Percival injury not serious; DL status uncertain

Posted May 29, 2008 by Marc Lancaster

Updated May 29, 2008 at 12:54 PM

The Rays got good news last night when the MRI on Troy Percival’s left leg came back clean, showing no serious damage. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll avoid a trip to the disabled list, but at least the Rays are confident that if he does go on the DL, he’ll be back in the minimum amount of time.

“If he is, it would be a minimum DL thing,” said executive vice president Andrew Friedman. “If he’s not, it would be ‘X’ amount of days off. But we’re confident that it’s not anything that’s going to linger into a month or months of missed time and that was first and foremost the most important thing on our minds. Once we got past that, now it’s figuring out how best to handle it.”

Friedman said the Rays might have something more definitive later this afternoon after their medical staff huddles with Percival. If it looks like something that might keep him out for five or six days, I’d expect the Rays to DL him and just let him fully recover. If it’s two or three days, they’ll probably ride it out. Whatever they do, it sounds unlikely at this point that a roster move will be made today to bring in reinforcements.

Considering what happened yesterday stemmed from Percival tweaking his hamstring in a game last week, you might think the Rays would be inclined to put him on the shelf for two weeks now rather than risk dealing with this for the rest of the season. Friedman said he would take the medical staff’s opinion on whether to go that route or not.

“There is a certain aspect of hamstring injuries where it does linger, and that’s something we definitely don’t want to have happen,” he said. “But if we have full confidence that it’s not something that will linger, then it won’t be a DL situation.”

One of the problems the Rays figure to have in assessing Percival’s condition is that he is unlikely to submit to a DL trip without a fight.

“It’s one of Percy’s greatest strengths and one of his biggest vices – he will absolutely tell you he wants the ball every night,” said Friedman. “He’s a competitor, and you wouldn’t have it any other way, but I’m sure he’s going to walk in today and say he feels outstanding and he wants the ball. So it’s our job to kind of sift through that a little bit and rely on the doctor and kind of put all the pieces together to do what’s in the best interests of the team.”