MLB early May injury update: 4 teams take big hits in first week

Injuries in Major League Baseball are inevitable. But four MLB teams had to put significant players on the disabled list over the past week.

No teams are exempt. No player is ever 100 percent safe from suffering an injury, even if they’ve played for years without going on the disabled list.

Just like the teams and players, no month of the season or even the offseason is immune from seeing players go down. Only five days in and May has been no exception.

Injuries can come from anywhere. They can be caused by overworking or overusing a certain muscle, or an accidental collision, whether it’s a hard slide into second base or an accident outside the game completely.

This month so far quite a few major players have fallen victim to injury and the (new, shorter) 10-day disabled list.

However, just because the disabled list says that a player is allowed to return to the game after just 10 days of rest, that doesn’t mean that is when they will actually return.

In the first month of the season many important players have been placed on the disabled list with injuries caused by a number of different reasons, and the majority of them will not be back with their team for weeks, even months.

Recently, San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner was in a dirt bike accident on his day off and was placed on the 10-day disabled list for the first time in his nine-year career. Unfortunately for the Giants, he will be out much longer than 10 days.

The Seattle Mariners‘ long-time ace Felix Hernandez will miss three to four weeks with bursitis in his right shoulder, the team learned last week. It is just the third time the six-time All-Star pitcher has been on the disabled list in 13 years of playing in the big leagues.

This first week of May has been no different for a lot of teams, including the Texas Rangers, Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics and New York Mets, who all lost important pieces of their clubs to injury.