Royals third baseman Alex Gordon has a minimally displaced fracture of his right thumb and will miss up to a month, meaning that he could miss Opening Day, the team announced Sunday. This is the third straight season that Gordon has missed time with a significant injury; he tore his quadriceps in 2008, then tore the labrum in his hip early in the 2009 season and missed most of the season's first three months. The Royals had hoped that this year would be the year that Gordon, Baseball America's No. 2 prospect in 2007, finally got past the injuries and put all of his considerable tools together. Over parts of three seasons with the Royals, he's hitting just .250/.331/.415 and averaging 18 homers per 162 games.
This injury obviously doesn't prevent him from doing that; he's still only 26 and he won't miss a significant portion of the season. Still, this injury means he'll miss the better part of spring training and will either have to take a rehab stint to make up for the lost time or play himself into shape once the season starts. That's certainly not the way the Royals envisioned his comeback season starting.




