Grichuk Early Exit

The full scope of the situation remains to be seen, but St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Randal Grichuk left Sunday’s 3-2 loss early due to a possible injury.

“He had a tweak in his–I haven’t been given the exact location, close to groin-quad kind of area,” said Mike Matheny, adding the move was more precautionary than anything else. “Probably one of those things he could’ve played through, but we’re not going to do it. We catch something early, it could save him significant time from pushing through it. We’re going to get doctors to take a look at him and then evaluate and see where we are.”

Grichuk was not available postgame, but a team spokesman shared information from the training staff that the issue happened while running the bases, not on a play in the field.

“It came to me, actually, after we already made our pitching change,” continued Matheny. “I had no idea, didn’t see anything. Next thing you know, we’re taking the field and I find out and we’ve got to kind of scramble to get guys ready because we had no clue.”

Grichuk grounded out to short in his last at-bat in the 5th inning, but played another in the field before Peter Bourjos took over centerfield as a defensive substitution in the 7th inning.

CISHEK DEBUTS

–After joining the team yesterday, Steve Cishek made his debut with a scoreless inning on Sunday.

“It felt good just to get out there and get the first one out of the way,” shared Cishek. “I felt pretty good out there just to begin with, made some pretty decent pitches I thought. I left one over the middle to Simmons but other than that, I felt pretty comfortable. I love throwing to Tony–he sets up a nice target over there and obviously, hear a lot of nice things about Yadi too so it’s nice to work with both of them.”

–Sam Tuivailala also threw a scoreless inning, extending his streak to eight consecutive scoreless appearances (8.0 IP).

photo credit:  Jeff Curry, Scott Kane-USA TODAY Sports