Obviously there’s potential impact here in the NL Central for the Cubs, but you just never want to celebrate injuries on another team. It’s low. Even when the circumstances surrounding Injured List trips are otherwise odd and might lend themselves to joking, I just don’t have it in me.
So, then, here’s the story: just one game into his return from the Injured List for lower back issues, Brewers star Christian Yelich is going right back on the Injured List.
“I want to be out there, you know? I want to play baseball."
But Christian Yelich's back isn't cooperating, so he landed back in the IL on Tuesday. You'll find much more from Yelich and Craig Counsell within our story. https://t.co/8GXoOqxbyU
— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) May 4, 2021
Yelich, 29, had missed the preceding three weeks with a lower back issue that was preventing him from playing. It seemed the team thought he was over it enough to go this week, but even just that one game was enough for him to know it isn’t ready yet. And this time he might be out just as long, if not longer. MLB.com:
(Yelich) quietly “gutted out the game,” according to manager Craig Counsell.
“That is not a realistic way to go through the day,” Counsell said. “Nothing happened last night that necessarily made it worse, but last night told us that he’s not going to be able to do this on a daily basis. And so we need to stop and completely resolve this before we start again. …
“I think Christian would like to know what’s going on. That’s the frustrating part for everyone involved and particularly for him. At this point, we don’t have an answer ….
“That’s where the tough part of this lies. We’re not getting answers from [the scans], but he doesn’t feel good. The MRI isn’t showing anything of any change in past MRIs, but he’s not feeling good enough to recover from playing for a day, which means there’s something else we haven’t yet diagnosed. We have to get the answer to that before we start playing again ….
We’ve got to find a course that’s going to make it feel better. Basically, Christian got better and then we plateaued over a good period here. We all felt that it was time to try to see what would happen when he played, because we were plateaued, and we weren’t making any improvements. He tried and it didn’t work.”
I can’t speak to Yelich’s situation, specifically, but usually lower back issues – where there isn’t some structural problem – do quiet down with rest and treatment within a week or two. We’ve seen it before with lots of players. But for Yelich to miss as much time as he did, for all the scans to come up clean, and then for him not to be able to play after just one game – yes, I can imagine that would be very frustrating not to understand what’s going on.
We’ll keep tabs on this, as it’s the most important position player on one of the top teams in the NL Central. Oh, and that’s not to mention the fact that Yelich is the singular core piece the Brewers have tied themselves to for the next eight years.