SEATTLE
Travis Snider had arranged tickets for several family members to this week’s two-game series between the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays. Other family and friends had bought tickets on their own and were prepared to cheer for Snider in what was supposed to be his first trip to the Seattle area as a major leaguer.
Instead, Snider, who played at Jackson High School, was more than 3,000 miles away on May 19 when the series opened, the victim of a sprained right wrist that brought a trip to the 15-day disabled list and a rehab at the Blue Jays’ training facility in Dunedin, Fla.
He was injured Friday while fouling off a pitch against the Texas Rangers and was placed on the DL Monday when pain persisted. He expects to start swinging a bat in about a week.
“Just a sprained wrist. No tears, no breaks,” Snider said by phone Wednesday. “That’s good news.”
Still, it couldn’t completely mask his disappointment in missing a trip to Seattle for the second straight year. In 2009, the Blue Jays sent him down to Class AAA Las Vegas on May 21 and didn’t call him up until about two weeks after they’d played a three-game series at Seattle in late July.
This time, injury cost him.
“The only way to get through it is to stay positive and realize how blessed I am to have this opportunity,” Snider said. “It would have been great to see all my family and friends and all those people who’ll be out there supporting the Blue Jays.”
The injury stalled a two-week stretch of hot hitting after Snider had started the season slowly. In a 10-game period before the day he was hurt, he batted .395 with two of his six home runs and nine of his 15 RBI. He’s batting .241 for the season.
“Things were not that far off at the beginning of the year even though my average didn’t show it,” he said. “Things finally started to click the last couple of weeks, and I was seeing the ball well and hitting the tough pitches hard.”
Despite the low numbers early, Snider played with a sense of security that he didn’t have last year when he struggled early and the Jays sent him down.
“They said from Day 1 that they would give me a chance and not to worry if after a couple of weeks I was hitting .180. As a 22-year-old, having that in the back of my mind helped,” he said. “The only difference (from 2009) was that last year I had a little bit of success before I hit a rough patch. This year started on a skid like that and, as an athlete, it’s hard not to think about it. But I went about it with the understanding that it’s all a matter of time and that I needed to stay positive, hit the ball hard and eventually it would fall.”
Kirby Arnold writes for the Herald in Everett.
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