Miguel Cabrera sustained a broken bone in his collision with a baseball:
Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera suffered a small fracture in the bone under his right eye after getting hit by a hard grounder in a spring training game Monday.
Cabrera, who received eight stitches to close the bloody wound, told ESPN The Magazine’s Buster Olney Tuesday that the team would re-evaluate him in a week, but he likely will be out at least a couple of weeks. Cabrera’s vision is fine, according to the team.
“I was lucky,” he told Olney.
Basically this means Cabrera gets less time to adjust to his new position. I suspect he might start the season as the designated hitter until the bone heals completely.
Jim Leyland is already sounding defensive:
“He’d be in the same place as Cabrera, getting stitches,” Leyland said when asked whether anyone else would have had a chance to make the play.
Right.
Good fielding third basemen don’t tend to fare any better than poor fielding third basemen on hard hit balls that take a bad hop. It’s a fluke. He would’ve had the same risk of the same injury while playing the other corner infield position the past 4 years. File it under stuff happens.
Francona said the same thing right after the play on ESPN.
Not sure I agree, but it was pretty hard hit and it was a bad hop, so they may be right.