It’s probably one of the things a player fears most when he squares around the bunt: one of his fingers will be protruding just a bit too much, the pitch will be in, and it will catch that finger before the bat.
Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened last night to Rafael Ortega on an attempted sacrifice bunt against Jacob deGrom. The 98 mph fastball came in quickly with ride, as deGrom’s does, and it caught Ortega just wrong:
It was clear in the moment that it wasn’t good, though you always hope for a bruise on a play like that. Of course, even a serious bone bruise on the hand may have kept Ortega out for a while anyway.
But it wasn’t a bruise, it was a broken left index finger, and David Ross confirmed that Ortega’s season is now over.
It is a sad end to Ortega’s season, which finishes with a .241/.331/.358/95 wRC+ slash line, and he continued to show that he can hit big league right-handers with enough regularity to be considered a solid bench option for a lot of teams.
That is to say, I think Ortega will be able to find a job next year – at least a strong minor league deal – if the Cubs do not retain him on the 40-man roster this offseason. Given the looming crunch, Ortega’s age (31), and the glut of upper-level outfielders having arrived or coming, I tend to think the Cubs may need to clear his spot on the 40-man. If so, it’s been a really impressive two years for the journeyman who had been trying to get to, and stay in, the big leagues for a decade.
As for the roster and playing-time implications, I’m not so sure we’ll see a fresh call-up to replace Ortega. Because of the balanced roster rules, the replacement has to be a position player, and I’m not sure there’s an obvious call-up at Iowa right now (Matt Mervis does not have to go on the 40-man roster, Darius Hill still looks like he might come up just short of the 40-man, Alexander Canario is hurt and not ready, Narciso Crook is hurt, Frank Schwindel is hurt, and Brennen Davis is almost certainly not ready).
Instead, the Cubs might just wait to IL Ortega when Willson Contreras is ready to be activated from the Injured List later this week, and make that the one-to-one replacement. (UPDATE: For a variety of reasons, I didn’t think Jared Young would get the call, but it looks like I may have been wrong.)
On the playing time side of things, Rafael Ortega’s increasingly infrequent starts in center field and at DH will likely be picked up by Nelson Velazquez and Michael Hermosillo. Good to get them that playing time anyway, even if this isn’t how you would’ve sought it.