Kansas City Royals shortstop Adalberto Mondesi leaves game with knee injury
In the same inning the Kansas City Royals batted around, broke Tuesday’s game open and left little doubt they’d end their losing streak at four games, they also saw starting shortstop Adalberto Mondesi come off the field gingerly.
Mondesi, the injury-plagued athletic phenom, left the game in the sixth inning after pulling up awkwardly on the bases. The Royals said he came out of the game due to “left knee discomfort.” Nicky Lopez took over at shortstop.
The Royals scored four runs in that inning on the way to a 6-0 win over the Chicago White Sox in the first game of their three-game series at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Mondesi successfully bunted for a single on a well-placed ball up the third-base line that left the defense no chance of getting him at first base. The bunt came after Bobby Witt Jr.’s leadoff double, and it gave the Royals runners on the corners with no outs.
With Mondesi on first base, White Sox pitcher Reynaldo Lopez threw over to first base multiple times. After the last throw over, which caused Mondesi to scramble back to the base, Mondesi walked off the field and went into the dugout where he was met by a member of the training staff. Edward Olivares entered the game as a pinch runner.
Royals manager Mike Matheny said Mondesi was sore after the game, but the initial check from the medical staff seemed to indicate no structural issues. Matheny said Mondesi would likely get looked at again on Wednesday morning. He described the initial findings as “good news” after Mondesi came off the field.
“You just hope for the best when something like that happens, you’re just kind of waiting to hear,” Matheny said. “It didn’t look good, but we got as good a news as we could possibly get.”
Entering the day, Mondesi had started all 14 of the Royals’ games this season and played every inning at shortstop for the club.
Mondesi’s health and availability have been an ongoing storyline, particularly last season when he suffered the first of two oblique injuries on the final day of spring training.
Strains to both obliques and a left hamstring strain kept him out for the majority of the season. He played just 35 games last season, his fewest since appearing in 25 in 2017.
Late last season, the Royals openly discussed the possibility of using a load management approach with Mondesi.
Royals president of baseball operations Dayton Moore even said the club could not view Mondesi as an everyday player due to his injury history. Though Moore later softened that stance.
From the beginning of spring training camp, the Royals’ proceeded with a primary infield alignment of Lopez at second base, Mondesi at shortstop and Witt at third base.
Witt primarily played shortstop throughout the minors, and Lopez had a stellar season last year as the club’s starting shortstop with Mondesi injured. But both general manager J.J. Picollo and Matheny made it clear in spring training that they’d head into the season with Mondesi as their everyday shortstop.
On Sunday, Mondesi extended his Royals record to 75 consecutive errorless games at the shortstop position, dating back to Aug. 2, 2020. He broke the previous record set by Lopez last season.
Picollo explained during spring training why the club had decided against using a load management system or artificially scheduling days off for Mondesi.
“We just think he’s too valuable to be on the field,” Picollo said in early April. “Hopefully, we can monitor his workload in different ways that if we’re sensing that it’s time to give him a day, we give him a day.”
In early April, Picollo also addressed whether or not they’d leave themselves open to second-guessing by not limiting Mondesi.
“The only reason I say no to that is because we haven’t come up with a definitive answer as to what will keep him healthy,” Picollo said. “There’s nothing we can find, whether it’s performance science, strength and conditioning. Again, it’s the unpredictability of it.
“It’s not like he has one chronic thing. It has gone to different body parts. We just don’t feel like there’s a clear-cut answer based on what our guys have researched that says this is the way to go. That’s why I say it’s going to be more of an awareness of how to manage him through the course of say maybe two-week chunks.”
While Mondesi played in every game so far this season, the Royals early-season schedule had been more spread out than anticipated due to a combination of three scheduled off days as well as two weather postponements.
This story was originally published April 26, 2022 at 9:58 PM.
