Riley Greene Is Headed To The IL, Further Proving There's No Reason To Be Hopeful About Anything
I don't want to hear about your organization's shitty luck. Nobody has it worse than us.
Most Detroit Tigers fans who have watched this team since the beginning of the year knew that, at some point, they were going to hit a wall. They were benefiting from the fact that they play in quite possibly the worst division of all time, but it's been fun seeing them play meaningful baseball, and a huge reason for that was the development of Riley Greene. The former top-five pick was having a fantastic season. The guy has all the makeup of a franchise player, and even if the Tigers were to fall off, which is inevitable at this point, at least fans could take comfort in the fact that we get to watch this potential star blossom in his second year in the league. For a brief second, I forgot that we were the Detroit Tigers, which means that we can't have nice things, and every good young player that steps on a Major League diamond will inevitably get injured.
When I say that every prospect that we've looked forward to seeing here over the last several years has gotten injured, I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE. The only ones that didn't get injured have been awful and probably weren't deserving of ever being on a Major League roster. Remember that three-headed monster of aces coming up through the system in Detroit a few years ago? Casey Mize is recovering from Tommy John. Tarik Skubal hasn't pitched in almost a calendar year. Matt Manning started the year on the roster but injured his toe in the second start of the season. I didn't know this, but rehabbing a toe injury takes about as long as rehabbing a shotgun blast to the kneecaps. We never hear about him, and no one really knows where he is. I requested his picture be put on a milk carton for missing persons, but my request was denied.
There's no sort of thesis or message to this blog. It just downright sucks. Is it a devastating career-ending type of injury? Absolutely not. Greene will come back, and he'll be fine, but it's the principle of it. Why can't we just enjoy one thing for an extended period? Why does everything with this organization have to be stopped and started? I hate to be self-righteous, but dammit, we deserve it. We deserve Riley Greene.
So now the Tigers, despite only being two games out of first, will go to work without their two best players, Eduardo Rodriguez and Riley Greene, for an extended period. If it were just as simple as those injuries, they could weather the storm, but this team came into the year banged up. I'm not exaggerating when I say this rotation has not even been at 80% capacity in two seasons. The last time Casey Mize, Matt Manning, Tarik Skubal, and Spencer Turnbull were healthy and in the same dugout was June 2021. And I'm not angry at anyone of these guys. I hope they come back healthy and play great. I am confident that Riley Greene will still be a star in this league. But this one hurts a little bit more. Because for a brief second, even in all my cynicism, I said to myself, "Damn, they're closer than we think."
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Nah.