When the Rays traded Ben Zobrist and Yunel Escobar to the Oakland A’s this past off-season for John Jaso, the big prize for the Rays was Oakland’s top prospect, shortstop Daniel Robertson. Now, like Jaso, Robertson is injured and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Robertson was originally sidelined when he was pulled from a game in the middle of an at bat on June 3. Now, he is being evaluated for a “possible broken hamate bone” in his left wrist according to Marc Topkin of TampaBay.com, and appears headed to the DL.
The timing is terrible for Robertson, who was named the Rays’ top prospect entering the season, because it sounded like he was on track to being promoted to triple-A, perhaps sooner, rather than later.
Mitch Lukevics, the Rays’ director of minor league operations, was recently a guest on the “This Week in Rays Baseball” podcast with Neil Solondz prior to the injury and strongly hinted that Robertson’s days in double-A were numbered (emphasis mine).
“[He’s] playing great and he didn’t start off great,” Lukevics told Solondz. “A lot of these guys who come over in trades, even though they were with us in the winter program, there is still an acclimation period. And early, Daniel [was] very tight, very tense. You know, he goes from the [California] League to the Southern League. The Cal League is a hitters league. The Southern League is where you start seeing the men play and now you make an adjustment and he got off to a slow start. You can see [now] where he is catching up to the league. You see where he is at with the skill and now he is going to surpass the league because he has that type of ability.”
Robertson’s numbers aren’t gaudy by any means, he was hitting .272 with three home runs and a solid .347 OBP at the time of his injury and his OBP was actually much higher in April (.367) than it was in May (.333). But when it comes to the top prospects, there is often a lot more to how they are playing than just the numbers as they are often asked to work on certain aspects of their game which can hurt their numbers over the short term.
But it is clear from Lukevics’ comments that this is a huge blow to the 21-year-old’s immediate future. If he does indeed have a broken bone in his wrist, it is safe to say he will miss at least a month, if not more, and then there will be another adjustment period when he returns. Any schedule the Rays had for Robertson has just been tossed in the trash.
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no need to worry we have nick franklin, lol