Despite an entertaining week with the trade deadline action, a number of significant players suffered injuries over the weekend and for some it could affect playoff implications.
On Friday night, Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt was hit in the left hand by Pittsburgh Pirates reliever Ernesto Frieri in the ninth inning. After the game, Goldschmidt received X-rays, but the results were inconclusive. He sat out on Saturday night while his team avenged the accidental incident when D-Backs reliever Randall Delgado beamed Pirates star Andrew McCutchen in the back with a fastball. Delgado was ejected from the game.
Goldschmidt had a follow-up X-ray appointment on Saturday and the results revealed a fractured left hand. He's now expected to miss the rest of the season, as the Diamondbacks have already called up Alfredo Marte from Triple-A to fill the roster spot. Although the Diamondbacks are far out of playoff contention, sitting 14 games below .500, a fractured hand for their star player is no good news. The Pirates also received bad news on Sunday afternoon when Andrew McCutchen left the series finale with what is believed to be an oblique injury, which could sideline him for weeks.
Los Angeles Angels star Josh Hamilton and Colorado Rockies outfielder also suffered injuries on Friday night. Hamilton was hit by a pitch in the left hand by Tampa Bay Rays reliever Jeff Beliveau and was diagnosed with a contusion on his left middle finger, but managed to play the rest of the weekend, going 2 for 8 with a walk, an RBI and two runs. Gonzalez re-injured his sprained right ankle on Friday against the Tigers when he slid into the wall trying to make a catch in foul territory. He was left out of the lineup on Saturday and Sunday while the team is still determining the severity of his injury. Gonzalez has been limited to only 65 games this season due to a number of injuries.
The New York Yankees received some decent news as well as some bad news. The decent news is that star pitcher Masahiro Tanaka will play catch on Monday to test out his ailing right elbow that revealed a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament early in July. Doctors suggested Tanaka attempt to rehab the elbow before opting to undergo Tommy John surgery and surrender the remainder of the 2014 season as well as the entire 2015 season.
"We'll see tomorrow what everyone wants to do with him, but as we said, three weeks is the mark," Girardi said Sunday night, in this ESPN article. "[He told] his doctor he feels good, so we'll see what we do. We'll get home and talk and decide what we're going to do."
The bad news is that the Yankees suffered yet another injury to their already decimated pitching staff last night. David Phelps was forced to exit Sunday night's game against the Boston Red Sox due to right elbow inflammation after only two innings. The Yankees pitching staff has only one player remaining that was listed in the rotation in April, and that is Hiroki Kuroda. The rest are filling in for the injured CC Sabathia (out for year), Ivan Nova (out for year), Masahiro Tanaka (out until at least September), and Michael Pineda (may return in two weeks, but has been out since May 6).
The Yankees are currently 57-53 and are five games back of the AL East division lead and 1.5 games out of the final wild card spot. They open a four-game series against the Detroit Tigers tonight at Yankee Stadium.
