Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports
Gabe Kapler and the Giants have estimated a 4-6 week timetable for Evan Longoria.
Longoria has no idea.
The Giants’ valuable third baseman was officially placed on the injured list Sunday with a left shoulder strain, but he said it’s specifically an SC joint dislocation — it links the collarbone and breastbone — after he and Brandon Crawford collided vying for a ground ball in Saturday’s ninth inning. It’s not the most common baseball injury — Longoria said maybe you see it with an outfielder crashing into the wall — and two infielders accidentally tackling each other for a ball hit on the ground is pretty rare.
But so were the circumstances that led to the play.
With groundball specialist Tyler Rogers on the mound, the Giants were trying to preserve a two-run lead, and the first batter ground one between second baseman Mauricio Dubon and first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr., and once Dubon took it, he bobbled the ball. Next the Giants got one out but not two because Dubon couldn’t finish a transfer from glove to hand on what could have been a double play. Javier Baez put another on the ground, but it squirted between Brandon Crawford and Dubon.
“There was a little hesitation on both sides, not knowing which guy was going to go for it,” Longoria said Sunday after the Giants’ 4-3 loss to the Cubs at Oracle Park.
And so amid so much uncertainty about who would get ground balls that were being placed well — especially with plenty of shifting at work — Anthony Rizzo ground one that neither Longoria nor Crawford let up on. They smashed into each other, Crawford coming out OK, but Longoria immediately going down. Manager Gabe Kapler has saluted both and said neither misplayed the ball, veterans who were going all-out.
“Just an unfortunate series of events,” said Longoria over Zoom. “I didn’t even see [Crawford] or hear him until the last second — he said, ‘I got it,’ but it was too late.”
Longoria does not know the next step for an injury he had never suffered before. He took inventory while he lay on the dirt and knew “something was wrong.” X-Rays were negative — which is a positive, with no shoulder dislocation — but an MRI may be coming.
The Giants’ next step involves Wilmer Flores, who started Sunday, and likely Jason Vosler as a lefty complement. Their IL is loaded with names such as Mike Yastrzemski, Brandon Belt, Tommy La Stella, Darin Ruf and Curt Casali, and the hope is they can continue rolling until they heal; none is lost for the season.
Longoria expressed how “tough to take” it is for the team, which just lost its third baseman and a huge contributor. Though he would not say it, the blow must be personal, too, for a 35-year-old whose .892 OPS is just shy of his career high (.896 in 2012), a player who has re-emerged this season as the Longoria of old, and who had a shot at his first All-Star Game since 2010.
He will be back at some point, though, and believes he will be returning to a team very much still in contention. He said this is “definitely” the deepest lineup that he has seen since he came over to the Giants in 2018 and called the rotation “the anchor.”
“It’s no surprise where we are,” Longoria said of a club whose 37-22 record is the best in baseball and two games up on the second-place Padres in the NL West. “We talked about in the spring wanting to win the division. That was something that we put out there, whether it was written about or not. It was our goal coming in, and so, to this point, I think we’ve done what we’ve expected to do.”
