for a fourth straight division title have taken a significant hit over the past several days with their own losses of two starting pitchers. Mike Soroka, who had yet to appear for the team this year, underwent exploratory surgery on his inflamed right Achilles tendon on Monday, while Huascar Ynoa was diagnosed with a fracture in his right hand sustained when he punched a dugout bench in frustration on Sunday, thus interrupting a breakout season. Both will be out until at least the All-Star break, and quite possibly longer than that.

For Soroka, this is just the latest disappointment in a frustrating series of events that began last August 3. Three starts into the follow-up of a stellar rookie season in which he made the NL All-Star team and placed second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting, he tore his right Achilles, sidelining him for the remainder of the 2020 campaign. The Braves hoped that he would be available to join their rotation by mid-April, but after making just one Grapefruit League appearance and several in simulated games at the team’s alternate site, he was shut down due to shoulder discomfort and wasn’t cleared to resume throwing until late April.

After experiencing renewed discomfort in his surgically repaired Achilles during his recent workouts, Soroka had an MRI, and when that proved inconclusive, he underwent an exploratory procedure and clean-up by Dr. Robert Anderson, the surgeon who performed his initial repair. Via The Athletic’s David O’Brien, Anderson will reevaluate the pitcher in two-to-four weeks, “to determine if anything else needs to be done and when he might be able to resume his rehab schedule.” Read the rest of this entry »