Drew Stubbs Injury Update
27-year-old Cincinnati Reds outfielder Drew Stubbs left yesterday’s game after the eight inning. Stubbs felt pain under his ribs on the left side of his back after taking a swing in the seventh inning.
The athletic center fielder will be evaluated today, but there are already rumblings that the Reds will call up someone in his stead. That will only happen after the evaluations, if the injury that Stubbs has suffered is serious enough. Hopefully he will only miss a couple of games, because Stubbs is vitally important to a Reds team that needs to win all the games they can in a tough NL Central race with the St. Louis Cardinals that will likely go to the wire. The Cards already know first hand that every game counts.
Drew Stubbs told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “We’ll see how it feels. You don’t really know how severe it is, or not bad at all, until the next day a lot of times. We’ll get some work on it and go from there.”
The CF- who has seven homers, 13 steals, but a low .300 OBP in a down year- went 0-2 with a run, two walks, and a strikeout before leaving the opening game of the series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
He is coming off of a solid 2.6 WAR season despite a slightly below-average wRC+ of 94. Stubbs broke out the year before in 2010 with a 4 WAR season and established himself as a rising star. Stubbs is more of a solid, young player who will always be worth around 3 WAR than someone who can be a star player. He is on pace for a 2-2.5 WAR season and has been worth a half of a win for the Reds this year. Stubbs is looking to increase his subpar 87 wRC+, but his usually decent offensive production is valuable in center (league-average wRC+ for his career that peaked at 110 in 2010).
Reds fans will anxiously wait for the results of the injury and hope it is nothing more than a few games out for their swift center fielder who is coming off of a 40-steal season and should hit 40 again this year.
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