SATURDAY 9:13am: The Nationals have announced that they’ve placed Eaton on the DL and promoted Bautista, as anticipated. Eaton’s injury has officially been listed as a left knee strain.
8:21am: The Nats will promote outfielder Rafael Bautista to the big leagues, MASN’s Byron Kerr writes. That news would seem to indicate Eaton is headed to the DL. The 24-year-old Bautista is batting a modest .291/.325/.354 in 83 plate appearances with Triple-A Syracuse, a line roughly in keeping with the offensive skill set he’s demonstrated throughout his minor-league career — he hits well for contact and posts reasonable on-base percentages but lacks power. Bautista swiped 56 bases for Double-A Harrisburg in 2016 while only being caught ten times, indicating outstanding speed, and Kerr notes that his range is very good. MLB.com ranks Bautista 13th among Nationals prospects.
FRIDAY 9:47pm: Skipper Dusty Baker was only able to say that the club will know more after Eaton undergoes an MRI tomorrow, as Dan Kolko of MASNsports.com tweets.
9:38pm: Nationals center fielder Adam Eaton was removed from tonight’s game after suffering an apparent lower-leg injury suffered while crossing first base. There are no details yet from the club, of course, but Eaton had to be helped off without placing any weight on his left leg.
The image of Eaton grimacing in pain while being removed from the field is just about the last thing the Nationals hoped to see this evening. The 28-year-old has functioned as a key cog in a productive Nats lineup since coming over in a somewhat controversial winter trade.
Over his 102 trips to plate entering tonight’s action, Eaton carried a .291/.392/.465 batting line with a pair of long balls and three stolen bases. Though defensive metrics haven’t loved his work in center field, the jury is still out given the meager sample to date.
We’ll need to wait for further word, clearly, before leaping to any conclusions. But given the degree of pain clearly being experienced by the gritty Eaton, and the fact he wasn’t able to bear any weight on his leg, it seems at a minimum that the organization will need to expect some kind of DL placement. For the time being, the club could utilize Michael Taylor in center while also playing Bryce Harper there at times, though obviously that’s not the optimal alignment.
Get well soon bro.
Matt Kemp got hurt in NY. Phillips got hurt in NY. Eaton got hurt in NY. Mets players got hurt in NY. NY got hurt in NY!
game was in DC
Damn i was about to edit just to mention that i know it is in DC. You beat me to it. Regardless, i know its in DC, but when playing the Mets, injuries happen. I’m just generalizing the Mets as NY.
Looked like an ankle injury if I had to guess. Hopefully he doesn’t miss too much time. If he does miss extended time, I would imagine Trea Turner could play some CF with Difo or Drew (whenever he’s healthy) could play SS for those games.
Eaton is done. Legs are not supposed to bend that direction. The curse of Dusty continues.
Huh? What did Baker have to do with this?
So you’re saying Dusty should have went to the bullpen and got Eaton out of the game?
Didn’t really look too serious, just a bad calf tear or ankle tear. Probably a month or so. Not ideal but nats fans can at least be happy it wasn’t an ACL or something that takes over a year to really come back from.
A bad calf or ankle tear only puts you out a month month?
I don’t know about that, but any ankle or calf injury certainly seems better than an ACL tear if that was the case.
yes on an ankle tear, depending on what you did. I tore a couple ligaments in my ankle and was back in 2 weeks with a small brace.
You are probably not a professional athlete, I’m guessing. I have a bone bruise on my foot currently, it hurts like hell but I can walk and work through it. If I had to perform at an elite athletic level no way.
Getting back on the couch doesn’t count!
You don’t need to be a professional athlete to know that the pain dissipates after a short period of time. Players also consistently play through injuries, so this idea that they can’t deal with pain and play at the same time simply isn’t based in reality.
A torn ankle ligament is a sprain. These are graded 1, 2, or3 and the healing time is longer the more severe a sprain. Grade 1 you may return to all activities in a day or 2. Grade 2 may need crutches or a brace for a few days and avoiding sports for a few weeks. Grade 3 may require a longer period of crutch use and a walking cast or brace for a 4 – 6 weeks. anationinmotion.org/ortho-pinion/how-long-does-it-…
Athletes play through pain, yes, but that’s different than playing through an injury. When players play through injury, they end up like Felix Hernandez in 2017 or Bryce Harper last year. Most of us don’t have to perform at an elite level physically at the jobs we have. We can work through soreness, minor injury, some pain etc. because it doesn’t really hamper our jobs as a chef or librarian or financial analyst or whatever. The website you linked to is designed for a non-athlete; our timetables are different depending on what we do for a living.
I will tell you that at no time in the 27 years I’ve been working have I ever had to run as fast as possible, throw a ball a hundred yards to keep a runner from advancing, swing a bat at a 100 mph pitch…you get the point. The notion that the recovery time from an injury is the same for me as it would be for an elite athlete is a bit absurd. In my working career, I have worked through numerous aches and pains, including a bone bruise on my foot, a hernia, a broken rib, colds and flus, lots and lots of serious burns and cuts. The physical demands of my job exist, but nowhere near the extent of those of a professional athlete playing at the highest level.
I’m sure that’s what the Nats medical staff will rely on!
Well then yours wasn’t a “bad” tear which is what we are discussing.
Looked like a broken ankle the way it was flopping around
“Eaton had to be helped off without placing any weight on his left leg.”
He actually had to be helped off without placing any weight on either of his legs..he got carried off the field.
That was mostly because he’s about 5’6″ and the guys carrying him off under his shoulders were 6-8″ taller!
Worse news is the promotion of Michael A. Taylor to CF. He can’t hit and proves it over and over.
Your right he has 3 hits today! Who are you Jimmy the Geek?
In meandog’s defense….any of us in this thread could have gotten hits today in the 23-5 blowout….it was bad….my fantasy team had a 50 point lead going into today’s games and I lost by 7 points after my opponents pitcher Keuchel scored 25 and Rendon had 31….I actually counted on Keuchel to get 20-25 points against the A’s….and still figured to win this week but Rendon scored 31 and single handily beat me….I was expecting 1-3 points from him….the rest of our teams put up average numbers so it was definitely Rendon who beat me….my team had the lead since the start of the week and hadn’t lost the lead up until the Nats vs Mets got out of hand….point is….Taylor just joined in on the hit parade….