The first weird injury of spring training is here: A Royals pitcher fell through his barn
Spring training is upon us, which means baseball fans can count on a few things: Unrealistic enthusiasm about bad teams, questionable Twitter pictures from beat writers and — the best thing of all — weird injuries.
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So we’re offering both our congrats and our condolences to Kansas City Royals pitcher Brian Flynn who wasted no time in making his case for the oddest injury of the 2017 baseball season. Flynn, a 26-year-old vying for a spot in the Royals bullpen, is out eight weeks because … wait for it … he fell through the roof of his barn. Ouch!
From Rustin Dodd of the Kansas City Star:
Days before he departed for camp, reliever Brian Flynn crashed through the roof of a barn at his home in McAlester, Okla., breaking a rib and sustaining three non-displaced fractures in his vertebrae, Royals manager Ned Yost said on Tuesday.
“He was working on his barn and fell through the roof,” Yost said. “So he took a pretty good tumble, knocked himself out. So he’s going to be about eight weeks behind everybody else.”
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This is significantly more serious for both Flynn and the Royals than many of the outlandish spring injuries we see — like then-Rays reliever Joel Peralta injuring himself while getting out of his car a couple years ago. The Royals need bullpen help and Flynn, undoubtedly, would like to have a bigger role. The injury certainly affects both of those situations.
We wish Flynn a speedy recovery. And we wish good luck to all the rest of the baseball players out there trying to pass him in the 2017 Weird Injury Rankings.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
