Astros: Colin Moran leaves game after fouling pitch off his face

After fouling off a pitch to his face, Astros third baseman leaves the game, status unknown.

Colin Moran was having a better time in his first stint with the Houston Astros in 2017. After last year’s struggles in Houston, Moran focused on improving his swing this offseason. Whatever he did worked as he was slugging in Triple-A with a slash line of .308/ .373/ .543/ .916. He also had 18 homers and 63 RBI. What he was doing in Fresno couldn’t be ignored by the Astros.

Unfortunately, Carlos Correa went on the DL for 6-8 weeks with thumb surgery. That gave Moran an opportunity to show that his adjustment would translate into the big leagues. It was a small sample size, but he looked impressive. In six at-bats in 2017, Moran had three hits including a homer and triple.

The injury.

Unfortunately, during his seventh plate appearance, he was unable to complete the at-bat. According to Jake Kaplan, “the pitch was a slider that kept running on the left-handed hitting Moran, who swung and deflected it straight up at his left cheek.” It was a scary moment as he went down to the ground and you can see the impact of the ball.

It is terrible to see any player get hurt like that, especially a young player like Moran trying to prove himself. This shouldn’t be a season ending injury, but Kaplan tweeted that Moran won’t avoid the DL. At the time of writing, Moran is being tested at a Baltimore hospital. Whether it is a concussion or something worse, we hope Moran has a speedy recovery.

The question on everyone’s mind is who is coming up to replace Moran. It is unlikely that they will bring up someone not on the 40-man roster, such as J.D. Davis or Reid Brignac. That leaves A.J. Reed, Tyler White, or Tony Kemp. My guess would be White, who is batting .300 with 19 homers and 69 RBI.

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White can play shortstop, but he would most likely cover first and third some games. He has played in the big leagues before making the Opening Day roster last year. There has been no official announcement either way. We will update this post when news comes out.

***Stats from Baseball-Reference***