First prize — We tip our cap
Here at Strange But True Injury Central, there’s only one thing we love more than a good Injury of the Year caper. And that’s having the same player churn out an injury caper sequel that elevates him onto this list for the second year in a row.
So we, uh, tip our “cap” to Rays reliever Pete Fairbanks, a true master of the all-important Strange But True Injury of the Year niche. You might recall that he was the 2023 Injury of the Year grand prize winner — for suffering a black eye while trying to dunk on his 3-year-old son on a swimming pool basketball hoop. So we’re excited to announce he’s back!
It seemed almost impossible to top that pool fiasco, just for sheer injury innovation. But Fairbanks gave it a shot this year, by missing a game with a cut finger — which he slashed trying to take the cap off a bottle of spring water.
According to the Tampa Bay Times’ Marc Topkin, Fairbanks grabbed an aluminum bottle of spring water on the team plane in May, lugged it back to the hotel and got all bottled up when he tried to open it in the dark. So the moral of that story seems to be …
Hydration: Good! Hydration in the dark: Fraught with danger!
Injury of the Year Awards Committee footnote: Just for the sake of full transparency, you should know that the competition in this category was as furious as ever. So we needed a tiebreaker to push Fairbanks over the top. And what was that?
We’re awarding bonus points to Fairbanks for A) throwing his, um, cap in the ring two years in a row, and B) getting hurt while he was already hurt two years in a row. Last year’s caper came while he was still on the injured list. This year’s caper occurred just as he was exiting the injured list, but before he’d made his triumphant return to the mound. What better way to (cough-cough) cap off his recovery!
Second prize — Dead heat
Miguel Sanó takes the silver for his heating pad mishap. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
Remember that episode of “Seinfeld” where Kramer fell asleep in a tanning salon and that didn’t go real well? Now meet Miguel Sanó, the Cosmo Kramer of Orange County.
Did I mention that I like to award bonus points to guys who get hurt while they’re already hurt? Well, a funny thing happened to Sanó in May after he’d already spent a month on the Angels’ IL with knee inflammation. He slapped a heating pad on that knee, lost track of the time and …
Ouch!
In what feels like a sitcom episode waiting to happen, he burned his knee with the heating pad … and missed yet another month … then was so unplayable after his return (.046/.125/.182) that the Angels sent him and his overheated knee packing. And here you thought Sanó’s biggest problem was high heat.
Third prize — the White Sox (special team citation)
It isn’t often we award one of these prestigious Injury of the Year medals to an entire team. But if ever there was a team that could pull that off, the 2024 White Sox proved once again, in this Injury of the Year derby, that the one thing they were great at was cornering the market on every form of Strange But Trueness.
They were so great, matter of fact, that it took them only two weeks to cement their place on the Injury of the Year leaderboard. A mere 11 games into this season, the White Sox had won just two games — but they’d lost three players, all of them because even the simple act of running to first base turned into a disaster waiting to happen.
As our White Sox mishap correspondent, Jon Greenberg, wrote so eloquently in April, those 90 feet were obviously way too many for the 2024 Sox.
On March 31, Eloy Jiménez blew out on the way to first after hitting a ground ball — and wound up on the IL for two weeks with a strained adductor.
On April 5, it was Luis Robert Jr.’s turn. The good news is, he hit a double that day. The bad news is, he strained his right hip flexor going around first and missed the next 53 games.
And on April 11, the spectacular season of Yoán Moncada was about to take a dramatic turn toward — hmmm, what’s the right word — invisibility? He tapped a second-inning ground ball to third, but collapsed in a painful heap before he made it to first base. Amazingly, he would never put another ball in play again all year. Ah, but he did make the White Sox the only team in baseball with as many adductor injuries as wins in their first 11 games.
So how’d Moncada’s year go after that? He vanished for the next 141 games, finally got an at-bat when the White Sox ran out of players in a 13-inning game on Sept. 18, struck out on four pitches that day and never made it into another box score. For some reason, the team declined to pick up his option after the season.
OK, so what tells you more about the White Sox season — 1) that they couldn’t make it from home to first base without it turning into a complete debacle or 2) that Moncada never started a game after April 11 and still finished second among all the position players on their team in wins above replacement? (He racked up 0.3, according to Baseball Reference.)
Fourth prize — the Mets (yep, another team citation)
The Mets didn’t have any cleanup hitters lose a tussle with a wild boar this season. That’s still Yoenis Cespedes’ unique claim to fame. But they did remind us that if you ever find yourself writing an Injury of the Year roundup, the borough of Queens — and the team that plays in that borough — always seems to be there for you.
