Dodgers Team News

Dodgers News: Grandal Won’t Give in to Injuries

If you were expecting Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Yasmani Grandal to apologize for the way that he plays, you might want to lower your expectations by more than just a tad. He’s not going to apologize for it one bit. Nor should he.

The 27-year old catcher is entering his second season as a member of the Dodgers. He was previously in the San Diego Padres organization prior to the team trading him to Los Angeles in the Matt Kemp deal in December 2014.




ICYMI: SportsNet LA Releases Spring Training Schedule


From ESPN Staff Writer Doug Padilla:

“I play the sport hard,” Grandal said on the day that Dodgers pitchers and catchers reported to the desert. “I go hard 100 percent every day. At some point, you are bound to get hurt if you go 100 percent.”

This is the type of quote you love to hear out of a player on your team. No one wants a player who isn’t going to give it his all out there, and if giving it your all leads to some injuries then you’ll just have to live with that.

Grandal didn’t stop there, either:

“A lot of times I’ve been put as this guy who gets hurt all the time, where my injuries have been caused by something else and it hasn’t been my body breaking down,” he said. “It hasn’t been that I haven’t been healthy, it’s just one of those things.”

He’s not entirely wrong, either. As Padilla writes, Grandal’s shoulder injury last season was the result of him being hit by a pitch. His knee injury in 2013, as Padilla says, was due to Anthony Rendon sliding into him.

The offseason shoulder surgery for Grandal went well according to reports, so this is a step in the right direction for him. We all hope that he can put together a full, healthy, season for the team. From the sound of it, he’s going to give it everything he’s got.

Dodgers News: Injured Players Are On Track, per Kasten

 

Staff Writer

Staff Writer features content written by our site editors along with our staff of contributing writers. Thank you for your readership.

5 Comments

  1. Most professional athletes play hard but you also have to play smart. Grandal, to me showed he was not a Team Player when he did not tell the team how badly hurt he was and took at bats away from the Very Hot AJ Ellis in the playoffs. That is not a Team Guy. We could have scored some runs we desperately needed as he was a rally killer the last 2 months of the year… 
    I understand he was hurt but we have Barnes in the Minors who is a very good defensive Catcher and a better contact hitter than Grnadal is.. So take one for the Team and sit your injured butt down…

  2. Tmaxster if what you said about him not mentioning his injury is true, then I say with Barnes on his tail, it is more likely than not it will happen again. All athletes fear competition. And with some switch hitters, they are a liability on at least one side of the plate.

  3. robert20156h Tmaxster We do not know exactly what he told the Training staff. But it was very evident he could not get the bat around with that shoulder. To me you go to management and say hey I am hurting the team…. 
    I am ok trying to work it out in the regular season but each Playoff game is precious and you must compete and win…

  4. Tmaxster  I agree as you know Tom. But on a larger scale, he should have been on the DL during the playoffs. It was obvious to everyone that the guy could not play. Ellis was hot, Barnes was doing well, there was absolutely no reason for him to be playing. Hey he plays hard…great…..but he is not all that smart. He obviously takes too many pitches, he was not all that great with runners in scoring position, and that was before the injury. Yeah, he his a game winning homer in the 9th against the Reds. But I did not see a whole lot of clutch out of the guy….do I dislike him? Yes I do. I did when he was with the Padres. He comes off as arrogant, and smug in my book. And he also will glare at the ump when batting and a pitch is called a trike that he does not agree with…He was acquired for his pitch framing skills….which as Mike Scioscia says, and I agree is a bull shit stat….

  5. Michael Norris Tmaxster Yes Michael I agree. As you and I have discussed I have a daughter in the sports medical field. Shoulder injuries are hard to diagnose and they rely on feed back from the patient. I believe if Grandal had been honest with the medical staff he would have been on the DL and Barnes up. 
    I think he was doing the “Man Up” thing rather than being honest with the Medical staff. As it turned out he had a bad injury so he should never have played. 
    That is on him. Soft tissue injuries especially in the shoulder do not show well in many MRI’s on CAT scans..

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button