If the subject is bad breaks, Ryan Kreidler can now speak. From experience.
He ran into a bad one Tuesday evening at Omaha during a game between Kreidler’s guys, the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens, and the Storm Chasers, as they’re known, who that night were chasing more of a cold front that descended on Nebraska, dropping temperatures into the low 40s.
Kreidler already had ripped a homer in the sixth inning, a bomb beyond the center-field fence, and had also been hit earlier by a pitch. Playing third base, Kreidler was hanging in during a typically miserable April for hitters who play in the north: .246 average, four homers, .808 OPS.
Now it was the eighth and Kreidler was ready for more warfare, this time against an ex-big-league pitcher, Brad Peacock, who was trying to keep a lid on Toledo’s 4-1 lead.
On a 1-1 pitch, Peacock came inside with a sinker that instead bored into Kreidler’s right hand.
It looks as if it will have been his last at-bat until sometime this summer, perhaps August. Kreidler’s hand has a displaced fracture that this week might need surgery.
“It happens to everyone,” Kreidler said during a Sunday phone conversation, speaking from Toledo as he packed for a flight to Florida and rehab at the Tigers’ minor-league complex at Lakeland.
He meant, of course, that not every hitter in professional baseball necessarily deals with a fractured right hand, but that injuries and inconvenience generally, at some point, arrive.
Kreidler also was clear: The two times he was plunked Tuesday weren’t a matter of Omaha pitchers trying to bury a power-hitting, right-handed batter with stuff designed to knock him off the plate.
More: Around the Tigers’ farm: Catcher Dillon Dingler shows signs of heating up for Erie
“Naw, the first one (Omaha starter Daniel Mengden) was a curveball, just kind of an unlucky one,” he said. “Then, Peacock — he throws like a sinker that just kept coming in. It started pretty close to the edge of the plate and kept coming in.”
So, he of course knew instantly that this was bad.
Well, no. No one did.
Toledo manager Lloyd McClendon sped to the scene, as did Mud Hens training staff. They pressed and poked and prodded Kreidler’s hand. Nothing ominous.
“I actually stayed in the game,” Kreidler said. “I convinced Mac and our trainer I could do it.
“But it took me about 30 seconds being out there (on first base) to realize this wasn’t good.”
He figures to learn as early as Monday if surgery will be required. He and the Tigers pretty much expect as much after orthopedic specialists make a final judgment.
Tough stuff, for sure, when the Tigers already have been dealing with another spring fracture that knocked out blue-ribbon outfielder Riley Greene, the hotshot, 21-year-old who was supposed to be manning center field in Detroit until he fouled a pitch off his foot a week before Opening Day.
Greene’s fracture has him on the shelf until probably June, at least.
“We’ve been talking, just checking in — I’m just going to pick his brain and see what it was like those first few weeks of rehab” said Kreidler, who last season was part of a Tigers’ troika that included Greene, Kreidler, and Spencer Torkelson — all of whom were busting up fences at Double-A Erie before they were shipped to Triple A.
“He got dealt a pretty tough hand.”
Greene was expected to be a vitamin-shot for Tigers manager AJ Hinch’s lineup before his foot fracture. Torkelson has been a starter at first base since Opening Day.
Kreidler, who wasn’t looking at any immediate openings in the Tigers infield, was instead allowed to ferment at Toledo and perhaps push his way to Comerica Park as early as this season, depending upon injuries, or trades, or the usual personnel shuffling that can occur when a 24-year-old prospect carries Kreidler’s clout.
He was a fourth-round pick by the Tigers in 2019, out of UCLA, and last season slammed a combined 22 homers at Erie and Toledo. His size (6-foot-4, 208), power, and throwing arm have made him a third baseman who can play his trademark position, shortstop, or work at second base, where the Tigers and McClendon had been using him in three games during April.
April, all things considered, had been going well enough ahead of Tuesday night’s sinker that mashed his hand.
He was striking out more than he would have wanted (22 times in 78 plate-appearances). But he had nine walks in those first 18 games, along with a pair of doubles and those four homers.
“I think it’s a tough month to hit,” Kreidler said of April, “with the combination of the weather and just trying to figure out how to play every day.
“I think I’d settled in pretty nicely. Everyone starts with some ups and downs. Teams, too, are trying to figure out who they are, and this team was about to turn a corner.”
What the Tigers front office understands is that Kreidler’s rehearsals for daily work in Detroit are on hold, probably for 2022. There will be ideas advanced later about how he can catch up after missing two or three months, with winter ball, or perhaps a repeat stint at the Arizona Fall League, all possibilities.
What has not changed are projections, and even expectations.
Simple math confirms the Tigers are thinking of Kreidler as being a 25-or-so-homer guy with the glove and arm to play left- or right-side infield.
That would be fine with a man who won’t turn 25 until November. He understands he’s been in conversations. Further chatter rests on how that bat develops.
He expected to be talking again with Greene — early this week.
“Riley’s a tough kid, with great perspective,” Kreidler said. “I’m going to try and accelerate this (rehab) if possible. But I’m still trying to be smart.”
As is a team in Detroit that could use some bats — and can’t wait for a couple of kids with crunch to heal.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and former Detroit News sports reporter.