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Salvador Perez gets good news on knee after potential WBC disaster
Sunday morning’s Say Hey baseball includes the Royals avoiding disaster with Sal Perez’ knee, the Dominicans comeback win over the U.S., and the chance of an extension for Yu Darvish.
Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports
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The World Baseball Classic is a hell of a lot of fun, but unfortunately when one of your favorite team’s players is participating, you have to hold your breath while enjoying the action.
Royals fans learned that the hard way on Saturday night, as star catcher Salvador Perez injured his knee in a collision at home plate. As of this writing, we haven’t learned the full extent of the injury. Luckily for the Royals, initial MRI tests show that Perez just has some inflammation in his knee. He’ll be done at the WBC, but the injury isn’t all that severe. This is surprising, given how serious it looked.
Any loss of time for Perez is a huge blow for the Royals, who already needed some luck to compete in the AL Central. They have leaned heavily on Perez behind the plate over the last few years, with the 26-year-old logging more innings at catcher than anyone besides Buster Posey since 2013. Their backup right now is Drew Butera, who just so happens to be the player who collided into Perez to cause the injury in the first place.
Even if it’s not serious, the impact of this injury will be felt beyond just the Royals. People were already apprehensive about this tournament. The argument is that putting players into meaningful baseball this early in the year is bound to cause injuries. There may be a bit of truth to that, but it’s not as if players don’t get hurt in spring training. Hell, just last year Mets catcher Kevin Plawecki was injured in a spring training collision at the plate. A major injury to Perez would suck, and hopefully the upcoming follow-up tests support the first one. But it’s not a reason to stop playing the World Baseball Classic.
- #NeverBunt is a growing movement, and for good reason. However, are we discounting the impact of bunting for hits?
- After the Dominican team’s late rally helped it to defeat the U.S. team on Sunday, Dominicans everywhere celebrated.
- U.S.-Dominican was the most hyped matchup of the WBC, and it lived up to expectations.
- Perez wasn’t the only player to leave a WBC game early on Saturday. Dalton Pompey exited his game after suffering from some dizziness.
- Clint Frazier having to cut his hair to abide by Yankees policy has made plenty of headlines, and the publicity isn’t helping the club at all.
- On the other side of New York, Yoenis Cespedes wants to win MVP this year. Normally, I’d laugh at this (who doesn’t want to win MVP), but I’m too scared to laugh at Cespedes.
- Yu Darvish is set to be one of the most sought-after free agents next winter. Could Texas prevent that by signing an extension this year?
- In other injury news, promising Twins pitcher Trevor May is going to miss all of 2017 with a torn UCL.
- Braves top prospect Dansby Swanson is dealing with some injury troubles, too, but he should be fine.
- The Pirates have placed Jung-ho Kang on the restricted list, putting into question when we’ll see him again.
- There is a lot of risk associated with the Cardinals rotation, but it is built to handle that.
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