PEORIA, Ariz. – Jeremy Reed has no fear of the outfield wall, and he may be lost to the Seattle Mariners for a considerable amount of time because of it.
Reed fractured the scaphoid bone in his right wrist Thursday night when he crashed into the center field wall during the Mariners’ exhibition game against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Manager Mike Hargrove said the recovery time would be 4-6 weeks.
“If anything good comes out of it, it’s that we still have a week of spring training to eat into those weeks,” Hargrove said.
All that seemed certain Friday was that the Mariners will have a vacancy in center field for several weeks. Hargrove planned to meet Friday night with general manager Bill Bavasi to discuss options for replacing Reed.
Among the possibilities, Bavasi said, is moving right fielder Ichiro Suzuki to center.
“We’re open to anything,” Bavasi said.
“I don’t know that we’re there by any stretch of the imagination,” Hargrove said of moving Suzuki to center. “Certainly that’s one of the options, but before we did that, I would sit down with Bill and discuss it, and with Ichiro too.”
Bavasi wouldn’t rule out an outside acquisition, although he said the club had enough viable options on its 40-man major league roster.
Among them, besides Suzuki, are Joe Borchard, the switch-hitting outfielder acquired this week from the White Sox when the Mariners traded away pitcher Matt Thornton; Willie Bloomquist, who the M’s may prefer to keep in a utility role; and Matt Lawton, who has started several exhibition games in center field but will miss the first 10 days of the regular season while he serves a suspension for a positive steroids test last year.
“There are a couple of ways we can go and still have standby plans,” Hargrove said. “It really is up in the air right now.”
Reed suffered the injury in the fifth inning when he hit the wall chasing a double by the Diamondbacks’ Johnny Estrada. Reed flew to Seattle on Friday to be examined by Dr. Carleton Keck of the Seattle Hand Group.
The scaphoid is a peanut shell-sized bone in the wrist that takes extreme force to break and can take considerable time to heal. Patients who have the fracture stabilized with a screw often return to sports in about eight weeks.
Reed had played well this month, especially at the plate after he had made offseason adjustments to improve his hitting. He was hitting .316 with one home run and six RBI, and in his last game went 2-for-4 with two RBI, including an eighth-inning single after he had been injured.
“We felt like his stroke was coming around,” Hargrove said. “Probably the hardest ball he hit all night was with a broken wrist. You feel bad for the kid.”
Although the injury occurred to Reed’s non-throwing wrist, the Mariners’ biggest concern is how it will affect his ability to swing the bat.
“What I do know, from talking to guys like (Rod) Carew when his hands started to go bad, was that it’s real difficult on guys like Jeremy who are good hitters,” Bavasi said. “If we get lucky and he’s back in four or five weeks, that’s great. If it’s seven or eight weeks, that’s great, too, as long as that part of his body gets healed real well.
“It’s a real sensitive situation for hitters.”
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