Houston Astros: Key contributor Yuli Gurriel goes under the knife

The Houston Astros are one week into spring training and they have appeared to lose their starting first baseman. Yuli Gurriel seems to have injured his throwing wrist or hand. Read along to see how the Astros should respond.

The Houston Astros hopes of repeating as championships looks to have gotten a little bit harder today. Yuli Gurriel posted to his Twitter account today, what looks like to be pre-surgery prep:

UPDATE:  According the Brian McTaggart of MLB.com, Gurriel will be out for approximately six weeks after having successful surgery completed to remove the hook of a hamate bone in his left hand.  This will put him on the DL to start the season and he will serve his five-game suspension — for the infamous gesture toward Yu Darvish — when he is ready to return back to the diamond. 

Wrist/hand injuries have a wide range of recovery time. If it is just a scope and cleaning out the injury he could only miss the first few weeks of the season. If it is something more serious he could be out months with the potential of it becoming a lingering issue. For reference, Paul Millsap of the Denver Nuggets is on the verge of returning from a wrist injury after being out for three months. Granted, different sports and different players but nonetheless a comparison.

Who’s up next?

The position battle to fill in the gap while Gurriel was serving his five game suspension becomes even more important now. AJ Reed, Tyler White, Marwin Gonzalez, and even JD Davis should all get looks at first base spot. Any one of these four could win the primary at bats from first base and you wouldn’t get any complaints from me. However, the Houston Astros like Marwin in a super utility role and are likely to try to keep him there.

Tyler White is a widely known commodity at this point, for the Houston Astros. He’ll be solid, yet unspectacular in his replacement of Gurriel. He has some positional versatility with his ability to play third and left field, maybe even second in a pinch. That adds value to him as he looks to make the 25-man roster.

Davis, like Gurriel, would have to move across the diamond from third base. Davis show some pop in his brief drink in the majors last year with four home runs in 62 at bats. He has potential to do some damage over an extended time at the big league level. However, in such a short period of time I imagine it’ll be hard for Davis to successfully make that switch and overcome the other three.

That leaves us Reed.

As I detailed out in article a couple days ago, I believe Reed to be the best guy to win the job. Reed smacked 34 homers last year for the Astros AAA affiliate. He came into spring training trimmed down from where he was last year. The Astros almost have, what I would imagine, to be there starting line up in today’s spring training game.

If this line up sticks, with moving Evan Gattis into the DH role and Brian McCann to catcher, this lineup remains stacked. Not every team can field a guy in the nine hole that has a 30 home-run potential. Look for Reed to capitalize on this opportunity as Spring Training continues and moves into the regular season.

Next: House of Houston Flash Briefing for Alexa

Thoughts and prayers are with Yuli. Go ‘Stros!