Jorge Soler can’t catch a break.
The 22-year-old outfield, who’d been killing the ball at AA, missed out on a great deal of game activity when he was 19-20 because of the defection process from Cuba. Then he missed a great deal of game time in 2013 because of a stress fracture in his leg. Then he missed a big chunk of Spring Training in 2014 with a hamstring injury. Then he returned to action only to re-injure that hamstring in his first at bat at AA this year.
And now he left last night’s game with another hamstring injury:
Jorge Soler left tonight's game in the 4th inning with "hamstring tightness". He tweaked it making a great catch in the 4th inning.
— Mick Gillispie (@BroadcasterMick) May 16, 2014
He played in just six games after his return this month from the previous hamstring injury.
Because it can be difficult to get really detailed information on minor league injuries, and because not everyone sees the games, I’m going to give you a more-detailed-than-usual take on how it played out.
Watching the play: Soler ranges far to his right to make a running catch, and as he does, you can perceive that he feels something. He throws the ball in (there was a runner on base), and then crumples immediately in a heap. He lays on his stomach motionless until the training staff gets out there. He turns over to a sitting position, and there’s discussion about what is bothering him. Soler doesn’t look like he’s in agony, but he does look frustrated. He’s helped up, and he walks off the field under his own power, but he does have a limp.
We’ll see what happens now, but it’s worth noting that, when he left the first game of the season, that, too, was with hamstring “tightness.” I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he’s getting another MRI, and that he’s going to miss some time regardless of the severity. It’s gotta be very frustrating to twice feel like you were over this thing, and twice have a setback. The last two times this happened, Soler missed about a month each time.
The hope here is that Soler had been instructed to be extremely sensitive to anything he feels in that hamstring, and he simply felt some non-injury-type tightness, causing him to go down as a matter of precaution. That seems like a stretch, but all we’ve got is hope at this point. The young man is obviously supremely talented, and you’d hate to see yet another season derailed because of injury.
We may get an update in the coming days.