Elephant Rumblings: Gelof likely IL bound, Hernaiz coming up

MLB news roundup

Happy Thursday everyone!

The Athletics suffered what could be a major blow to the squad as young second baseman Zack Gelof injured his oblique and is heading to the injured list:

This is going to be a tough pill to swallow for the club. While he just hit a big 2-run home run on Monday, he apparently felt abdominal soreness before today’s game and was a late scratch from the lineup. Testing later revealed the extent of the injury and he’s now likely to miss weeks of action. Until yesterday Gelof had been an ironman for the club, playing in all 24 games at second base for the club.

It’s been a tough start to the year for Gelof, who entered the season with probably unfairly high expectations. After he burst onto the scene in spectacular fashion last year, the hope was that Gelof could continue that and be a force in the middle of the Oakland lineup. He continued to feed fans’ optimism by having a killer spring training, where he looked like he was ready to pick up exactly where he left off at the end of last season.

Instead he’s limped to just a .196/.260/.337 line with three home runs. A lot of that is likely him pressing and trying too much at the plate, but there was always likely to be some regression in Gelof’s first full season of big league ball. Pitchers had all offseason to get a more in depth look at Oakland’s prized young second baseman, making adjustments to him. He’s going to need to learn how to adjust to the adjustments better, but for now the focus will be on his health. Oblique strains can be tricky so the club would be wise to not rush Gelof back from this injury. It could be a while but it’s in his and the club’s best interest.

While the club has yet to announce who will replace him on the active roster, there was one major hint from the minor leagues late last night:

If Hernaiz is indeed getting called back up, it’ll be a quick five game stint down in Triple-A. Hernaiz won a job on the Opening Day roster after a solid spring training but he’s looked overmatched in his first taste of big league pitching, collecting just 3 hits in 32 at-bats. He didn’t really get going down in Vegas either as he’s gone just 4-18 in his five games down there. Now he’ll come back to Oakland as a replacement for the injured Gelof.

Whether that means Hernaiz will be the new everyday second baseman is still to be decided. Fellow infielder Abraham Toro took over for Gelof at second base yesterday but with third baseman JD Davis down with his own injury Toro could be playing more at the hot corner in the coming weeks. This could be a chance for Hernaiz to get a more consistent shot at playing time in the major leagues since he wasn’t really getting that in the early going. How the club handles Gelof’s absence will be something to watch moving forward but a silver lining could be watching Hernaiz finally get going. A’s fans will be hoping for that.

A’s Coverage:

• Yankees outpower Athletics 7-3
• Gelof has left oblique strain, heading to IL
• Ways the Athletics could replace Gelof
• Vegas residents: No public funding for stadium

MLB News & Interest:

• Cardinals demote former top prospect Walker
• Giants place Blake Snell on IL with adductor strain
• Diamondbacks’ Kelly out at least a month
• Today in Baseball History

Best of X:

Joey Estes and Jeremy Eierman to IL:

Puk’s new team is finding out:

Will the Coliseum get something like this?

Lazarito doing things on the farm: