Before the start of Sunday’s matchup vs. the Orioles, A’s starter Jésus Luzardo was placed on the 10-day IL with a hairline fracture in his pinkie finger. How it went down, though, is what’s intriguing and unfortunate: Luzardo fractured his finger before his start vs. Baltimore on Saturday while playing video games, pitching through the injury in an 8-4 loss.
A’s manager Bob Melvin explained that it was an accident, and explained how the incident went down.
“Before the game he was playing a video game and accidentally bumped his hand on the desk as he was playing the game,” Melvin said, via ESPN. “He came in, was a little bit sore, training staff checked him out. We threw him in the cage before he went out there, watched him warm up.
“He was comfortable pitching, the training staff was comfortable with him pitching. After the game, we got an X-ray and there was a hairline in the pinkie finger.”
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Melvin said that there’s no timetable for Luzardo’s return. Luzardo gave up six runs (three earned) in the Saturday loss, and the A’s have come back down to Earth after a 13-game win streak, going just 3-5 in their past eight games.
Luzardo’s injury is the latest in a sport that is no stranger to bizarre injuries: Sammy Sosa injured his back while sneezing, Blake Snell injured his toe after a piece of granite fell on it and Trevor Bauer famously injured his finger while attempting to fix a drone.
If nothing else, Luzardo will have some company on the infamous injury list.
