Well, That Bites

The injuries to Lance Lynn and Garrett Crochet I get. Sign a hard-throwing, overweight pitcher over the age of thirty, and you can expect something to happen. Draft a hard-throwing pitcher, and you play a game of Russian roulette, baseball-style. It’s the other injuries as the White Sox start their season that leave me scratching my head. Consider that Ryan Burr felt something in his right shoulder warming up Wednesday and now finds himself on the 10-day IL. A day earlier, Yoan Moncada felt soreness swinging the bat before the team’s final spring-training game, and out he goes for an estimated three weeks with a right-oblique strain. I’m off this train. Either Moncada has been hiding the injury, which affected his hitting all spring, or it’s bad luck on top of bad performance. Either way, he hit all of .121 this spring, four hits in 33 at-bats, with a whopping thirteen strikeouts. If you’re hurt, you tell someone. If you’re not, change your body language so it doesn’t look like you’re going through the motions. To me, Moncada looks distracted, at best. So, now it falls on Jake Burger to see if he can make this a Wally Pipp moment for Moncada. At a minimum, Burger doing well could force Moncada into getting serious about proving he’s an All-Star talent. Because, if he isn’t, then it’s time to find someone who is.