Injury History of A's Rookies Problematic

A.J. Puk, Jesus Luzardo and Sean Murphy each have the potential to be impact players for the Athletics in 2020. To do that, they'll have to stay healthy and on the field, and for each of them, that's been a problem

Much is being made of the three rookies who are center stage in the Oakland A’s plans for the 2020 season.

But we were reminded today that there are pitfalls to the A’s reliance on left-handed starters A.J. Puk and Jesus Luzardo and catcher Sean Murphy.

All three were in the top 36 of Major League prospects posted by scouting guru Keith Law at theathletic.com. Law, who relies on his own eyes and has deep connections in the scouting world, is at the top of the charts when it comes to evaluating talent, and he has Puk ranked as the 21 best prospect heading into 2020, with Luzardo 26 and Murphy 36.

No team has more such highly placed prospects on Law’s list, and only the Padres, the White Sox and the Tigers have as many.

But as a quick scan of Law’s assessments underscores, there are issues. Specifically, health and playing time.

Puk, the team’s No. 1 draft pick in 2016 (the sixth overall choice), could have been with the A’s as soon as 2018, but during the spring of that year, elbow problems brought all that to an end. He needed surgery that wiped out all of 2018 and erased the first two months of 2019 as well.

Luzardo, who was taken in the same draft as Puk as a third-rounder by the Nationals, came to the A’s in 2017 as part of the deal that shipped Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson to Washington. Luzardo was coming back from Tommy John surgery at the time, was healthy when the A’s picked him up, but injuries have been a sporadic problem, limiting him to just 164.1 innings the last two seasons. That span includes a dozen innings pitching in relief with Oakland in the final three weeks of the 2019 season.

As for Murphy, the man who hopes to be catching Puk, Luzardo and the rest of the A’s starters as the primary catcher this season, he has yet to catch 100 games in a season. And in fact, his games played numbers are going in the wrong direction – 98 games in 2017, 73 games in 2018 and just 61 games combined between the majors and minors last year.

His injury issues are a cautionary tale. Since his junior season at Wright State, Law points out, Murphy has broken both hamate bones, has suffered a meniscus tear in his left knee that required surgery and missed big chunks of time with a sore hand and a staph infection.

His left knee severely limited his playing time in 2019 thanks to two stints on the injured list, first in May just after making his MLB debut, and then in July. He came back and wound up as a semi-regular in September. But just two weeks after the season was over, he had a lateral meniscus debridement procedure on his left knee. He and the A’s both say he’s healthy, but he’s being held out of games until March 2, just in case.

Law is one of many seeing big things what could be the best A’s rookie corps ever.

But they have to stay on the field. That’s a big “but.”