Detroit Tigers: James McCann Placed on Disabled List With Ankle Sprain
By Matt Snyder
The Detroit Tigers placed catcher James McCann on the disabled list with an ankle sprain. Bobby Wilson has been called up from AAA to take his spot on the roster.
Detroit Tigers catcher James McCann collided with Pirates first baseman John Jaso in Monday afternoon’s game trying to leg out a ground ball. A throw by second baseman Josh Harrison sailed a bit wide of the bag forcing Jaso to re-position his body in line with the base.
McCann — in a last-ditch effort to avoid a collision — tried to plant his foot and change direction as he hit the bag, but his foot slid off the base and rolled underneath him. Here’s a link to a video of the play on MLB.com.
McCann was placed on the 15-day disabled list by the Tigers on Tuesday morning with what is being called a grade two sprain. Jason Beck reports that the club expects him to miss 2-4 weeks of action.
Ausmus on McCann: “They’re calling it a Grade 2 sprain, which is generally 2-4 weeks.”
— Jason Beck (@beckjason) April 12, 2016
To take McCann’s place on the roster, the Detroit Tigers have purchased the contract of Bobby Wilson from AAA Toledo (that’s baseball speak for adding him to the 40-man roster) and activated him for duty. Wilson began the season in AAA after being acquired from the Texas Rangers as part of the return package in the Bryan Holaday trade.
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The 33-year old Wilson has appeared in parts of seven major league seasons in his career and has amassed a rather light .204/.267/.303 batting line. Jarrod Saltalamacchia will assume full-time catching duties in McCann’s absence but Wilson will need to make several starts to give Salty some time off in the meantime.
Simply retaining Holaday wouldn’t really have been an option for the Tigers. He was out of minor league option years, so the Tigers would not have been able to send him to the minor leagues to begin the season. In hindsight, their only options for keeping him would have been to carry three catchers on the roster or to designate him for assignment until the last minute and also not place him on waivers until the seventh day of the 10-day DFA period.
In that case, after seeing McCann go down, they could have revoked the waiver placement and re-activate him to the 40-man (and 25-man) roster, but all that would have required foresight into McCann’s injury. In other words, an impossible situation. Also an incredibly dumb one because the 95% case would have been to lose Holaday for nothing instead of getting a modest return package.
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In an interesting (but unfortunate) turn of events, Holaday has become the de facto starting catcher in Texas after Robinson Chirinos broke his arm after being hit by a pitch.