Mike Trout misses game with injured wrist

Mike Trout suffered a right-wrist injury on an awkward feet-first slide into third base Wednesday night and did not play in a 4-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.

Trout, who started 108 of the team’s first 109 games, 94 in center field and 14 at designated hitter, said he did not test the wrist by trying to swing a bat on Thursday. He received treatment all game. Though he said he felt better afterward, he seemed questionable for Friday night’s game at Cleveland.

As difficult as it is for the Angels to absorb the loss of baseball’s best all-around player for even one day, the news could have been worse: An X-ray and MRI test revealed only inflammation, with no broken bones or torn ligaments.

Trout missed seven weeks of the 2017 season after tearing a ligament in his left thumb on a head-first slide into second base.

“I’ll get as much treatment as I can,” Trout said. “I’ll see how it goes, and hopefully I’ll be back in there [Friday night].”

Trout walked in the first inning of Wednesday night’s 7-2 loss to the Rays and stole second. He took off for third as Tyler Glasnow went into his motion but was thrown out when the Tampa Bay right-hander aborted his delivery and fired to third baseman Matt Duffy.

As Trout tried to avoid the tag by sliding to the inside of the bag, he banged his right wrist on the ground twice. Trout got the wrist taped, but the injury seemed to affect him the rest of the game.

He struck out looking in the fourth inning, popped out to third with two on in the fifth and popped out to first in the seventh.

“I was definitely thinking about it,” Trout said. “I didn’t really feel it at the plate, but I felt it on deck with a weight on my bat. We tried to do as much as we could throughout the game, but after the game, it was really sore.”

Trout, who is batting .309 with a 1.083 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, 30 homers, 60 RBIs, 82 runs and 99 walks, has injured his right wrist on slides before, “but not this bad,” he said. “I woke up [Thursday] morning and it was still sore.”

A Groove Thing

Chipper Jones paid homage to a former Angels most valuable player and hitting coach in his Hall of Fame induction speech Sunday, the former Atlanta Braves switch-hitter crediting Don Baylor with laying the foundation for a 1999 season in which Jones won the National League MVP award.

Baylor led the Angels to their first American League West title in 1979, batting .296 with a .901 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, 36 homers, 33 doubles, 139 RBIs and 120 runs to win AL MVP honors. He was the team’s hitting coach in 2014 and 2015 and died in 2017.

“Everyone has that one hitting coach in their career that they just kind of click with,” said Jones, who hit .319 with a 1.074 OPS, 45 homers, 41 doubles, 110 RBIs, 116 runs, 25 stolen bases, 126 walks and 94 strikeouts in 1999. “For me, it was the late, great Don Baylor.

“I only got one year with Don, in 1999. We had a little sit-down in spring training, and he convinced me that I could be just as powerful from the right side as I was from the left side. All we did that year was go out and win the NL MVP. Groove, I miss you, buddy. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss our rigorous cage sessions.”

Short hops

Shortstop Andrelton Simmons made the defensive play of the game Thursday, diving to his left to smother Daniel Robertson’s grounder up the middle and, from his stomach, shoveling a two-hop flip to second baseman David Fletcher to force out Matt Duffy to end the inning. … The Angels have lost their last 10 games in Progressive Field, where they’ll open a three-game series against the Indians Friday night. They are 2-12 in their last 10 games in Cleveland. … Albert Pujols is five hits shy of becoming one of nine players in major league history with 1,000 hits in each league.

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com

@MikeDiGiovanna