Kansas City Royals lose Brady Singer to arm injury, but optimistic about prognosis
An injury to the throwing arm of Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Brady Singer put an early damper on the club’s night and a heavy burden on the relief corps at the start of the season’s final home stand.
Singer, the Royals top draft pick in 2018 (18th overall), made his 27th start of the season and 39th of his career on Tuesday night against the Cleveland Indians at Kauffman Stadium. Unfortunately for the right-hander, it also marked the shortest start of his career.
Singer exited the game flanked by head trainer Nick Kenney with two outs in the first inning. The Royals went on to win 6-4, but the abruptness of Singer’s exit with what was termed “upper arm discomfort” made for some anxious moments.
“He grimaced, I guess, would be the right word,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said of what prompted Singer’s removal from the game. “You could see that something didn’t feel right.”
After he threw a 2-1 slider to Bradley Zimmer that made the count 2-2, second baseman Whit Merrifield and catcher Salvador Perez approached the mound, apparently having noticed something. Matheny and Kenney immediately came out of the dugout and to the mound.
“But we already had a picture taken,” Matheny said after the game. “Everything came back good. It’s not the elbow or the shoulder.”
The injury or discomfort Singer felt apparently caught everyone a little off-guard. Both pitching coach Cal Eldred and Perez remarked before the game about how sharp Singer looked while warming up in the bullpen prior to the game.
Singer spoke to reporters postgame and described the issue as having to do with his bicep and triceps, and he said there wasn’t really any problem leading up to that last pitch.
“I threw a few sliders to Zimmer there, and the last one just got me — grabbed kind of the middle part of my arm,” Singer said. “But I’m starting to feel better and I’m not overly concerned about it.”
Both Matheny and Singer said the discomfort was the type of thing Singer had worked through in the past.
“I pitched through it before, quite a few times,” Singer said. “We always go out there and have little aches and pains and stuff like that, but tonight on the last two pitches I could feel it grab a little bit more than normal, which kind of concerned me.”
The imaging they had done during the game helped ease those concerns.
Singer gave up three runs on three hits and a walk in 2/3 innings.
Six Royals relievers combined to hold the Indians to one run on six hits and three walks in 8 1/3 innings.
“There’s a lot of things that happen when somebody is injured,” said reliever Josh Staumont, who earned the win. “A, we have to pick up the slack and that’s a team thing. That’s not necessarily a personal thing. That’s a work thing. Then there’s the second side. We care more about Brady and how Brady is sometimes than the actual game itself. We just want Brady to be okay.
“Thankfully, Brady with all the training staff and everything is going to just be Brady. He’s going to come right back and be firing. Today like you saw, we put 8.1 strong innings together. We had to just trust our coaching staff to put the right guys in the right situations, pick each other up accordingly. It was an unbelievable team win.”
