Spencer Torkelson and Ridiculous Baseball Injuries

Trevor Bauer and the Drone

Trevor Bauer is many things to many different people. He’s a talented pitcher. He’s a multi-millionaire. He’s the leader of an army of Internet trolls. He’s a terrible rapper. He’s been on the leading edge of advancements in pitching over the past decade. And he’s a drone hobbyist.

Hobbies are great, and professional athletes need breaks from the grind like anyone else. But during the 2016 American League Championship Series Bauer sliced open his finger while doing routine drone maintenance and was forced to miss his Game 2 start. Bauer did start Game 3, but that resulted in the spectacle you see above, when his cut opened and he went full Red Wedding on the field. Bauer was forced to leave the game after retiring just two batters. Cleveland went on to win the series, but Bauer wasn’t terribly effective in the World Series, going 0-2 with a 5.40 ERA in one of the tightest Fall Classics ever.

Yoenis Céspedes and the Wild Boar

Yoenis Céspedes first breached the public consciousness with an amazing hype video that concluded with footage of the Céspedes family at a pig roast. It took nearly a decade, but the pigs got their revenge.

Céspedes became a fan favorite in New York after the Tigers traded him to the Mets at the 2015 trade deadline. He went wild in Queens, batting .287 with 17 home runs and 44 RBIs in just 57 games with the club, helping them to the World Series. He re-signed in New York and had a good 2016 season, but then the injuries struck. He missed half of 2017, then most off 2018, and in 2019 the team announced Céspedes had suffered a severe leg injury in a violent fall on his ranch in Florida. It was widely assumed he fell off a horse, but then the details emerged:

The Post has learned all involved parties agreed that Cespedes was injured on the ranch stepping into a hole after an interaction with a wild boar.

Welp.

Carlos Correa and the Massage

Carlos Correa is one of the better shortstops in baseball, and he’s certainly a player Tigers fans would like to target in free agency next year. But the 26-year-old is no stranger to the trainer’s table, and none of his injuries have been more absurd than the time he fractured a rib getting a massage.

Correa was hitting .295 with 11 home runs through 50 games at the time of his injury, and he went on to miss exactly two months of action. He was very good when he returned, but injuries crept up again and he finished with just 75 games on the year. Fortunately for Correa he has been mostly healthy since, and he was once again excellent for the Houston Astros in the postseason last year. Perhaps he’s given up on the daily massages.