FIELDER LIKELY OUT FOR YEAR Prince Fielder

Texas Rangers slugger is expected to have season-ending neck surgery for the second time in three years, and his career could be jeopardy as well.

Fielder got a second opinion Monday, and general manager said Dr. recommended surgery. That was the same as Dr. in Los Angeles said last week after an MRI showed a herniation between Fielder’s C4 and C5 disks.

While Daniels didn’t want to speculate on the longterm future for the 32-year-old Fielder, the GM did acknowledge the seriousness of having a second surgery in close proximity to the first.

“He rehabbed once from it and came back. I think with each additional surgery in that area it increases the risk involved and just the overall, his ability to get back,” Daniels said. “But it’s not for me to speculate about that here today.”

Dossett, a specialist in Texas who works with the Rangers, performed Fielder’s surgery in May 2014 when he had a cervical fusion of two disks just below the area that is bothering the slugger now.

Fielder has hit a career-low .212 with eight homers and 44 RBIs in 89 games this season. He had recently been feeling weakness and discomfort in his neck and left arm, similar to what he felt two years ago before surgery.

“I just know that post-All-Star break last year and through the playoffs, and then just kind of inconsistency of this season, there were times he’d show you a spark or two, and then it would just kind of evaporate,” manager

said. “There were times when the ball still came off his bat at 100 miles an hour. But I don’t know this season that this was who we’d seen in the past.”