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We all know that Francisco Cervelli, as good of a catcher as he can be, is considered to be injury prone at this point in his career. Of course, most of the damage he's done to his body has been from the dangers and pains of being a catcher. He broke his wrist in a home plate collision, he's suffered concussions, but some of it was avoidable. Some of it was his own fault.
Remember last year, when he got off to a ridiculously good start to the season, then broke his hand and was never seen again? Look at it happen again and tell me what he did wrong:
What are you holding your hand out there for, bro?
If his hand is tucked behind his back, like most catchers do, that foul tip doesn't break his knuckle and the game keeps going. Sometimes catchers try to cheat a bit with their hand out like that so they can grab the ball out of their glove quicker and throw it to second faster. The only problem was that there was no one on base because it was the first batter of the game! As Kay astutely calls him out on. He has zero reasons to be doing that and because either he's not paying attention to the situation or just enjoys taking risks, his season ended in flames.
That was just one incident, though, and perhaps it was just bad luck, but judging by the way he protects his body, it's safe to say that he seems to be asking to get hurt again:
What's wrong here, you might ask? Oh, I don't know, how about the fact that he's a catcher who doesn't wear a cup. Like, let's talk about this for a second. He catches high-speed projectile objects traveling at near-100 mph to anywhere near his head to his knees while in a squatting position. You wear a cup for that. I don't care if keeping yourself free and in the breeze offers you some increased mobility. If that ball hits you correctly, you die. You're dead. Just dead.
Remember the time Jordany Valdespin wasn't wearing a cup and got hit with a Justin Verlander fastball right in the junk? Or that time that Carl Crawford got tagged directly in the crotch? Let's wear a cup, people. Yes, cups are weird, but they save lives.
Cervelli also doesn't wear any kind of protection while batting either. Maybe if he did he wouldn't have broken his foot on a foul ball a few years back, but it's hard to fault him for that. He did start wearing that gigantic space helmet after he was hit in the head, though, so he deserves credit for that. The thing is, though, that Cervelli is a catcher, and catchers get hit hard, beat up, and hurt. He doesn't need to do anything to make it more likely that he gets hurt because it's already pretty likely to happen without his help. It's unfortunate that he's missed so much time to injury and hopefully he's ok after the other night, but he does it to himself. Maybe someone needs to say something. Maybe they already have.