<\/p>\n
In these divided times, there aren\u2019t that many things that we can all agree on. But in Kansas City Royals land, there are at least a few: that Bobby Witt Jr. is the franchise\u2019s best position player since George Brett, that keeping him healthy is important for the short and long term, and that it would not be a good thing if, say, he weren\u2019t in a knee brace.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for us all, he\u2019s hurt. He\u2019s in a knee brace. And manager Matt Quatraro hopes that he will be available in the next few days after being diagnosed with a grade 1 MCL sprain.<\/p>\n Witt last played on June 18, where he went down after a defensive play at shortstop. It looked scary, and though he stayed in the game afterwards, he was taken out of the game later.<\/p>\n While we\u2019re on the subject of other things we can all agree on, let\u2019s also talk about Maikel Garcia<\/a>, who is also an important player for the Royals to succeed. Unfortunately for us all, he has been hurt, too. On May 30, Garcia was removed from the game after seven innings. He was diagnosed with a grade 1 hamstring strain, and though he made an appearance as a pinch hitter and as the designated hitter a few times in the following games, it took eight days for him to be well enough to play in the field again.<\/p>\n Just a few weeks later, Garcia saw some time off due to injury, this time due to hand soreness which he said first happened in the St. Louis<\/a> series in mid-May. Garcia left the game on June 16 after six innings and then saw the field five days later at shortstop while Witt was out.<\/p>\n And finally, one thing that we can all agree on, too, is that Salvador Perez<\/a> is the best defensive catcher on the team. Yet at the beginning of May, Salvy spent eight consecutive games as the designated hitter due to a hip injury<\/a> (and was on base only five times in 32 plate appearances).<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n What ties all these events together? You probably guessed, especially if you read the title of this article, but the answer is that the Royals didn\u2019t put any of these players on the injured list at any point.<\/p>\n Putting a player on the injured list provides the team with a clear benefit: players on the injured list don\u2019t count against the active roster. So, as long as a player is on the injured list, they can call up another player to take their spot. The downside, though, is that injured list stints require a minimum of 10 days for position players (and 15 for pitchers) for non-concussion injuries.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to get into nitpicking whether or not any of these specific situations warranted an injured list trip or not. The fact of the matter is that the team doctors know more than us both about medicine in general and these situations in particular. Plus, players want to play, and more of them are banged up to some degree than not at this point in the year. Teams are better off with their core players playing at less than 100% than they are with Triple-A guys filling in at full strength, and of course there\u2019s a chance that those players are also<\/em> at less than 100%.<\/p>\n All the listed injuries I brought up could have easily been injured list material. Salvy went 11 days between games behind the dish with his hip injury. Garcia went eight days between games in the field with his hammy injury. And Witt will, at minimum, be five days between any baseball action at all; he\u2019ll hit the 10-day counter this upcoming Sunday.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n This is clearly a pattern, and it\u2019s one that has actually gone back a few years. The Royals just do not like putting guys on the injured list if they don\u2019t know for sure they\u2019ll be out a minimum of 10 days. And it would be one thing if this were just limited to the player, but there are teamwide consequences, too\u2013with guys on the bench but unable to play, Kansas City is forgoing a roster spot every time they do this.<\/p>\n I think it would also be one thing if the Royals were fighting for a playoff spot, but the 2026 Royals are simply fighting to not be the worst team in the American League. What\u2019s the worst that could happen if Witt or Garcia or Salvy spend a few unnecessary days on the injured list? The team loses 95 games instead of 93 games? Oh, the horror.<\/p>\n Witt\u2019s injury is particularly worrying to me. Yeah, I\u2019m sure he wants to play. Yeah, I know the Royals want to win, still, regardless of their record. But the Royals are going to look really dumb if that MCL sprain turns into some other, bigger knee damage that affects 2027 if they don\u2019t even put him on the IL and send him back out there to play as soon as he can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In these divided times, there aren\u2019t that many things that we can all agree on. But in Kansas City Royals land, there are at least a few: that Bobby Witt Jr. is the franchise\u2019s best position player since George Brett, that keeping him healthy is important for the short and long term, and that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2472088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[360833,91466,342885,313842,77699,357714,52318,402966],"class_list":["post-2472087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-anne-rogers","tag-bobby-witt-jr","tag-injured-list","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-salvador-perez","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-st-louis","tag-the-kansas-city-royals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/The-Royals-are-avoiding-the-injured-list-like-it-is.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2472087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2472089,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472087\/revisions\/2472089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2472088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2472087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2472087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2472087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}