Manny Machado Injured by Andrew McCutchen’s Slide

While last night’s O’s-Pirates short two-game series finale was awesome in the end, there were plenty of bumps along the way. In addition to Wade Miley being ineffectively wild and getting beat around when he did manage to find the strike zone, and new bullpen addition Edwin Jackson being less-than-inspiring, there was an apparent injury to Manny Machado.

During Miley’s second-inning implosion, the Pirates pulled off a double steal, with Andrew McCutchen taking third base and Elias Diaz swiping second.

McCutchen, though, should have been out. Caleb Joseph threw from his knees, and delivered a strike to Machado low and right in front of the swashbuckler’s slide. McCutchen was dead-to-rights. Walking the plank.

However, his spike hit Machado in the wrist, and appeared to get tangled in Manny’s wrist wrap. McCutchen’s leg twisted awkwardly, Manny fell backwards equally awkwardly, and in the process dropped the ball.

Safe.

McCutchen grimaced for a moment, but got up without the Pirates trainer needing to come out. Machado, though, sat on his rear end in the grass, examining his forearm and waiting for Richie Bancells to make his way out. Bancells appeared to pour some sort of liquid on Manny, probably a disinfectant, and Machado stayed in the game.

In the bottom of the third though, when Machado was due up, Ruben Tejada came out onto the on-deck circle instead. Manny was out.

After the game, Buck Showalter said that X-Rays on Manny were negative, and that the team was trying to set up an MRI for sometime today, just to “be on the safe side, see what we’re dealing with.”

It was an unfortunate play, but nothing that can be blamed on any sort of malicious intent, which Buck made sure to point out as well. Dan Duqutte happened to be in the MASN booth with Gary & Mike at the time the incident occurred, and mentioned that the slide might have been a bit high, but we’ll forgive him for being a bit upset in the moment, watching his star player in pain.

It’s also notable that the Orioles made zero effort to “retaliate” by throwing baseballs at McCutchen or any other Pirate, OR that the O’s beat writers didn’t go on Twitter and encourage such ridiculous behavior.

As for Manny, obviously the hope is that his wrist was just sore and that, at most, he’ll miss a day or two. Any time that Machado spends on the DL could be detrimental to the Birds, as he’s obviously their most talented player despite his up-and-down (mostly down) 2017 campaign to date.

On the other hand, let’s look at the bright side: maybe a few days (no more!) off will be good for him. We saw what happened when Adam Jones was forced to sit for a couple games due to minor injury just two weeks ago – he came back mashing.

Here’s to Manny doing just that, no later than say…Saturday?