Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
Xander Bogaerts‘ first season as a second baseman hasn’t gone as planned. He’s struggled mightily at the plate thus far, and while he’s fared better defensively, on Monday he suffered a fracture in his left shoulder while diving for a ball. He could miss a couple of months, leaving the Padres — who despite going just 27-26 thus far currently occupy the third NL Wild Card spot — to fend without him.
The injury occurred during the first game of Monday’s doubleheader in Atlanta. With the bases loaded in the third inning, Bogaerts ranged to his left to try to stop a Ronald Acuña Jr. grounder. He dove in time to get his glove on the ball, but he landed hard, and awkwardly. He immediately began writhing on the ground and could only wrist-flip the ball to shortstop Ha-Seong Kim, who saw the play to its conclusion — a run scored, though Bogaerts’ stop probably prevented a second one from doing so as well — and motioned for help.
“As soon as I caught the ball, I heard, like, cracks. Four cracks,” Bogaerts told reporters. “At that point, I was like, ‘Something’s wrong.’ I didn’t feel exactly like something shifted. I just felt, like, cracks.” Four cracks! In another telling, it was “a couple,” but with an important detail: “I didn’t feel anything come out and then go back in. The only thing I remember hearing was a couple cracks.”
Presumably Bogaerts was explaining that he didn’t feel as though he’d suffered a soft-tissue injury. While initial x-rays were negative, a subsequent diagnosis confirmed a fracture in his left shoulder, and while the Padres didn’t offer further specificity, the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee reported that the fracture is in his shoulder socket. That would suggest a glenoid fracture, particularly given the traumatic nature of the injury, but such injuries usually involve tears of the labrum, and the Padres have since confirmed that Bogaerts did not suffer a tear, nor will he need surgery.
By comparison, when Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story dove for a ball and dislocated his left shoulder on April 5, he suffered a glenoid rim fracture and tore his posterior labrum, both of which were addressed with season-ending surgery. Under the Knife’s Will Carroll pointed out that given the combination of a lack of soft tissue damage and an initial report that Bogaerts’ shoulder was stable, the process of elimination points to the scapula as the fractured bone.
That’s the good news, but the bad news is that Bogaerts is still expected to be out two to three months according to Acee. Bogaerts expressed the belief that he’d be back sooner, though his words read more like an athlete’s bravado than an informed update. “Two to three months, no,” he said. “Nah, nah. I understand we want to be smart, but I’ll be back before that. I don’t like the sound of all those months.”
For the 31-year-old infielder, the injury is just the latest unexpected turn in a season that hasn’t lacked for them. During spring training, the Padres convinced Bogaerts — who signed an 11-year, $280 million contract with the team in December 2022 and spent the following season playing shortstop — to switch places with the defensively superior Kim, the team’s primary shortstop in ’22 and its Gold Glove-winning second baseman last year
It’s too early to get a true read on the returns defensively, but the prorated metrics suggest it might have cost them a couple of runs thus far:
| Padres’ Middle Infield Swap Meet 2023 | Position | Innings | FRV | DRS | UZR | AVG/1200 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kim 2B | 856.2 | 5 | 10 | 2.6 | 8.2 | |
| Bogaerts SS | 1285.2 | 2 | -4 | -0.2 | -0.7 | |
| Padres Total | 12969.0 | 19 | 40 | 26.2 | 2.6 |
It’s worth noting that Manny Machado’s early-season absence at third base could have influenced Kim’s positioning and play, but we’re really squinting at small samples. On a team-wide basis, the Padres’ prorated metrics show a similar gap — they were further above average last year than they are now — but in terms of turning batted balls into outs, they’re basically unchanged; this year’s .704 defensive efficiency (tied for third in the NL) is on par with last year .702, which ranked third as well.
On the other hand, it doesn’t take much to see that Bogaerts hasn’t been himself at the plate. Despite playing much of the 2023 season with a nagging left wrist injury that required spring and midseason cortisone shots and forced him to adjust his swing, he hit a respectable .285/.350/.440 (120 wRC+) with 19 homers and a career-high 19 steals in his inaugural season as a Padre
This year, however, he’s slipped to .219/.265/.316 (71 wC+) with four homers and four steals. As to what’s going wrong, he’s not hitting the ball very hard, producing a career-low exit velocity and his lowest hard-hit rate since 2017
That gap of nearly 20 feet owes something to cooler spring temperatures that prevent the ball from carrying as far as it does in the hotter months, but still, it’s left its mark on Bogaerts’ production. Bogaerts spent the first month of the season hitting leadoff, but when he addressed his slump after an April 19 0-for-4 performance, he refused to lean on that or last year’s wrist troubles as an excuse
One additional clue may offer some insight: Per The Athletic, Bogaerts reportedly has dealt with hip discomfort and soreness, which he attributed to the position switch. Particularly given how essential hip rotation is to generating bat speed, I do wonder if that’s been a factor.
Perhaps the time off will allow Bogaerts a reset that helps him…
