Mike Trout is not in Angels’ lineup today after injuring his right wrist Wednesday night
Mike Trout suffered a right wrist injury on an awkward slide into third base Wednesday night and was not in the starting lineup for only the second time this season on Thursday.
As difficult as it is for the Angels to absorb the loss of baseball’s best all-around player even for one day, the news could have been worse: An X-ray and MRI test revealed only inflammation. There were no broken bones or torn ligaments.
Trout, who missed seven weeks of the 2017 season after tearing a ligament in his left thumb on a head-first slide into second base, was listed as day to day.
“I’ll get as much treatment as I can, and I might try to swing,” Trout said before Thursday’s series finale (10 a.m. Pacific start) against Tampa Bay. “I’ll see how it goes, and hopefully I’ll be back in there [Friday night at Cleveland].”
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 with a feet-first slide into third, he banged his right wrist into 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 [the wrist],” said Trout, who has started 94 games in center field and 14 at designated hitter this season. “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 and 60 RBIs, has injured his right wrist on slides before, “but not his bad,” he said. “I went to bed, woke up [Thursday] morning and it was still sore.”
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