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Roger Mooney

Roger Mooney covers the Tampa Bay Rays for The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and News Channel 8. He has covered the Rays since their first season in 1998, including 11 years for the Bradenton Herald. Roger has also covered Florida, South Florida and Florida State football, the Bucs and the Lightning.

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Balfour injured horsing around with Hickey

Posted Jul 31, 2010 by Roger Mooney

Updated Jul 31, 2010 at 06:27 PM

ROGER MOONEY
ST. PETERSBURG Grant Balfour suffered his intercostal strain before Friday’s game while roughhousing with pitching coach Jim Hickey.

Balfour was placed on the disabled list and will like miss up to four to six weeks.

“Just kind of a freaky thing, just messing around, pitching coach and the pitcher that know each other well doing some freakish thing, just interacting … something that guys do every day and nothing ever happens. It happened. It’s just a freaky, goofy thing. It’s really unfortunate because Grant is so important to us,” manager Joe Maddon said.

As a result, the Rays traded for right-hander Chad Qualls early this morning, completing the deal around 2 a.m.

Rays VP of baseball Andrew Friedman said Hickey would not be disciplined.

“No, there was no mal intent on either side. That being said, it’s very frustrating and obviously very avoidable now that you look back on it in retrospect, but both guys were kidding around,” Friedman said. “It’s what happens in a major league clubhouse all the time, just like or similar to the Kendry Moralas thing. (Morals is the Angels first baseman who broke his leg while jumping on home plate after hitting a game-winning home run). Guys do that sort of thing thousands of time and nothing every happens, same kind of thing, guys mess around like they do thousands of time and nothing every happen, but when it does, hopefully it makes people more conscious of that because we have a chance to do special things this year and that’s the part of it that’s frustrating.”

Maddon said he will not ban horseplay among his players and coaches.

“No. It’s obviously a freaky, fluky who knows why it happened sort of thing,” he said.

Still, the Rays are without one of their best relief pitchers until at least September.

“It’s unfortunate,” Maddon said. “He has been pitching so well. He’s a big part of what we’re doing. He looked like he did a couple of years ago. We’re going to miss him, definitely going to miss him. I’d like to have him and the addition of having Chad Qualls here, too. Believe me it’s not optimal.”