So here they come, the Mets’ three most creative injuries of 2024.
These cleats weren’t made for walking — What’s a guy to do when those cleats he ordered from Adidas don’t show up? Here’s a helpful tip: Not what J.D. Martinez did!
He ordered an emergency pair on Amazon. He played one game wearing those cleats, then announced they’d given him a sore ankle. Whereupon he had to miss the next game, then went 1 for his next 14 and hit .195 over the rest of the season.
The Curse of Amazon Prime isn’t quite as legendary as the Curse of the Bambino, but maybe it explains Season 2 of “Reacher.”
Beware of popups — You have to hand it to Kodai Senga. He pitched in exactly one game for the Mets in the entire regular season — and got hurt in it.
Thanks to persistent shoulder issues, it took Senga until July 27 to make it to a big-league mound last season. Then a sixth-inning popup busted out and he had that thought that all pitchers have at moments like that:
I’d better get the heck out of the way so somebody can catch this thing!
Kodai Senga exits with an apparent injury to a standing ovation, with 9 Ks through 5.1 IP in his first start back from the IL.
(via @SNYtv)pic.twitter.com/kzqD4lKhvN
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) July 27, 2024
Oops. He blew out a calf muscle jumping off the mound and wasn’t seen again until October. It felt like the most Mets injury thing ever, except …
Not for the faint of heart — Never mind! The most Mets injury thing ever had actually already gone down a couple of weeks earlier.
That’s when Brandon Nimmo woke up to head for the hotel bathroom in the middle of the night, somehow fainted, gashed his forehead and wound up arriving at the park later with a bandage on his head and a hospital bracelet around his hand. No truth to the rumor that thousands of Mets fans had a similar experience watching Game 6 of the NLCS.
Fifth prize — Victim of glove
Props to Alex Verdugo for finding a new way to make the Injury of the Year list. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
It was a bizarre year in the life of Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo in many ways. But it’s safe to say that one of those ways was this:
He revealed in August that he was allergic to his own batting gloves.
I’m still not sure whether to shake my head over this or feel sorry for him. But Verdugo told NJ.com that he’d been informed by doctors he was allergic to the cobalt and chromate in his batting gloves. Then another doctor told NJ.com that he believed Verdugo was also having a related allergic cross-reaction to the numerous tattoos on his arm.
Boy, it’s enough to make you miss the good old days when guys just got hurt wrestling with a wild boar.
Honorable mention
• Dodgers reliever Ryan Brasier strained his calf … doing his pregame jogging in the outfield.
• His teammate Evan Phillips strained a hamstring … after his cleat got caught in the outfield grass … while he was playing catch. No wonder the Dodgers are moving Mookie Betts back to the infield. It’s dangerous in that Dodgers outfield!
• Brewers pitcher Trevor Megill wound up on the concussion IL this year … thanks to, um, food poisoning? He was in a phone store, felt lightheaded, passed out and banged his head on the floor. Isn’t there an app for that?
Punch Line Department
Finally, I counted at least four players who got hurt after leaving games this year, for reasons that might sound familiar.
• Marlins outfielder Dane Myers got ejected from a game in July — and that turned out to be the highlight of his day. He then stomped up the tunnel, kicked the clubhouse door and fractured his ankle.
• A’s closer Mason Miller was so delighted to hear that the training staff wanted him to do one more round of postgame weightlifting, he punched the training table — and broke his finger.
• Rangers reliever Brock Burke had One of Those Days in April. He drilled Houston’s Yordan Alvarez. He served up a homer to Kyle Tucker. Then he stalked back to the clubhouse, punched a wall, forgot to notice that the wall is undefeated and broke his hand.
• And then there was Cubs reliever Colten Brewer, who gave up three runs to the Angels in July — and didn’t even wait to make it back to the clubhouse before looking for something to punch. He fired a haymaker at the dugout wall, lost a unanimous decision, broke his hand and knocked himself out for the year.
I know how to stop this stuff, by the way. Every team should just post a copy of this column on the clubhouse wall!
The Year in Strange But True
GO DEEPER
MLB’s Strange But True 2024: The team, game, inning and homer of the year — plus The Ohtani Game
GO DEEPER
MLB’s most mind-blowing hitting, pitching feats of the year — plus the 5 most ridiculous games
(Top photo of Pete Fairbanks: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
