Adam Haseley will miss four weeks with a groin strain

Joe Girardi dropped a little bit of a bomb on the team today when he said during his postgame press conference that Adam Haseley will be missing four weeks thanks to his groin going south on him.

Saying it will alter the competition for the center field job might be a bit of an understatement.

Haseley of course got the Phillies spring off to a rousing start this year, drilling the second pitch seen for a home run.

Haseley was also going to be the leader in the clubhouse to be the Opening Day center fielder job, so this puts him significantly behind the eight-ball when it comes to that job. In fact, it isn’t out of the realm of possibilty that Haseley will begin his season in the minors, slowing his ascent to the majors.

There are also other ramifications here. It would seem that Scott Kingery will now probably win the job, with Roman Quinn likely being the direct backup to him. After that, this may also open up a spot for Odubel Herrera to get back to the major leagues. After all, the team was willing to bring him to spring training to see where his head and game are at with the lack of time he has seen on the playing field lately.

Now, there are complications with that. First, he has to be one of the best players during spring training. There is no sense in bringing him north if the reason is because they are paying him good money on his contract. His contract shouldn’t play a part in the decision. Second, to make it back to the team, Herrera will need a 40-man roster spot. Will the team want to do that knowing Haseley might not be that far behind? It would probably be assumed that one of the lower arms on the pecking order of the 40-man roster (Llovera, Hale, Falter) would have to be one of the ones to be DFA’ed, but with pitching going to be such a precious commodity this year, they may not opt to do this.

While losing Haseley for four weeks might not seem to be that big of a deal, he will need to be brought up to speed slowly. They will not want to “waste” a roster spot on a player who isn’t ready, so they’ll need to figure out the roster and plan accordingly. It’s an injury that might be relatively minor, but it does force them to evaluate things a little more carefully as they continue with their spring training.