It didn’t take long for Baltimore Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts to go down with injury, again. Roberts was helped off the field in just the third game of the season after he heard something pop behind his knee after stealing a base in the ninth inning of a game against the Tampa Bay Rays last Thursday. From what you could tell by looking at his reaction and the amount of pain he appeared to be in you would have thought he was done for the rest of the season, and some thought that was the end of his career right there.
An MRI revealed a rupture of the semitendinosus tendon, part of the hamstring, which isn’t as bad as you might have thought considering he’s only expected to miss up to four weeks. When you hear or read about athletes have surgeries to repair other torn tendons, such as the ACL, it’s generally this tendon that they take to repair the other damaged ones because it is not considered to be vital to an athlete’s performance.
There are multiple concerns surrounding this latest setback for Roberts, who was healthy and in the best shape he could physically be in after having hit the disabled list the previous three seasons with serious injuries. The first concern is whether Roberts and his 35 year-old body will actually recover at a normal pace, without any setbacks, or if he won’t be able to and he’s out longer than the expected month.
The second concern is who takes over at second base while he is out? The Orioles already had Alexi Casilla and Ryan Flaherty on the bench when Roberts started the first three games of the season. Flaherty started at second base for the first two games of the three game series with the Minnesota Twins and Alexi Casilla started the third game of the series.
It’s difficult to make any final judgments on either of these players and who should or should not get the majority of the starts based on their stats this early into the season, but Flaherty has started the year 0-10 and his defense at second has looked largely average-ish whereas Casilla went 1-3 with a walk in the game he started and brings a good mix of speed and defense to the table. Should either one get the bulk of the playing time while Roberts is out though, or should it be split somewhat evenly based on match-ups?
All we can do at this point is take a look at what they’ve done in previous seasons and by doing so this exercise wouldn’t benefit Flaherty in any way. Casilla is a switch-hitter who doesn’t have extreme splits one way or the other over his career (.247 vs. RHP and .259 vs RHP) and Flaherty bats from the left-side of the plate and has a .199 average against right-handed pitchers over his 60 games, and 164 plate appearances, in the big leagues so far.
The one thing that Flaherty brings to the table that Casilla doesn’t is power potential. Flaherty, if he could hit for a high enough average to warrant a full season’s worth of playing time, is a solid candidate to hit at least 20 home runs but he hasn’t made contact often enough at this point in his career to really show it off. His glove is also useful in the field but it’s hard to make a case for him being any better than average with the glove, but he can play all over the infield and the outfield which makes him very useful coming off the bench.
Casilla, on the other hand, is predominantly a second baseman but has also seen a good amount of time at shortstop and a little at third base over his career. He’s not going to hit for much power at all, if he hit more than five home runs in a season it’d be a surprise, so his value lies in his above average defensive ability and his speed. He’s a singles hitter who has the speed to get those infield hits that most other hitters would not be able to.
It may seem as if Casilla is the better choice to receive the bulk of the playing time at second base while Roberts recovers from his ruptured tendon, but is he really? Flaherty still has some untapped potential offensively and is it worth giving him the extra playing time early on to see if he can reach it? Should the Orioles play the safer bet in Casilla since every win matters, especially following a playoff caliber season, even though he may not offer near what Flaherty could, potentially, with the bat?
That, in my mind, is really what manager Buck Showalter must decide because intermittent playing time for each of them probably isn’t in the best interest for the team or either player.
