thurdl sports

NIH: The Next Day

I know it's usually not my beat to try and parse what people are saying. But when it has to do with injuries, it becomes my beat. First, let's look at the facts:

Fact the first: Cristian Guzman is now on the 15 day DL with a strained hamstring.

Fact the second: Felipe Lopez will start tonight's game at shortstop, where he's played most of his career, instead of second base, where he moved to this season.

Those are the facts we're dealing with. Next we've got what people said. First up we had the Nationals radio team on Monday after the game postulating that Lopez would not make the move back to shortstop unless Guzman was going to be out for at least a month. Now, they were obviously not running that question by the team management when they said this, but they do understand the situation well enough. Someone who did talk to Nationals brass is Bill Ladson, who reported that Manny Acta, "said if Guzman is out for an extended period of time, second baseman Felipe Lopez will move over to short and Ronnie Belliard will be the second baseman."

So, what do we know about the chances for Guzman's return right now. We know that hamstring injuries don't necessarily heal up overnight. We know that two different sources, one quoting Manny Acta, said that Lopez would not move to short unless the injury was going to be long term. And we know that Lopez is moving to short.

All of this probably means that Guzman is done for April. We'll see where it ends up going.

posted by thurdl @ 9:08 AM