Ben Zobrist says he’s headed to the DL to tend to a minor back injury, via Jesse Rogers of ESPN. There doesn’t seem to be any serious concern, but Zobrist has missed the past few games due to the injury, so the Cubs appear to be proceeding with caution. They’ll be able to make the move retroactive by a few days, so it seems unlikely he’ll be out for very long. The versatile Zobrist is in the third year of a four-year, $56MM contract with Chicago. He’s certainly off to an impressive start; in 49 plate appearances so far this season, the veteran has hit .326/.408/.465 with more walks (six) than strikeouts (5). For the time being, players like Kyle Schwarber, Albert Almora Jr. and Ian Happ will likely continue to get an extra game here and there to plug the gaps created by Zobrist’s absence
A pair of additional injury notes elsewhere in MLB…
- The Marlins officially placed 31-year-old righty Odrisamer Despaigne on the DL last night (along with fellow reliever Chris O’Grady), as we noted in our daily roster roundup. The reason was a strained forearm, which is always a concerning injury when it comes to pitchers. According to Joe Frisaro of MLB.com, Despaigne had the following to say about his injury: “I first felt it tight when I was warming up in the bullpen. I tried to keep going with it. When the game started, it’s when I started to feel the pain.” For the Marlins, it’s yet another development that thins out an already-shaky pitching staff.
- Two-way Angels phenom Shohei Ohtani appears to be making progress in regards to his blister issues. Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register tweets that Ohtani feels his blister is “recovering”, and that he’s on schedule to make a start on Tuesday in Houston. Fletcher also notes that Ohtani worked with pitching coach Charlie Nagy in a bullpen session, and came away with some things he can use (presumably to prevent a re-aggravation of the injury).
Ohtani vs Astros should be fun.
He’s so much more polished as a hitter. He looks like just a “thrower” on the mound right now. He should be fine long term on the mound, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him in RF on a daily basis.
Have you actually watched him pitch?
He hasn’t played OF in like 6 years, and the Angels have a perennial Gold Glove contender in RF.
So many things wrong with this hot take that it’s really impossible to know where to begin.
Best to understand his pitching mechanics (without the recent blister) are exemplary, and he notched his high number of strikeouts due to several factors, including repeating mechanics and using the same arm slot for all pitches. “Throwers” don’t get the swing-and-miss totals that Ohtani has thus far on the season.
If anything, his pitching will be ahead of his hitting, due to the constraint of being out of the lineup 50% of the time.
The idea of RF was nixed by both sides during the pre-Spring Training time. No reason to risk injury playing the OF when there is a 6 year plan in front of him.
What? Before the Sox/blister game, he was painting the corners with upper-90s fastballs and throwing and untouchable splitter. The hitting is better than expected by a lot of scouts who were predicting that his swing was too long and would be easy to exploit, but his pitching is still way ahead of his hitting.
It’s a shame there’s no info on MTR on Orlando Arcia’s injury. It looked bad when it happened and I would think there’d be coverage on one of the game’s exciting young shortstops.
X-rays were negative. Good sign.
To aggravate means to re-injure. Unless there’s an actual second re-injury, re-aggravate or re-aggravation, is redundant.