The Toronto Blue Jays shut Melky Cabrera down for the rest of the regular season on Friday night.
The team announced that the 30-year-old outfielder will have season-ending surgery on his right pinkie finger, per Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com:
Cabrera exited Friday’s game against the Boston Red Sox after injuring the finger:
Cabrera’s .300 average coming into the night ranked first on the Blue Jays, while his 73 runs batted in were third. According to Baseball-Reference.com, Cabrera’s 3.1 WAR was also second behind Jose Bautista.
At the time of writing, Toronto sits 9.5 games back of the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East and 4.5 games out in the AL wild-card race. With Cabrera out of the lineup, climbing into a postseason place becomes that much more difficult.
Cabrera’s a free agent at the end of the season as well. Rotoworld’s Matthew Pouliot thinks that he’ll be hit hard in the offseason:
Surgery was the only option, but there’s no question it will have major consequences on both the team and player.
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