SIGNIFICANT LOSSES & DELAYED LAUNCHES
7 of MLB’s biggest injuries ahead of Opening Day
Major League Baseball players hoping to cure what ails them by Opening Day are pretty much out of runway.
With the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres already opening play in South Korea and all 30 teams teeing it up March 28, the languid days of spring are over.
It’s officially a terrible time to get injured, with any significant ding more or less ensuring a player will miss time in games that count.
Sure, most of the looming absences aren’t as significant or extended as New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole’s; he’ll be out into June with a vexing elbow injury.
Yet as the exhibition season winds down, key players are succumbing or not recovering sufficiently to answer the opening bell.
TJ Friedl, Reds: Wrist fracture
It’s not easy losing your leadoff hitter and center fielder less than two weeks before Opening Day. But Friedl’s nondisplaced fracture in his right wrist, suffered while diving for a ball Saturday, will sideline him well into May. Friedl will be reevaluated in about three weeks.
It’s a key blow for a club harboring NL Central title hopes. Friedl produced a .352 OBP and 3.9 WAR in 2023. Will Benson figures to get the first crack at the temporary gig, but replacing a guy who produced both 17 bunt hits and 18 home runs a year ago is challenging.
The St. Louis Cardinals gave Sonny Gray a three-year, $75 million contract to anchor their rotation. Yet Gray will be sidelined for one of the most symbolic acts of that designation: Starting on Opening Day.
The club officially handed that assignment to veteran Miles Mikolas on Monday, one day after Gray threw a third bullpen session since suffering a hamstring strain on March 4. Gray threw 15 pitches and worked into a second simulated inning. Thursday, the club hopes he faces live batters for the first time. Hey, it’s progress.
But as anticipated, it won’t allow for a significant ramp-up to make his
they wanted to make a last-ditch bid. The Astros, who exchanged proposals last week with Snell and agent Scott Boras, were offering only a two-year deal for less than $50 million and declined the agent’s two-year, $66 million proposal. Ultimately, the Giants snagged him at $62 million over two years – $110 million less of a guarantee than Aaron Nola received from the Philadelphia Phillies.
It was just less than five years ago when Gerrit Cole received a nine-year, $324 million contract from the Yankees and Stephen Strasburg got a seven-year, $245 million free agent deal from the Washington Nationals.
Yet the market never materialized for Snell, who originally was seeking a nine-year, $270 contract.
Even if teams were hesitant to bid on Snell considering he has pitched more than 130 innings only twice in his career and walked five batters per nine innings last season, it’s a steal. Who cares if Snell opts out after the season? It just means he had a great year and believes he’ll be worth more than $30 million in next year’s open market. If he doesn’t opt out, it means he stunk.
The Giants are paying him just $15 million this season, a $17 million signing bonus on Jan. 15, 2026, and a $30 million player option in 2025.
“The Giants got an absolute gift,” one rival executive told USA TODAY Sports.
Just like that, the Giants are a legitimate playoff contender again in the grueling National League West, with a starting rotation that could scare the daylights out of everyone.
“Obviously, we’d like to have had him right in the beginning of camp,” said Giants starter Alex Cobb, who played with Snell on the Tampa Bay Rays, “but the momentum that we’re going to have as a team going into opening day knowing that we’ve got a rotation that has the potential it has, is lifting everyone up. Hitters. The staff. Bullpen. Defense. Everyone’s just got a shot of adrenaline.”
They’ll open the season with the top two finishers in the 2023 NL Cy Young race in Snell and Logan Webb.
They’ll have the 2021 AL Cy Young winner, Robbie Ray, back this summer from Tommy John surgery. They’ll have Cobb, their 2023 All-Star recovering from hip surgery, back in late April,
They have one of the top left-handed prospects in baseball in Kyle Harrison.
And they have plenty of depth with Jordan Hicks, Mason Black, Carson Whisenhunt, Landen Roupp and KaiWei Teng.
The Giants, along with just about everyone else in that clubhouse, were ecstatic with the news. “The first thing that popped in my head was that I’m just very glad that I do not have to face him or don’t have to be put on the bench when he’s pitching,” Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski said,
Indeed, Snell has a 5-1 record and 1.61 ERA against the Giants. He has been dominant against the rest of the NL West, too, going 5-1 with a 1.11 ERA against the Arizona Diamondbacks, 3-2 with a 3.60 against the Colorado Rockies, 2-2 with a 2.59 ERA against the Los Angeles Dodgers and 1-0 with a 1.80 ERA against the San Diego Padres.
“You look at our division, and there’s not too many guys that have had a ton of success,” Yastrzemski said, “so to have somebody who has a clear track record of success is definitely helpful.”
The bar has now been raised in San Francisco. “It obviously doesn’t guarantee anything,” Yastrzemski said, “but it’s something that obviously we’re happy to see that the front office has been really making a push to make this team the best it can. It’s a great addition.”
Sure, the Giants are not as good as the Dodgers. Probably not Atlanta or the Phillies either. Yet they’ll take their chances going head-to-head with Arizona s and San Diego to claim at least a wild-card berth.
You don’t dish out $415 million in free agency and trade obligations, sign manager Bob Melvin away from the Padres, and don’t expect to be playing in October. Let’s see, they signed free agent center fielder Jung Hoo Lee for $113 million. They signed designated hitter Jorge Soler for $42 million and Jordan Hicks for $44 million.
They traded for Ray from the Mariners, taking on $74 million in salary. Then they added Chapman and Snell. Gone are the openers, all the platoons, and a disgruntled clubhouse.
They’re exceeding the first luxury tax ($237 million in 2024) for the first time since 2017 and may even reach the next threshold of $257 million. They also forfeited their second and third picks in the draft, along with $1 million in international money, the first time they’ve given up multiple draft picks since 2005.
When you win three World Series in five years, and have now gone a decade without another, you get a little antsy.
“I was excited about our team even before we got those guys,” Webb said. “But obviously, when you add two talents like that, the excitement goes up. The rotation, I thought it was going to be fantastic, and then you add a two-time Cy Young Award winner, I think the sky’s the limit.”
Certainly, there are no guarantees with Snell. He went 13-3 with a 1.20 ERA in his last 23 starts, yielding a .156 batting average, but also opened the season with a 1-6 record and 5.40 ERA, becoming the first pitcher to win the Cy Young while leading the league in walks since 1959. But in his career he is averaging 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings and is yielding a .214 batting average, the second best among lefties to only Dodgers three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw (.209).
The Giants will soon find out how long it will take for Snell to make the adjustment, but for now they have another Cy Young winner in their rotation, and their price, with postseason dreams dancing in their heads.