Diamondbacks Dodge Bullet With Archie Bradley Injury
There are few things scarier in all of sports than when a pitcher gets hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of an opposing hitter.
That’s exactly what happen to Archie Bradley during the second inning of the Diamondbacks win over the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night from Chase Field. The young pitcher took a line drive off the bat of Carlos Gonzalez straight to the face and laid on the ground for a few minutes before getting up and heading back to the dugout.
I was at the game last night and it was the first time I’ve witnessed anything like that. It was by far and away the scariest thing I’ve ever seen at a sporting event. My first thought was that he had a serious head injury or even worse, he could have been dead.
Luckily for the Bradley and the D’Backs, his injuries don’t appear to be too bad.
The right-hander was placed on the 15-day disabled list on Wednesday with only a sinus cavity fracture. Considering how bad the video of the play looked, Bradley is very lucky that it wasn’t much worse than that.
This injury obviously comes at a very bad time for this team and for Bradley. In his four big league starts, Bradley looked like the real deal as a staff ace and was the only bright spot of the Diamondbacks rotation through the first four weeks of the season.
For the time being, Arizona will go with an extra reliever, hard thrower Enrique Burgos, in the bullpen. With an off day tomorrow, the club won’t need a starter in Bradley’s spot until next weeks series against the Rockies in Colorado.
In Bradley’s absence, someone is going to have to step up in this rotation. The best bet is for Josh Collmenter to do so being that he was this team’s Opening Day starter and the only guy in the rotation with a track record of success at the big league level.
If the entire rotation as a whole steps up, that will give Bradley an extra week or two to rest up and come back at full strength. Considering how important Bradley is to this organization’s future, they should take the conservative approach with his timeline on coming back from this injury.