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The Cincinnati Reds offseason has been chugging along at a blissful pace. In fact, I can’t remember ever being this positive about a team’s direction at any point in the last, I dunno, however many years. Bees are buzzing. Birds are chirping. Dogs and cats are living together.
Something was bound to go sideways, even just a little, and today it did.
Just hours after the Reds officially announced the signing of Nick Castellanos to what could end up a 4-year contract, they dropped some not-so-bueno news on us, too. Apparently, Eugenio Suarez was working on his can-openers a little too hard recently, and the result was a pool-related cartilage injury to his right throwing shoulder, the team announced on Twitter.
Eugenio Suárez today had surgery to remove loose cartilage in his right shoulder, an injury suffered recently in a swimming pool. His physical activity will be limited at beginning of spring training. We anticipate him to be ready to play near the beginning of the regular season.
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) January 28, 2020
Remember kids, no running on the pool deck. Kid-parents, keep your beers in cans - we don’t want any shattered glass.
As at-Reds notes, Geno’s going to be on the shelf for a bit, and won’t get in his usual work once he reaches spring training in Goodyear. That’s unfortunate, but the hope is still that he’ll be raring to once the regular season rolls around, with fingers crossed that he might even be superman by then. One can hope.
What the Reds do have in their back pockets, of course, is an arsenal of potential 3B fill-ins that’s the envy of every franchise in the game at the moment. Nick Senzel is a 3B by trade, and while he’s also recovering from shoulder surgery, he’s supposed to be ready come Goodyear-time and could likely fill in at the hot corner if needed (especially given the glut of options in the OF). Mike Moustakas also has a lifetime of experience at 3B and could easily shift around the diamond, while Castellanos, too, originally came up as a 3B (though obviously isn’t as gifted defensively there as the others mentioned).
In other words, this is certainly a bump in the road, but hardly something over which we should lose our collective minds. Just please, someone get Geno some bigger swimmies the next time he’s near a pool, or at least one of those Insta-friendly unicorn floats.